June 5th 1916

June 5, 2025 3 min read

JUNE 5^TH 1916, KITCHENER AND ARTHUR NORTH UNITED IN DEATH

June 5^th 1916 saw the deaths of two men, one a national icon, the other known only to his family and his friends in Loughborough. They were Field Marshall Herbert Horatio Kitchener, 1^st Lord Kitchener, and Leading Stoker Arthur North. In life, in origin, in wealth and influence, they couldn’t have been further apart. In death at sea, they were equal.

Both men perished when HMS Hampshire was hit by a German mine laid by a U-Boat, in a gale force storm one and a half miles off the coast of Orkney. Lord Kitchener was on a diplomatic mission from Scapa Flow to Arkhangelsk, for face-to-face talks with Tsar Nicholas II. Arthur North was doing his normal job.

A stoker from Loughborough

Arthur North had been in the Navy since 1908, when as an 18-year-old, he signed up for twelve years. He started his naval career as a Stoker 2 on HMS Nelson, a training ship, and followed that with service on many other ships, joining HMS Hampshire in January 1914. On 1st January 1916 he was appointed to the rank of Leading Stoker. Stokers were at the bottom of the pecking order on board ship, toiling away out of sight, loading coal into the boilers. It was backbreaking but essential work. A warship going at full speed would eat up 40 tons of coal an hour. The men who did the job were brawny and resilient, often coming from industrial civilian jobs, as Arthur North did.

Arthur North was born on 11th November 1889 in Loughborough, the son of Arthur and Sarah North. He was one of seventeen children, eleven of whom survived to adulthood. In 1901 the family lived at 116 Station Street. Arthur went to Rosebery School and would probably have left around the age of 14 to work. He was working as a boilermaker’s labourer before he joined the Navy.

Kitchener, the commanding face of World War 1

Lord Kitchener, an army officer’s son born in Ireland in 1850, had forged a distinguished and often controversial military career in the Sudan, in the second Boer War, in Egypt and India, reaching the rank of Field Marshall in 1909. In 1914 he became a cabinet minister and the Secretary of State for War. Almost everyone knows the recruitment poster with his commanding glare and pointing finger. “Your country needs YOU”.

On HMS Hampshire¸ Kitchener would not have known anything about Arthur North, whereas Arthur might have heard below-decks gossip that they had a VIP passenger. But both would have been shockingly aware of the impact when the detonation of the mine holed the cruiser between bows and bridge, and the lifeboats were smashed against the side of the ship by high waves when they were lowered. It took just 15 minutes for HMS Hampshire to sink. According to the Ministry of Defence, the ship was carrying 655 men and 11 passengers. Research has suggested the death toll was 737.

Commemorations

The bodies of over 100 officers and men were recovered from the sea and were interred into one common grave at the Lyness Cemetery, Hoy, Orkney. Those of Lord Kitchener and Arthur North were not amongst them and were never found.

Arthur North, aged 27 when he died, is remembered in many places: on Portsmouth Naval Memorial, and in Loughborough on the Carillon, on the rolls of honour for St. Peter’s Church and Rosebery School. His name also appears on the Kitchener Memorial at Marwick Head, Orkney. A tree for each man lost has been planted by Woodland Trust Scotland in order to create HMS Hampshire Centenary Wood.