R.200970 ~ HARRY THURSTON ELLIS, Merchant Navy
Judy Cooper’s late father was a collector of military bits and pieces, nothing serious, but just as and when he came across something that took his fancy he would acquire it. After her father died, Judy discovered most of what her father had collected had been dispersed except for a pair of medals associated with war service and the Merchant Navy. Judy, of Lower Hutt, had found a 1939/45 Star and War Medal 1939/45 on a mounting brooch bar indicating that they had been worn.
Any merchant naval medals I have dealt with to date have usually been of First World War vintage (then known as Mercantile Marine Service) and had almost always include the Mercantile Marine Medal. Most importantly, all of those medals were named, not so the case with many Second World War medals. During WW2 merchant navalmen crewed War Office commandeered ships to transport troops, equipment, fuel ammunition and supplies to various destinations in Africa, Europe, the Middle and Far East, and the Pacific. As a consequence, the task or shipping routes necessarily exposed these men to the hazards of submarine attack, mines and transiting operational war zones. Accordingly, merchant navalmen were also eligible for some of the same medals Armed Forces personnel were eligible for. Eligibility was dependent on qualifying service in a defined zone or theatre of war (Germany, Africa, Italy, Burma etc). While the medals of most contributing Commonwealth countries were named before being issued, lamentably, those issued by the UK and New Zealand governments were not.
Fortunately Judy had also found an issue receipt from the General Registry and Record Office of Shipping and Seamen in Llandaff, Cardiff WALES for the two medals in the name of HARRY THURSTON ELLIS, dated 14 October 1963. In addition, the sheet that originally accompanied the medals from the Ministry of Transport, a New Zealand government department that at that time had ministerial responsibility for Mercantile Marine, Civil Aviation, Traffic Police, indicated which medals Harry had qualified for.
Judy had also gone some way to doing her own research of the owner, to the point of finding the original medal record for Harry Thurston medals which simply confirmed his name, discharge number and that he had been issued the ribbon of the 1939/45 Star only. For all seamen claiming medals not in the UK, this record was sent to the appropriate authority responsible for administering medals for merchant sailors to assess any further eligibility or medal issue action. The authority in this case was the NZ Ministry of Transport. NB: Harry’s daughter Shirley who resides in Liverpool recalls her father’s war medals arriving at their home in Liverpool and clearly recalls that apart from the two medals shown above, the Africa Star and Burma Star were also included.
Not knowing quite where to go from here, Judy contacted me for help and so the research of Harry Ellis’s life began. The first thing that became obvious was that Harry had been born in England but had died in Porirua City, Wellington.
Serving the Colours
The son of an iron worker, Harry Ellis’s father Arthur ELLIS (1883-1967) had grown up in Wednesbury, West Bromwich in the West Midlands, historically part of Staffordshire (STAFFS). A Carpenter by trade (later a Building Contractor), Arthur Ellis was 18 when he enlisted in the Royal Artillery (Royal Horse Artillery [RHA] & Royal Field Artillery [RFA]) at Woolwich Barracks, East London in January 1900. Posted to 106 Battery, Royal Field Artillery, 3462 Gunner Arthur Ellis served for 4 years 299 days, completing a Wheeler’s (wheelwright) course prior to discharging from the Army at his own request in Nov 1904. However, to break his agreed contract of eight years of ‘Service with the Colours’, Arthur was required to purchase his discharge which at the time was going to cost him £25 (British Pounds), the equivalent today of NZ$18,704.00!
Clearly one of Arthur’s main motives for early discharge included his marriage in 1905 to Phoebe Harriett THURSTON (1884-1971). However, in order to avoid the crippling cost of buying his discharge, Arthur had expressed his intention to re-enlist and a desire to serve at one of the Army’s posts in India. In considering his circumstances, the Army decided to simply extend his service from the time of re-enlisting, to include any periods of absence for his marriage and establishment of his personal circumstances, in order to complete his original eight year contract. This then would give him the option to either re-engage for another period of service at the end of the eight years, or to be discharged, without any financial penalty. India was soon out of the question as Arthur and Phoebe’s first child – Rosina May Ellis – was born in 1906 at Steyning (68 miles from Woolwich) however, unfortunately she did not survive.
Two notable events for the Ellis’s occurred in 1907 – first was the birth of a son, Arthur Leslie Ellis at Farnham, and the second, Gunner Ellis was promoted to Acting Bombardier (Cpl equivalent) in May 1907. In 1908, Bdr. Ellis sought a transfer to the Army Service Corps (ASC) which would allow him to make best use of his training as a wheelwright (Wheeler). As the majority of vehicles and artillery guns in the British Army at this time were horse-drawn, Arthur’s skills as both a qualified carpenter and a wheelwright were in high demand. Accordingly, his Corps change was approved and Arthur joined the ASC as: T/26991 Driver (Wheeler) A. Ellis.
The Ellis’s third child was Harry Thurston Ellis who arrived on 26 June 1908 while the family was living at 40 Kings Hill, Wednesbury, West Bromwich, Arthur Ellis’s home town. Harry was followed by his sister Clifford May Ellis (1911-1996), the Ellis’s second child born at Farnham.
New Brunswick, Canada
By August 1911, Driver Arthur Ellis was at Aldershot to begin his ASC training. Later in the year after securing a residence at No.2 Ferndale Villas, Holly Road, Arthur relocated Phoebe and the family to Aldershot from West Bromwich.
Coincidentally at this time, Arthur had completed his eight year contract of ‘Service with the Colours.’ Having done so and not electing to serve another period, he was automatically transferred to the Section B of the Army Reserve, the most common form of reserve service. For men who had fulfilled their contract in the regular army, the normal period of obligation to the Army Reserve was five years, meaning they could be recalled to service at the Army’s discretion. Those classified as Section B reservists could only be called upon in the event of general mobilization. Pay amounted to 3 shillings and 6 pence (35 cents) a week.
Arthur’s intention was to take his family to Canada, perhaps a first step to permanent migration further afield at a later date? Since this meant leaving the country whilst still bound by his five year Reserve obligation, and therefore eligible for recall in the event of general mobilization, he was required to sign a document acknowledging this condition before any leave of absence from England was approved. Arthur and Phoebe together with their three children left Liverpool on 29 August 1911 on the Ascania which was bound for Quebec. Eleven days later the ship docked at Halifax, Nova Scotia where the family disembarked and eventually established themselves at St John in New Brunswick.
War on the horizon
With the sabre-rattling by Germany throughout the 1910s, it was the assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand in Sarajevo which precipitated war between Germany, Britain and her allies. The British Army Reservists were mobilised in early August 1914 which meant Arthur Ellis would be re-called for war service. Many of the Reservists filled the ranks of the regular army units to bring them up to their war establishment strengths. Those who were surplus to the immediate needs of the regular battalions were posted to the Special Reserve. Thus the 3rd Battalion of each regiment was massively and very rapidly expanded with men that would be eventually be posted to a regular battalion. Driver Arthur Ellis ASC was re-called to the Aldershot Special Reserve battalion in Feb 1914 and six months later in September was mobilized for deployment overseas.
Dvr. Ellis was deployed to Belgium in October 1914 as part of the first ASC elements of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). Landing at Zeebrugge, Belgium in Nov 1914, the BEF were confronted with an enemy who had gained a substantial advantage following the August Battle of Mons. Superior in numbers, the German Army had slowly forced the BEF backwards, costing some 1,600 Allied soldiers lives before the Germans were finally stopped at Marne.
After his extraction from Belgium, Dvr. Ellis went with his unit to France. In March 1915, he was promoted to Temporary Wheeler Sergeant, and in Feb 1916, was appointed an Acting Wheeler Staff Sergeant. For every 12–18 months of service overseas, a soldier earned 10 days leave which Arthur was able to take advantage of to visit with his family in New Brunswick. It must have been a surreal experience packing up all of one’s gear in the field and going home to civilization in Canada for a week, to semi normality, and then returning to the carnage of the Western Front! Travel time was inclusive of the 10 day leave periods however Arthur still managed at least on two occasions during the war to return briefly to St John.
Wheeler S/Sgt. Arthur Ellis was a hard worker and one who went about his work with great diligence. His proficiency and personal efforts were particularly noted by his superiors and brought this in a recommendation, to the attention of the General Officer Commanding BEF, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haigh. As a result, Whlr. S/Sgt. Ellis was Mentioned in Despatches on 9 April 1917 for“gallant and distinguished services in the Field”. In May 1917, his work in arduous and dangerous circumstances was further recognized with the award of the Meritorious Service Medal (MSM) – LG 30101 Page 5317.
In Sep 1917, Whlr. S/Sgt. Ellis was sent to the Mechanical Transport Base Depot at Arquata in Italy. The Italians, who had been neutral at the beginning of the war, had been forced to mobilize against their neighbours, the pro-German Austro-Hungarians. They were drawn into the war with no shortage of manpower (except that most officers were inexperienced Reservists), the Army numbering some two million men in the field by 1917. But their Army was grossly deficient in equipment, arms and ammunition which, a situation that was alleviated by supplies made available by the French that were railed to wherever needed. British and US forces being allies of these non-belligerent powers at this time, dispatched some of their Army Service Corps units to expedite the organization and distribution of these, before returning to England and demobilizing in July 1919.
Sadly during this last year of war, Arthur and Phoebe’s son 11 year old son Leslie succumbed to the world-wide pandemic of Spanish Influenza while in St John. Being almost the same age as his brother, Harry had been very close to Leslie and so was understandable heartbroken when he died, however, good news was on the way. A sister, Clifford May Ellis was born at St John in 1918 prior to the family’s return to England. Whlr. S/Sgt. Ellis was able to go to St John and accompany his wife and family – Harry (11), May (8), Charles (5) – home to England. Departing from Montreal on the SS Tunisian, the Ellis family arrived in Liverpool on 31 July 1919 where they returned to Kings Hill, Wedensbury (to No.36) and set about rebuilding their post-war life in England. The last two Ellis children were also born while at Wednesbury – Valma Irene Ellis (1920-2005) and Raymond Thurston Ellis (1922-1983).
T/ 26991 Driver (Acting Wheeler Staff Sergeant) Arthur Ellis, MSM (mid) – RASC** was officially discharged from the British Army on 31 March 1920. In addition to the MSM, he was awarded the following war medals: 1914 Star, British War Medal 1914/18 and the Victory Medal. During World War 2, Arthur Ellis who by then was a New Zealand resident, served in the NZ Home Guard for which he was entitled to receive the War Medal 1939/45 and the New Zealand War Service Medal.
Note: ** The Army Service Corps was granted the prefix ‘Royal’ in 1918 in recognition of its service during the First World War.
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Ellis family emigrates
The Assisted Immigration Scheme to NZ was an attractive post-war option for many English immigrants who were keen to make a fresh start away from the wreckage of a city they had called home. Arthur Ellis decided the family was going to emigrate to NZ however then eighteen year old Harry wanted to return to Canada. In August 1923, his father paid Harry’s passage back to Halifax, Nova Scotia on the Pittsburgh and on arrival he made his way to a friend’s farm in Colbrook, New Brunswick where he would initially live and work on the farm.
The Ellis family – Arthur (40) and Phoebe (41) together with their four remaining children – May (14), Charles (10), Valma (4) and Raymond (2), left Southampton for New Zealand on 12 March 1925 aboard the RMS Ruahine. They disembarked at Wellington and found temporary accommodation in the South Wellington suburb of Newtown. Arthur being a carpenter had little difficulty getting work on the numerous residential and commercial building projects that were underway in Wellington at this time. Over the ensuing 20-odd years, Arthur became a successful building contractor. Following WW2, Arthur had been appointed the Clerk of Works for the construction of major government project in 1947, the Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital in which was opened in August 1950. Built as a psychiatric hospital, the complex consisted of 56 acres with 10 x two story, 11 bed villas, a fire station, 2 x swimming pools, a maximum secure villa, staff quarters, library, community hall, chapel, morgue and 4 x two storied 50 bed villas along with garaging and workshops, an administration building, glass houses/gardens, central dining facility, rugby and cricket grounds.
His second big project was the construction of Massey House in Wellington. This was built in 1955-57 as the joint national headquarters for both the Dairy Producer’s Board and the Meat Producer’s Board. Arthur and Phoebe eventually retired to 5 Canteen Street in Marton where Arthur died in 1967 at the age of 79.
Birth and death in Canada
After returning to Canada in August 1923, seventeen year old Harry developed a relationship with Canadian girl, Vera Pearl MARNEY (1907-1925) who was also just seventeen. As can happen with young love Vera became pregnant in 1924, certainly not something she or Harry was prepared for. Vera came from the town of Brookville in St John where she was still living at home with her parents. Disaster struck for Harry when Vera was admitted to the St John Infirmary two weeks prior to giving birth to their baby. The birth itself while not complicated, sadly resulted in Vera’s death at 11.30pm on 28 May 1925, only minutes after she had delivered the baby. Her cause of death was Pulmonary Embolism (PE), one of the most severe complications of pregnancy. It is a condition where a blood clot blocks an artery in the lung. A Pulmonary Embolism will typically occur during, or shortly after, the labour and delivery, and can be fatal for the mother if not treated immediately. Vera Marney was 17 years and seven months when she died.
Vera and Harry’s baby son happily survived however the loss of Vera was too much for the 17 year old Harry to cope with. Possible afraid of what the fallout would be from Vera’s parents, or from the authorities, Harry left St. John on a ship that ended up at Seattle in the Washington State on 13 Feb 1926. Baby Donald Charles Marney was adopted by Vera’s aunt and uncle, Muriel Marney WORDEN and her husband Theodore who raised Donald as their own, ‘Worden’ becoming his surname. Known as Don, he married a US citizen in later life and had a son and daughter. Don Worden served in the military during WW2 and eventually returned to live in Canada where he died in 1977 at the age of 52 in Edmonton, Alberta. It is not known if Harry ever met his son in later life.
Deported !
When Harry left St. John he went across country, crossed the Canada/US border (illegally) into the USA where he eventually got work on a farm in Wisconsin, situated on the western side of Lake Michigan, one of the great lakes. By all accounts it was particularly tough work for an eighteen year old but Harry stuck it out for the best part of a year before making for the port of Seattle in Washington State on the East Coast. Having crossed between Canada and the US without being processed through the normal border immigration authority meant he was technically an ‘illegal alien’. While attempting to get passage on a ship out of Seattle, Harry (20) was apprehended in Nov 1928 and deported from Montreal back to Liverpool on 4 Nov 1928 aboard the RMS Laurentic along with three other ‘illegal aliens’ who were also in their teens and early twenties. Harry’s destination address was given as c/o Sailors Home, Liverpool, no doubt where he would be held until legally cleared by the UK immigration authorities to leave.
Over the following 12 months, Harry got back on his feet with labouring jobs around the Liverpool Docks and a found a place to stay. Around 1930 he opened a small repair shop, putting his electrical and mechanical skills to good use fixing anything from a radio to a meat mincer, copper kettle to an alarm clock. It was at a Liverpool dance Harry (25) met Florence Veronica GERRARD (1908-1970), also from Liverpool, and whom he married in 1933 at the Liverpool Registry Office.
In need of a more regular income, Harry gave up his little repair business and became a Journeyman Steel Erector (what we would call a Scaffolder), hard work with much of it no doubt around the Liverpool Docks.
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A life on the ocean wave …
As expected, the Liverpool Docks was an extremely busy place and provided the majority of jobs for young Liverpudlian men. If it wasn’t working the Docks, a young man essentially had three other choices – one of the numerous heavy industry factories in the city, the army, or a job at sea. Harry had demonstrated during his schooling that he was very adept at mathematics and had developed a penchant for all things mechanical, particularly engines and engineering. Wanting a career that paid and with options, choosing the latter option was the basis of his decision to join the Mercantile Marine Service.
Merchant freight and passenger ships were constant at Liverpool Docks being the primary port of entry for immigrants, and for freight and passengers arriving and departing from the UK. Twelve kilometers of interconnected docks, the most advanced port system in the world enable ship movements within the dock system 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, isolated from the high River Mersey tides. The workforce required to unload and load not only the ships but also service the extensive rail network that moved the goods and passengers all over the United Kingdom, was massive.
Elder Dempster Line
Once Harry and Florence had settled themselves into 29 Wesley Street, Waterloo, a stone’s throw from central dock area of Liverpool, Harry (26) joined the Elder Dempster Line towards the end of 1933. Based in Liverpool, Elder Dempster Lines had its origins in a Steamer service to West Africa. Alexander Elder was a Scottish ship builder who together with fellow Scot John Dempster started the service in 1868 from Liverpool to West African ports of Cape Palmas, Cape Coast Castle, Accra, Lagos, Benin Bonny, Old Calabar and Fernando Po. The Steamers were specially built for the African Trade and, besides being comfortably fitted up for passengers, they had extensive cargo space which enabled them to carry rough goods at moderate rates.
In 1899 the Elder Dempster Shipping Ltd was formed, and together with the African Steamship Company, and the British & African Steam Navigation Company, came under the Elder Dempster Lines (EDL) name in 1932. It operated three liners (known to all as the mailboats) on a regular scheduled service departing each fortnight to Ghana and Nigeria, with other ports of call in Sierra Leone and Liberia. A large number of cargo and express cargo ships also sailed further south beyond the equator, and also to the USA. Outward cargoes were general and manufactured goods and included cars, locomotives, machinery, textiles, salt, beers and whisky, and on return voyages logs, sawn timber and ply, palm kernels, palm oil, groundnuts, rubber, cocoa, and tin. In the 1930s EDL also operated an airline – Elders Colonial Airways – with flights from Freetown to Bathurst and Dakar, and for many years ran a fleet of coastwise cargo ships and river ferries in Nigeria.
EDL employed many people, from its seagoing staff to those personnel in its UK offices and Elder Dempster Agency branches in West Africa. EDL was the largest shipping company trading between Europe and West Africa from the late 19th century to the 1980s. It increasingly employed West African crew members, and its employees played a key role in developing economic, social and cultural links between West Africa and the UK. Black seafarers, for a long time, endured earning less and receiving fewer rations, whilst at the same time carrying out many of the most laborious and dangerous jobs on board.
Being one of the largest shipping lines of the time, in the mid 1950s EDL pioneered a Cadet Department to train the deck, engineer, purser, and catering officers of the future. Elder Dempster Line was also the first British shipping company to open a purpose-built cadet residential establishment and also had its own cadet training ship. Until that time, Midshipmen like Harry Ellis were largely trained on the job and examined regularly until the complete range of skills required had been mastered.
The company played a major part in Britain’s First World War effort, but not without a price: losing 42 ships in the Great War and 26 ships in the Second World War, plus a further seven managed on behalf of the British government. Elder Dempster ships had also taken part in transporting troops to the Boer War 1899-1902, and to the Falklands War of 1982.
Source: http://www.elderdempster.org/
Liverpool at war
Little is known of Harry’s history during his first five years with the Elder Dempster Line but it would be reasonable to assume as one of the largest shipping lines in Britain, Harry would have had to undertake an apprenticeship as a Midshipman (ship’s officer under training) in seamanship skills and marine engineering, on both steam and oil fueled vessels. At the conclusion of his training, Harry would hold the rank of 4th Engineer (4th Engineering Officer). It was also during these early years with EDL, Harry and Florence were living at 83 Upper Frederick St, Liverpool when they began their family with the birth of two sons, James Arthur Ellis in 1934 and Charles Thurston Ellis in 1936.
As the opening shots of World War 2 reverberated around the world, Harry’s absences from home and the dangers he was likely to face at sea, may have prompted the couple to increase their family while they had the chance, an occasion that was heralded by the birth of twin girls in June 1940, Joan & Caroline Veronica Ellis.
The Liverpool, Bootle and the Wallasey Pool complex were strategically very important locations during the Second World War. The Port of Liverpool had for many years been the United Kingdom’s main link with North America, and proved to be a key part in the British participation in the Battle of the Atlantic. As well as providing anchorage for naval ships from many nations, the port’s quays and dockers handled over 90 per cent of all the war material brought into Britain from abroad with some 75 million tons passing through its 11 miles (18 km) of quays. As a result Liverpool and the Merseyside was the most heavily bombed area of the country, outside London during WW2.
The first major air raid of the Liverpool Blitz took place on the night of 28 August, when 160 bombers targeted the Liverpool city and docks city causing widespread damage and deaths. This assault continued over the next three nights, then regularly for the rest of the year with 15 raids in September and nine in October. On 18 September, 22 inmates at Walton Gaol were killed when high-explosive bombs demolished a wing of the prison.
There were 50 raids on the city during this three-month period. Some of these were minor, comprising a few aircraft, and lasting a few minutes, with others comprising up to 300 aircraft and lasting over ten hours. However, the first major raid came on 28-29 November when it was hit by 350 tons of high explosive bombs, 30 land mines and 3,000 incendiaries. This resulted in the most serious single incident, when a hit on an air-raid shelter in Durning Road caused 166 fatalities. The docks, surrounding areas of infrastructure and civilian housing took a pounding resulting in massive damage and over 4,000 killed.
The air assault in 1940 came to a peak with the Christmas Blitz, a three-night bombardment from 20–22 December, the effects of which impacted upon the Ellis family. In 1941 baby Joan Ellis died of Bronchitis. Her lung and breathing problems had begun after a neighbour’s house two doors away from the Ellis’s had been bombed in early 1941. The impact affected the Ellis’s house and whilst no-one was actually injured at the time, the air contamination from explosives, burning buildings and their contents was attributed to be the cause of her Bronchitis. After Joan died, a year later her sister Caroline also died, a situation believed to have resulted from the trauma of losing her twin which is not uncommon among twins.
Merchant service during the war
By 1941 Harry Ellis was ranked as a 3rd Engineer. In January 1942, Harry (34) joined the RMS Hilary, a Booth Steamship Company passenger vessel, Booth being one of EDL’s many shipping company acquisitions. A passenger liner launched in 1931, Hilary was designed to carry 80 first class and 250 second class passengers between the United Kingdom and South America. Hilary was also the largest ship Booth ever owned, both in length and in tonnage, with the most powerful engines of any Booth ship.
RMS Hilary was requisitioned by the Royal Navy and in 1940 was refitted in South Shields as an Ocean Boarding Vessel. Commissioned on 21 Jan 1941 as the HMS Hilary (F22) she was used throughout 1941-1942 in the North Atlantic as an OBV. An Italian tanker, the Recco, was stopped on 3 May 1941 but the crew of the tanker scuttled it before it could be captured. On 10 May, Hilary successfully captured the Italian tanker Gianna M.
HMS Hilary was restored to a merchantman and returned to the Ministry of War Transport (MoWT) director (Booth SS Co. Ltd., managers) in April 1942 for use in the North Atlantic as a ‘convoy commodore’ vessel. It was at this point that 3rd Engineer Harry Ellis joined the ship. A ‘convoy commodore’ was the title of a civilian put in charge of the good order of the merchant ships in the British convoys used during World War II. Usually the convoy commodore was a retired naval officer or a senior merchant captain drawn from the Royal Naval Reserve officers aboard one of the merchant ships. In October 1942, RMS Hilary and her crew had a very fortunate escape when she pursued by two U-boats and torpedoed amidships (the engine room) but the torpedo failed to explode!
Re-commissioned for RN service again in 1943, HMS Hilary became a combined infantry landing ship and headquarters vessel (Landing Ship Infantry [Headquarters]). She was again modified at Birkenhead to be equipped with six landing craft and accommodation for 313 crew and 378 soldiers. At the end of the war in 1945, she was again returned to civilian service, and scrapped in 1959.
Harry was 3rd Engineer aboard the SS Eclipse (1931) when he arrived at New York from Gibraltar in May 1945. The SS Eclipse was a British-flagged steam tanker that had been torpedoed on 04 May 1942 and sunk in the Atlantic Ocean off Fort Lauderdale, Florida by U-564 with the loss of 47 crewmen. Later salvaged, repaired and returned to service in December 1942, the ship was sold to Panama and renamed Ionian Skipper in 1950, and finally broken up in 1954.
‘Home is the sailor, home from the sea’
Within a month of Harry’s return home, daughter Katherine Shirley Ellis was born in October 1945. In 1946, Harry was back at sea as 3rd Engineer aboard an ESSO** bulk fuel tanker, the Esso Springfield (a ship that served the US Marine Corps, 1944-1960). Harry was employed as a “Wiper”, a position responsible for both cleaning the engine spaces and machinery of a ship and assisting the ship’s engineers as directed by the Chief Engineer – more than likely Harry would have been filling this vacancy by necessity. In September 1946, Harry (38) was listed on a passenger manifest of Cunard-White Star Line’s RMS Queen Mary sailing from Halifax to New York, via Montreal. There were no less than 28 other Engineering Officers of varying grades aboard, possibly being transported to the three planned ports to take up positions on local ships or those in foreign ports.
1947-1948 were Harry’s last years at sea. He spent time as 3rd Engineer on another Esso tanker, the Esso Manchester, and from March–May 1948, was 3rd Engineer aboard the HMS Winchester Castle which was engaged moving British migrants from Cape Town, South Africa to Portsmouth. The Royal Mail Steamer Winchester Castle had been requisitioned in 1941, completed one trooping voyage to Bombay before becoming the HQ ship for Admiral Mountbatten’s Combined Operations. When the ship finally reached Tilbury in May 1948, it was laid up for refit at the Grayson, Rollo and Clover shipyard, a ship repair and dry dock facility based at Birkenhead, on the Wirral Peninsula, south bank of the Mersey River. From October 1948 to September 1949, Harry was involved in carrying out the conversion and refurbishment of the Winchester Castle until she was returned to Royal Mail Ship service. The Castle resumed mail runs on 22 September and continued until 1960 when she was replaced by the Windsor Castle.
Medals: 1939/45 Star and War Medal 1939/45
Mercantile Marine Service: 1933 – 1945, 12 years completed for the Elder Dempster Lines
Note: ** Esso = Standard Oil of New Jersey, was formed in 1911 upon the breakup of Standard Oil. Although Socony (Standard Oil of New York) owned the rights to marketing in the New England States, the company allowed Standard Oil of New Jersey to market its products there under the name Esso (which stands for the S and O of Standard Oil).
Post war, life ashore ..
From 1949-1952, Harry Ellis was the Chief Engineer for the Howard Ford Hosiery factory in Woolton, Liverpool where he and his family occupied a company house at 18 Vale Road, Woolton. The “Bear Brand” factory employed generations of families from across Merseyside and had a long history in the area. The “Bear Brand” trade name was American in origin, as Howard Ford had started in the hosiery business by importing stockings, some from the Bear Brand Hosiery Company of Chicago. Ford later bought the trade name “Bear Brand” for use in the United Kingdom and Eire, and started manufacturing stockings in Liverpool. The factory site survived across the generations, also avoiding World War II bombers during the blitz as the Woolton factory turned out thousands of parachutes for the war effort.
Harry’s New Zealand family
In 1952, Harry made the decision to reconnect with his family who of course had been well ensconced in New Zealand for some 27 years. Requiring a sponsor for immigration purposes, Harry’s mother fulfilled this requirement. Harry and Florence together with James (18), Charles (16) and Shirley (8) migrated to Wellington on the SS Captain Hobson, arriving on 31 August 1952. The family settled in Porirua where Harry soon had work with Miller Wilson, a Wellington stainless steel sink manufacturer. After a couple of years at Miller Wilson, he joined Straits Air Freight (Cargon Ltd) at Paekakariki, employed to construct steel air cargo crates.
Florence found it hard to settle and was unsure about staying in New Zealand as she was homesick for England. The Ellis’s stuck it out for eight years before Harry agreed to return to England to support his wife. While eldest son James Arthur Ellis (then a Storeman) remained in NZ, Harry and Florence with Charles (23) and Shirley (14) returned to Southampton on the TSS Castel Felice in July–August 1960, settling at Hunts Cross Avenue, Gateacre in Liverpool. The following year, Charles Thurston Ellis married Lynette Royce VICKERS at Woolton, a lady he had originally met in New Zealand. Charles and Lynette decided they wanted to return to live in New Zealand which they did in 1961.
NZ bound once more
In August 1966, Harry and Florence migrated once more to New Zealand, this time having decided to stay for good. Their daughter Shirley however chose to remain in Liverpool where she continues to reside to this day. Harry and his family settled into 115 Gear Terrace at Porirua where he had secured a job as an Engineer and Tool Maker with a roller-door manufacturing company in Porirua. Within four years of arriving back in Wellington, Florence Ellis died in 1970, aged 61.
To maintain his house and essential services Harry engaged a housekeeper from Wellington, Katherine HALLAM, known to all as “Kit.” Born Katherine Amelia Winifred “Kitty” SEXTON in Whanganui on 2 Nov 1905, Kit Hallam was one of nine children of an Auckland born mother, Elizabeth May (nee JARVIS), and her London House Painter father, Thomas SEXTON. With Claude HALLAM, Kit had a son, Russell Lindsay HALLAM. In 1929 she married Arthur Alfred OLSEN from Patea and had two further sons, Colin Arthur and Arthur Francis Olsen before divorcing and gaining work with the Hallam’s in their Wellington hotel. From the 1950s Kit and her son Russell lived with Kit’s mother-in-law, Clara Evelyn HALLAM (nee JAMES), Kit’s estranged husband Claude, and sister-in-law Margaret Hallam, in the iconic art deco styled San Merino Flats in Oak Park Street (off Cuba St), Te Aro.
Clara Hallam had been a Wellington publican at 99 Courtney Place (name of the hotel unknown) who had taken up the reins of the business after her publican husband, John Hallam died in 1959. Clara was still listed as the ‘Hotel Proprietor’ in 1969 and presumably remained so until the hotel was closed/demolished when Courtenay Place was modernized in the 1970s. At the time Russell’s father Claude Hallam (59) died in 1969, Russell was working for the Wellington Harbour Board as a Clerk (later a trainee Teacher in 1981), while Kit and her sister-in law Margaret Hallam continued to work for Clara at the hotel until its closure. Thereafter Kit became a Shop Assistant in the city until she was employed by Harry Ellis in 1970.
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End of an era …
Following their marriage in 1975, Kit relocated to Gear Terrace with Harry where the couple remained for the next 17 years, until Harry passed away. Having lived in NZ for 42 years, Harry Thurston Ellis, late 3rd Engineering Officer of the Merchant Navy (ex-Liverpool) died at Kenepuru Hospital, Porirua on 11 February 1992 at the age of 83. Harry was buried in the Porirua Cemetery with Florence. Kit later moved to Spreydon, Christchurch where she died on 24 Jan 1994, aged 89.
~ Lest We Forget ~
Charles Thurston ELLIS
My hunt for the Ellis descendants was relatively easy in this case. Having found that Harry Ellis had emigrated to NZ and lived in Wellington, an Ancestry family tree maintained by Lynette Ellis was the key to locating Harry’s at least one of Harry and Florence’s sons, James or Charles Ellis. As it happened, Charles was the easiest to trace via census records due to his relative stability in the Wellington/Kapiti Coast areas throughout his working life. This, together with wife Lynette’s maintenance of the Ellis Family Tree, was all I needed to make the family connection. I had no idea that Lynette was Charles’s wife when I sent an Ancestry message to the author of the Ellis Family Tree so it was a most welcome response when Lynette replied saying Harry’s son Charles was her husband. This enabled me gather some detail of what would otherwise have been a very sketchy outline of Harry’s mercantile marine service and his life post WW2 in New Zealand.
Following Charles and Lynette Ellis’s return to New Zealand after their marriage, Charles spent his life’s work in the printing industry before retiring to Pukekohe, while his brother James Arthur Ellis, a photographer, went to Auckland where he currently lives. Charles, now 86, related an interesting anecdote about his father while gathering this research material, a particular quirk his father had which appeared to have been born from his West African mercantile marine experiences. Charles said his father hated gambling of any sort, and believed that card and board games to be responsible for the problems he had encountered. It was something he had an abhorrence of, possibly the result of his many voyages on the West African run. Perhaps it arose from the distraction such games imposed when the players should have been otherwise engaged as lookouts or ship task. Problems invariably arise during games of chance when money is involved and a ship’s crew is not immune from its fallout.
It may have been a reminder to Harry that sailing in dangerous waters required the duty crew’s full attention to ensure a vessel and its crew remained safe, rather than be distracted by either gambling with cards or board games, possibly with drink also involved? It could also have been the desperate lengths that some in the grip of gambling addiction would be prepared to go to in order to satisfy a debt or recoup a loss, such fighting, theft of money or valuables of fellow crewmen, etc. Whatever the reason, Harry made his aversion to cards or board games clearly known to Charles and his siblings who were never allowed to play with or have any as children, in fact Harry forbade them in the house! As a consequence, in later life Charles and his siblings had no idea how any of these games were played.
It was a pleasure to see Harry Ellis’s medals returned to his son Charles Thurston Ellis. Charles indicated that his father had no interest in any medals that were due to him and so had never made a claim. The medals issue slip that accompanied these medals is dated 1963, this being one of the years during which Harry and his family had returned to Liverpool. It may well be Harry had a change of heart about applying for his entitlement or, had been convinced by someone else he should apply for them. As they appear now they have been mounted for wearing and appear to have been worn on occasions. Whatever the case, how they came to be in the possession was likely a random purchase Judy’s father had made as a collector of all things military. It was indeed also a fortunate coincidence that Judy read of MRNZ’s service reuniting medals, or the medals could very well have missed being reconnected with the family.
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Thanks to Judy Cooper for entrusting MRNZ with the return of the medals to the Ellis family. My particular thanks to Charles Ellis’s wife Lynette who was able to collate the answers to the many questions I had whilst tracing the busy and convoluted life of Harry Ellis, and which greatly helped in writing this post. Charles has also reassuringly added that his father’s medals will now remain with the family as valued heirlooms that will eventually be passed down to a grandson.
The reunited medal tally in now 418.