In memory of Thomas Elwyn Jones
Born in Rhyl in 1889, Thomas Elwyn Jones went to school in Colwyn Bay where his father was a minister at the Welsh Calvanistic Methodist Chapel on Woodhill Road, writes Adrian Hughes. Young Thomas was a gifted sportsman and academic, and progressed to Bangor University where he attained a first class degree in mathematics. While at university he captained the cricket, football, tennis and rowing clubs.
In 1912 he was appointed senior maths teacher at Carmarthen Grammar School and stayed in this post until July 1914 when he left Wales and moved to Greenwich to study at the Royal Naval College. By the end of his six-month course, the First World War had broken out.
On New Year’s Day 1916, Jones joined the crew of Royal Navy flagship HMS Defence and taught the midshipmen mathematics and physics. Defence was sunk on 31 May 1916 during the Battle of Jutland, the largest naval battle of the war. The ship’s magazine was detonated by fire from a German battlecruiser. The fire from that explosion spread to the ship's secondary magazines, which also exploded. There were no survivors and 903 men were killed.
Thomas Jones probably died while destroying the ship’s secret code signalling books, of which he had charge. It was his duty in an emergency to take the code books down to the fires in the boilers (which generated the steam to drive the ship), throw them into the flames and wait there till certain of their destruction to prevent any possibility of them falling into the hands of the enemy. He was 27 years old. His body was never found. He is remembered on Plymouth Naval Memorial.
