Notes
Recovered 21.08.2023 from https://www.cwgc.org/find-records/find-war-dead/casualty-details/2871256/henry-robert-hallett/
ORDINARY SEAMAN HENRY ROBERT HALLETT
Service Number: J/21622
Royal Navy H.M.S. "Bulwark."
Date of Death 26 November 1914 Age 19 years old
Commemorated atPORTSMOUTH NAVAL MEMORIAL 3.
http://www.piddlevalley.info/history_great_war.php#1
Ordinary Seaman HENRY ROBERT HALLETT, Piddletrenthide, HMS Bulwark.
The first man from the Valley to lose his life in the Great War was only 19. Henry Robert Hallett joined the Royal Navy and served as an Ordinary Seaman on the battleship HMS Bulwark. Built in 1902, Bulwark had a displacement of 15,000 tons and a top speed of 18.5 knots. 430 feet long, she carried four 12" guns, twelve 6" guns and others of smaller calibre. Her complement was 750 officers and men, of whom eleven, including Hallett, came from Dorset.
On 26th November 1914, she was loading ammunition at Sheerness when she blew up. 793 men perished in the explosion and there were only 12 survivors. Henry Robert Hallett is commemorated with his shipmates on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial.
The Admiralty Court of Inquiry could find no cause for the explosion, but during the War, another two ships blew up mysteriously. After the third loss, HMS Vengeance, in 1917, it was realised that the same dockyard hand had been present on each occasion. He was tried and convicted as an enemy agent.FREDERICK HALLETT was from Piddletrenthide. Mention has already been made of another HALLETT, HENRY ROBERT, the young sailor killed when HMS Bulwark blew up in November 1914 (see November/December 2014 above). The boys were twins, born in 1895 and christened in All Saints Church on Christmas Day that year. One can imagine what a joyful occasion that christening must have been, not only for the parents, William and Eliza, but for the whole village.
The Hallett family lived at Well Bottom, near Incombe Copse, where a beef unit stands today. The twins were followed by a sister, Kate, in 1898 and a younger brother, Douglas William, in 1899.
We cannot conceive the anguish suffered in that lonely cottage at Well Bottom when both sons were killed within 10 months of each other. They had not reached their 20th birthday and neither had a grave for the family to mourn over.
The names on the Memorial Hall plaques are in alphabetical order until the letter 'H' is reached. If the alphabet had been strictly followed, Frederick Hallett would have appeared at the bottom of one plate and his brother Henry Robert would have been at the top of the other. How thoughtful of the first Memorial Hall Committee to slightly rearrange the order so that the twins' names appear next to each other.