Stevens, Herbert

Wonderfully, having had no photograph when we posted the link below, we now have two from his grandson.

In 1963 Stoker Bert Stevens was one of ten survivors of Jutland who recorded their recollections for an episode of the BBC programme the Great War. Bert is audio clip number 10 at https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/voices-from-the-battle-of-jutland.

There is also a 23 minute audio clip at https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/voices-of-the-first-world-war-jutland.

Transcript: When we come out of that scrap we were terribly bashed about. There was 38 killed on the upper deck amongst the gunners and there were so many of the ammunition party was killed. And we managed to get a lot of the wounded down below, including Jack Cornwell, laying on the mess stools down below, see. Now then, when we got about 100 miles from Grimsby, Captain Lawson says, ‘I'm gonna stop the ship.’ He said, ‘I’ll have to take a chance. We can't take these men in, they're too bad.’ And he stopped the ship and we buried the worst ones over the side, see. Had them in canvas and we put a dummy shell in, over the side. I forget how many we buried, I couldn't say. I know it was a terrible thing.


 * 1) HMS Chester Crew List (Photographs)
 * 2) HMS Chester Crew List (updated in Real-time)