This week’s blog is more personal than previous as it is about my family. It is a story that has been carried through generations in the Peterson family. From 1833 the Peterson tradition was to name the eldest son Archibald. Between 1917 and 1940 three members of my family drowned, they were all called Archibald James Peterson.
In 1917 my Great, Great Grandfather Archibald James Peterson was torpedoed at sea in WW1. Archie was a merchant seaman, he was serving on a defensively armed British cargo steamer the SS Britannia. On the 19th October, while on route from Middlesbrough to St Malo with a cargo of pig iron, the ship was torpedoed by a German submarine. Archibald and all the crew drowned.
Archibald was 47 when he drowned, leaving his second wife to look after his six children from his previous marriage. The Peterson stepmother was not only strict but cruel. She sent one of the children, David, to a training ship (HMS Mars) at the age of 10 not long after his father was killed.
(Great, Great Grandfather Archibald James Peterson)
In 1937 my Great, Uncle Archibald James Peterson drowned aged 16. At the start of a family camping holiday at Shoeburyness, Southend, Archie drowned while swimming in the sea at the mouth of the Thames with his siblings when the tide came in and they were stranded on a sandbank. Archie was the eldest sibling so as soon as he sensed danger he tried to save his brother, he managed to rescue my Grandfather James, 14 at the time and My Great Uncle John, 9, but sadly Archie drowned. My Grandfather and Great Uncle John never spoke about the death of their brother as they found it too painful and blamed themselves.
(Great, Uncle Archibald James Peterson)
The third Archibald to drown at sea was the son of Archibald who had drowned in WW1. My Great, Great Uncle Archibald James Peterson, drowned after his ship was mined in 1940 in WW2. In 1939 Archie was recalled to the Royal Navy so he elected to join the submarine corps and served as leading signalman aboard HM Submarine Thames. HMS Thames was on her first war patrol when she went missing. She had sailed from Dundee to patrol in the North Sea. That same day she successfully attacked the German torpedo boat Luchs just west of the Skagerrak. The Luchs was acting as part of a screen for the battle cruiser Gneisenau, which is believed to have been the Thames original target. It is thought that the Luchs had manoeuvred between the submarine and the battle cruiser just as the Thames fired her torpedoes. The shortened range and the ensuing explosions may have been the cause of the loss of the Thames although the favoured opinion is that the submarine struck a mine. Submarine Thames was sunk, with the loss of all crew off the coast of Norway on the night of 2nd/3rd August 1940.
(Great, Great, Uncle Archibald James Peterson)
Archie was the third Archibald James Peterson in the family to die by drowning at sea. He was 36 years old and left Doris, a widow at 28, with a young daughter Elizabeth.
Three generations of the Peterson family, all named Archibald James Peterson all drowned at sea. My Great Grandmother Catherine said we have a curse on our family and we must never name another child Archibald.
(Great, Great Grandfather Archibald James Peterson)
(Great, Uncle Archibald James Peterson)
(Great, Great, Uncle Archibald James Peterson)
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