Stoker 1st Class Henry David Snell

Henry was born in a poor area of St Pancras known as Union Street on 7 March 1897. His father, David Henry, also known as Henry, was a builder and his mother’s name was Rachel. He had an elder sister Florence and both children were baptised together in St Michael’s, Camden on 3 October 1898. A brother Ernest was born in 1899 and Rachel died in 1900.

At the 1901 census, Henry was living with his father in Union Street but there is no record of his siblings although it appears that Ernest lived until 1988.
Henry’s father married Elizabeth Emma Howells and they went on to have seven children, the eldest, Beatrice, being born in 1899. They set up home in Elizabeth Terrace, Leonard Road, Streatham.

Henry was sent to Canada as a Bernado boy and by 1911 he appears on the Canadian census as living with a farmer, John Slaughter and his wife in Ontario.
Henry enlisted in the Navy on 2 November 1914. He was 18 years old with fair hair and complexion and grey eyes. He sailed for England on SS Grampian on 18 April 1915 and arrived on 29 April 1915. He is listed as losing a day’s pay for being absent without leave on 6 May and again on 2 August 1915 before being transferred to base camp on 10 September 1915. By 7 October he was listed as a deserter.

There is no record of when he re-enlisted but he was on HMS Weymouth as a Stoker 1st Class (K31313) by 1918. He was killed in action after the Weymouth was damaged by a torpedo from the Austro-Hungarian submarine SM U-31 during the second battle of Durazzo, Albania, on 2 October 1918.

Henry’s name is listed on the Chatham Naval Memorial and in St Mark’s Church, Mitcham. The direct connection to St Mark’s is unclear but it is less than a mile from his father’s home.