In memory of Harry Lloyd Bacon

rhayader_harry_lloyd_baconHenry Lloyd Bacon (known as Harry) was born on 18 April 1883 in Coleshill, Warwickshire, to Mr and Mrs Joseph A Bacon, who later kept the Warwick Temperance Hotel in Rhayader.

Harry joined the Royal Navy in 1901, on his 18th birthday, signing up for 12 years. He served on the battleship HMS Colossus in the Grand Fleet before joining the staff of a youth training facility at Devonport, near Plymouth. He married Emily Jones, whose parents Mr and Mrs Philip Jones lived in Church Street, Rhayader.

Harry rose through the ranks to Lieutenant. During the First World War he served on the monitor ships HMS Marshall Soult and HMS Raglan. Monitors were ships with large guns, designed to bombard enemy coastal assets.

HMS Raglan spent most of the war in the eastern Mediterranean, where it was attacked and sunk on 20 January 1918 by enemy warships. Harry was among the 127 who perished.

When news of the sinking reached Mr and Mrs Bacon, they initially hoped Harry had survived, as he was a strong swimmer. His body was recovered from the wreck by a diver from HMS Edgar. Harry was buried with military honours on Thasos, a Greek island. After the war his remains, along with those of comrades from HMS Raglan, were moved to Lancashire Landing Cemetery in Turkey.

Harry’s brothers served during the war with: the Royal Fusiliers (Colour Sergeant James A Bacon); the Royal Field Artillery (Bombardier Walter Bacon); the Herefordshire Regiment (William G Bacon); and the wireless telegraph department of the volunteer force in India (John Bacon). Another brother, Joseph Cologne Bacon, was a Presbyterian minister in Newport during the war.

Emily was living in Irfonwy, Rhayader, by 1920.

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