Tuesday, January 22, 2013

The life and wartime service of Greg Clarke in the Royal Navy: in memoriam by Bill Forster

Greg Clark joined HMS Hecla on Boxing Day 1940 as the "Schoolie" while she was being fitted out in John Brown's shipyard on the Clyde. Sixty years later on Boxing Day 2000 he was recorded by his son Nick talking about his wartime service on destroyers and the destroyer depot ship, HMS Hecla. He survived her sinking and after the war became the first Curator of the Royal Navy Museum at Portsmouth, the museum entrusted with the care and upkeep of Nelson's flagship, HMS Victory, and was 95 when he died. Nick transferred his VCR recording onto a DVD and sent it to me with scans of some of his father's photographs. This together with notes of a conversation I had with Greg two years before he died in October 2012 forms the basis of this brief account of his long life... Read...
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In memory of those who died seventy years ago when HMS Hecla sank on Armistice Day 1942

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