The Poignant Story of Deck Hand Donald Arthur Featherstone.
This genuine WWI British War Medal honours the life and tragic sacrifice of Donald Arthur Featherstone, a brave trawlerman and sailor from Hull who gave his life for his country just three months before the Armistice.
According to the 1911 Census of England and Wales, Donald was born in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, around 1886 to parents Amos and Millicent Featherstone. By 1911, he had moved to the bustling seafaring port of Hull, Yorkshire, where he was working as a professional fisherman. He lived at 4 Rosamond Terrace, Rosamond Street in Hull with his wife, Alice, and their young daughter, Maud.
When the Great War broke out, Donald’s skills as a seasoned commercial fisherman were desperately needed by the Admiralty. He stepped forward and joined the Royal Naval Reserve as a Deck Hand, assigned official service number 17305DA.
He was deployed to the Dover Straits to serve aboard H.M. Drifter Scania (attached to the shore base HMS Attentive III), a commercial drifter requisitioned by the Royal Navy to act as a crucial net minesweeper, protecting vital shipping lanes from German U-boats and mines.
On August 2, 1918, tragedy struck. While on active duty in the treacherous, pitch-black shipping lanes of the English Channel, H.M.D. Scania was involved in a devastating collision with the British patrol boat P. 57. The fragile wooden drifter sank rapidly.
Naval pension records confirm the heartbreaking reality: Donald drowned when the ship in which he was serving was sunk in collision. He was just 32 years old. His body was never recovered from the sea. Donald left behind a widow, Alice Maud Mary Featherstone, and three very young children: Agnes Maud (10), Amos Donald (6), and Kathleen Monica (3), who were left to grow up without a father at 59 Chiltern Street, Hull.Because he has no known grave, Donald is permanently commemorated with honour on the majestic Chatham Naval Memorial in Kent, on Panel 30.