John Weston Brown

Born: 28 March 1868

Died: 1 January 1915

Rank and Regiment: Chief Stoker 143956 aboard HMS Formidable in the Royal Navy

Resting Place: body unrecovered

Memorials: St. George’s, Hardingham, United Kingdom and; Chatham Naval Memorial.

John was born on 20th March 1868 at Deptford. 

In 1896 he married Minnie Faith Moore in Medway, Kent. Their children were Dorothy (born 1897), Ivy (born 1899), Albert (1900-1972), Ernest (born 1905) and Ruth (born 1910).

In the 1901 Census, although John Brown appears to have been aboard the training ship HMS Arethusa on Census night, Minnie was living at 39 Regent Road, New Brompton, Gillingham. The household appears to have been prosperous enough to include Grace Cox, 14, a domestic servant.

John Brown served in the Navy for 22 years, enlisting as “Stoker 2nd Class” as a youth of 20 and being pensioned as Chief Stoker in May 1910. He is one of only two Hardingham men for whom virtually complete service records survive, which allows us to learn something about him. In particular, unlike Arthur Whitehand who stood only 5 feet 6 in tall and weighed under 10 stone, John Brown was 5 feet 9 or 5 feet 9½.

He appears to have prospered sufficiently to have been able to buy his way out of the Navy in 1892 – “Shore by Purchase” appears on his service record – but he signed up again in 1895.

In May 1910, he retired from the Navy, as he believed permanently, no doubt looking forward to a peaceful and moderately prosperous retirement in the peace of the Norfolk countryside, and by the time of the 1911 Census, as well as being a Royal Navy pensioner he was working as electrical engineer and chauffeur at Hardingham Hall. He was the manager of the electric plant at the Hall.

Of course, as a Navy pensioner, he was on the reserve list meaning that he was among the first to be called up when war broke out.

He was on HMS Formidable when on 1 January 1915 she was torpedoed by a German U-boat in the English Channel. He was one of 547 officers and men who, together with the captain’s dog, lost their lives. His body was never recovered and he is commemorated on the Chatham Naval Memorial.

His widow returned to Kent in the spring of 1915 – Albert and Ruth are marked in the Admissions Register of Hardingham School as leaving on 12 April 1915 to go to Maidstone. Minnie Brown’s family lived in Kent, and she appears to have remained in that area for the rest of her life, dying in Canterbury in 1963.

Chatham Naval Memorial