Search our records : Alfred John Hawker

Alfred Hawker was born in Beer on 29^th October 1886, the younger brother of Charles (see separate panel).

He joined the Royal Naval Reserve on 30^th October 1914.  He gave two home addresses, one in Highfield Terrace, Beer and a second one in Barry, Glamorgan, so he may have been another of the Beer men who worked in Cardiff or Barry docks at this time.  His RNR record shows him as 6ft tall, with hazel eyes and a dark complexion.

After a short period at HMS Vivid (Plymouth) he joined the Duncan class battleship HMS Exmouth in January 1915, based at Portland as part of the Channel Fleet.  In May 1915 she was sent to the Dardanelles as flagship of Admiral Nicholson.  After the withdrawal from Gallipoli she remained in the Mediterranean, supporting Allied forces in Salonica and operating from Malta and Salamis.

In April 1917 Exmouth moved to the Indian Ocean, and patrolled near the Seychelles and later the coast of East Africa, and in August returned to Plymouth, where she paid off.

After a period ashore at Plymouth (HMS Vivid) Alfred joined HMS Europa, a cruiser which dated from the 1890s and which was serving as the flagship at Mudros, a port on the Greek island of Lemnos, which was an important supply base for the ships enforcing the Allied blockade of the Dardanelles.

Alfred was demobilised on 30^th May 1919.