ERIC BENJAMIN BARNES

P/JX 134697, Leading Signalman

HMS Phoenix Royal Navy

Who died aged 25 on 21th July 1940

Eric Barnes was one of the six children of Eliza and Benjamin Barnes.  Only two of the children were boys and both died in the year 1940 in the Submarine service.  

When their father was employed by Mr Cooper who farmed at Holverston and the family lived on the north side of the main A146 at Hellington Corner, but by 1940 when these tragedies occurred the family had moved .

Eric was a professional seamen having joined the Royal Navy as a cadet in HMS Ganges and joining the Submarine service in November 1936.  His submarine HMS Phoenix was based on the China Station before the war but returned to serve in the Mediterranean.  She sailed from Alexandria on 3 July to take station to the North of Malta.  On 21st July 1940 Lt Cdr Nowell fired torpedoes at the tanker “Dora C” off Augusta in Sicily but was immediately attacked by the tanker’s escort torpedo boat Albatross whose depth charges are believed to have sunk the submarine with the loss of all hands.

This action took place on 16 July 1940 but the official date of the loss is logged as 21 July, the date by which HMS Phoenix had not responded to nor issued signals and was assumed to have been lost. 

Eric’s name is on the Portsmouth Royal Navy memorial.  He and his brother Maurice are also remembered in Hellington church (no longer a commissioned church, but open daily for visits) where a plaque on the north wall of the Chancel records their names.

Eric Barnes, a studio portrait taken in Harrogate before he went to join HMS Phoenix on the China Station in the 1930s

 

The memorial plaque in Hellington church that commemorates Eric and Maurice Barnes.  

HMS Phoenix on the China Station at some time before the outbreak of war in 1939, when she returned to operate in the Mediterranean

 

 

Eric Barnes in Egypt in 1933 with a shipmate from HMS Phoenix