Chief Petty Officer (Gunnery Instructor) JAMES CHARLES THOMAS WEDGE
8, Andover Road, Winchester
Service number 171150. HMS M21, Royal Navy
Killed in action, English Channel, 21 October 1918
Life Summary
James Charles Thomas Wedge
James Charles Thomas Wedge, the eldest of James and Mary Ann Wedge’s seven children, was born in Bloomsbury, London, on 30 December 1877. A sailor with the Royal Navy from the age of 16, he served throughout the Great War before being killed just three weeks before the Armistice. This biography will focus primarily on James’s life - full details of the Wedge family history can be found in the biography of James’s younger brother, Charles Wedge.
Early Military Career
In January 1893, aged just 15, James Wedge Jnr joined the Royal Navy as a boy sailor. His service records give his occupation when he enlisted as plumber’s mate, so he had probably previously worked for his father, a gas fitter and plumber. James’s first posting was on the training ship HMS Boscawen based at Portland.
After completing his basic training, James served on several ships in quick succession, including the ironclad battleship HMS Inflexible, which operated as the Portsmouth Port Guard Ship, and the armoured cruiser HMS Undaunted. He won his first promotion, to Ordinary Seaman in December 1895, and was made Able Seaman in July the following year. James trained to be a gunner and spent much of the period between 1897 and 1910 based at the naval shore establishments HMS Victory I and the HMS Excellent, the Gunnery School at Whale Island, Portsmouth.
James was clearly a trusted and respected sailor. At the funeral of Queen Victoria in 1901, a year after being promoted to Petty Officer 2nd Class, he was chosen to be part of the brigade of servicemen who drew the gun carriage bearing the late monarch’s coffin. He was selected to perform the same duty at the funeral of King Edward VII in 1910. For these services James received the Royal Victorian Medal.
On 23 April 1905 James married Emily Maud Forsdick in Milton, Portsmouth. Emily, who had been born in Nova Scotia, Canada, on 21 February 1882, was the daughter of George and Amelia Forsdick. In the 1901 Census George was listed working as a gun retailer and living in Portsmouth.
James Wedge with his wife Emily whom he married in 1905
Emily gave birth to a daughter, Constance, in Portsmouth on 9 November 1907. In the 1911 Census, James, by then a Petty Officer 1st Class, was living with Emily and Constance at 16, Netley Street, Fratton, Portsmouth. A second daughter, Jessie Ellen, was born on 4 October 1913 when the family were living at 228, Twyford Avenue, Portsmouth. A son, Harold, was born in Portsmouth on 6 August 1918, just a few weeks before his father’s death.
Great War Record
At the start of the Great War in August 1914 James Wedge was serving on the London-class battleship HMS Venerable. Venerable formed part of the 5th Battle Squadron of the Channel Fleet and spent the opening weeks of the war helping to protect the British Expeditionary Force as it crossed to France. In late August she was used to transport part of the Portsmouth battalion of Marines to Ostend.
By late October Venerable was at Dover, serving as the flagship of Admiral Sir Horace Hood. On 27 October she anchored off the Belgian coast to help the Belgian army in the Battle of the Yser. Sluice gates had been opened to flood the area in front of the Belgian lines, but the water had not yet risen high enough to stop the Germans attacking. HMS Venerable took part in the bombardment of German army positions on both 27 and 28 October before withdrawing on the 30th. As a gunnery officer, James would have been at the forefront of operations on ship.
HMS Venerable – one of the two fighting ships that James Wedge served on in the Great War
By February 1915 only four battleships remained with the Channel Fleet. In March two of those four were sent to the Dardanelles, but HMS Venerable remained in the Channel to take part in further bombardments of the Belgian coast. On 11 March she bombarded the coast close to the Yser as part of moves to support the Battle of Neuve Chapelle. James brother Charles was killed in the battle the same day.
In May 1915 Venerable was also sent to the Dardanelles, replacing HMS Queen Elizabeth. Once there, she took part in the Suvla landings in August, bombarding Turkish positions to support the Allied troops on the beach. Again, James would have been in the thick of the action.From the Dardanelles Venerable moved to the Adriatic to support the Italians and she remained there until early 1917. In December 1916, however, James Wedge, by now a Chief Gunnery Officer, returned to Portsmouth where he spent the next 12 months at HMS Excellent. In December 1917 he was transferred to HMS Attentive II, the shore establishment for the Dover Patrol.
Based at Dover and Dunkirk, the Dover Patrol’s primary task was to prevent German shipping – chiefly submarines – from entering the English Channel en route to the Atlantic. The aim was to force the German Navy to travel via the much longer route around Scotland which was itself covered by the Northern Patrol.
The Dover Patrol was made up of cruisers, monitors, destroyers, armed trawlers, paddle minesweepers, armed yachts, motor launches, submarines, seaplanes, aeroplanes and even airships. It operated in the southern North Sea and the Dover Straits, carrying out anti-submarine patrols, escorting merchantmen, hospital and troopships, laying and sweeping mines and bombarding German positions on the Belgian coast.
James was posted to HMS M21, an M15-class monitor which had a crew of 69 officers and men. The ship’s main armament was a 7.5in 50-caliber gun plus one 12-pounder and one 6-pounder anti-aircraft gun. She boasted a top speed of 11 knots.
HMS M21 - James Wedge was killed when the ship hit a mine off Ostend on 21 October 1918
On 23 April 1918, M21 took part in the Zeebrugge Raid, an attempt by the Royal Navy to block the Belgian port of Bruges-Zeebrugge by sinking obsolete ships at the mouth of the canal which led to the port. The port was used by the German Navy as a base for U-boats which were a threat to Allied control of the English Channel and southern North Sea.
The Zeebrugge Raid was carried out in conjunction with an attack on Ostend. Two of three blockships were scuttled in the narrowest part of the Bruges Canal and a submarine rammed the viaduct linking the shore and the mole (stone pier), to trap the German garrison. However, the blockships were sunk in the wrong place and after a few days the Germans had opened the canal to submarines at high tide. The British suffered 583 casualties in the action and the Germans just 24. The following month James was promoted to Acting Chief Petty Officer and was working as a Chief Gunnery Instructor. It is believed that he became a full Chief Petty Officer before his death.
James was killed on 21 October 1918, aged 40, when HMS M21 struck a mine off Ostend. The ship was taken in tow to Dover but sank off West Pier. James’s body was never recovered.
Family after the Great War
Emily and the three children were living at 8, Highfield Street, Fratton, Portsmouth, when James died, but by 1920 she had moved to 6, Andover Road, Winchester, next door but one to her widowed mother-in-law Agnes Wedge. It is believed that Emily was responsible for the names of her late husband and her brother-in-law Charles – killed at Neuve Chapelle in 1915 - being listed in the Winchester War Service Register and on the memorials at St Matthew’s and St Paul’s.
From April 1919 Emily received a widow and dependent’s pension of 33s 4d a week. This covered both her and the children although the children’s pension ended when they reached 16.
James and Emily’s daughter Constance went on to marry Alfred Long in Portsmouth in 1927. In the 1939 National Register the couple were recorded living at 9, Derlyn Road, Fareham, together with Emily and their eight-year-old son Richard. The family later returned to Winchester and by 1942 were living at 32, Hatherley Road where Emily died in 1955, aged 73. Constance died in 1957 at the age of 49.
Jessie Wedge, James and Emily’s younger daughter, married Reginald Ashdown in Portsmouth in 1933. The couple had two children - Daphne, born in Portsmouth in 1936, and Melville, born in 1941 in Winchester. The family cannot be found on later records and may have moved abroad.
The 1939 National Register recorded Harold Wedge, James and Emily’s son, living at 11, Victoria Road, Winchester, with his uncle John and aunt Ida. He was single and working as a heating engineer’s clerk. During the Second World War Harold served with the Royal Observer Corps on the home front. He died in Winchester in 1961, aged 42.
James Wedge’s son Harold in 1944 in
his Royal Observer Corps uniform
Medals and Memorials for James Charles Thomas Wedge
Chief Petty Officer James Charles Thomas Wedge was entitled to the 1914-15 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. He is commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial, Southsea. He is also mentioned on the memorials at St Matthew’s and St Paul’s churches, Winchester, and the Portsmouth City Memorial.