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Showing posts from November, 2020

Lest We Forget - Alexander Cockburn

Alexander Cockburn was a 33 year old Royal Navy Warrant Engineer on H.M. Submarine Seahorse when he died in January 1940 near Heligoland Bight, Germany in the North Sea. The Seahorse did not have any credited "hits" and was the first British sub lost to enemy action in WWII, and it seems inconclusive when it was officially lost.  HMS Seahorse (98S) Alexander's father, Robert Tough Cockburn, was a Naval Warrant Officer and a Gunner, whose active service ended in 1903. Alexander's mother, Adelaide Tickner, came from a naval family; her father had served in the English Coast Guard and her brother Rowan, was one of the Chief Naval officers in attendance at the German Navy surrender at Scapa Flow, Orkney in 1919. (Rowan would go on be the Chief Constructor of the Portsmouth Dockyards, then Hong Kong Dockyards, retiring from the Sheerness Dockyards.)  Following in the footsteps of of the men in his family, and those of many men in the Portsmouth area, Alexander enlisted in