BARKER, AMOS OWEN

Born 21/04/1894 Grimsby, baptized at Clee on 11/05/1894

Died 14/10/1942, age 48, Grimsby

Buried 19/10/1942

Lieutenant, Royal Naval Reserve, H.M.S. Arlette (GY1315, requisitioned by the Admiralty as an examination service vessel in 1940. Previously known as the George French when built in 1918)

Son of George Barker (b 1858 Sheffield) and Margaret Baker (b 1866 Grimsby)

One of 11 children – Lilly (b 1883), Edith (b 1886), May (b 1888), Albert (b 1890), George (b 1891), Fred (b 1893), Mabel (b 1896), Annie (b 1898), Arthur (b 1907). The tenth sibling died in infancy.

Husband of Gertrude May Allard, a skipper’s daughter, married 1915 in Cleethorpes

Father of Iris M. (b 1920) and Owen (b 1926)

1901 – living at 29 Guildford Street, Grimsby

1911 – living at 97 Lovett Street, Cleethorpes. Amos is now a fisherman, as is his brother Albert and his father George is a skipper. All work for the Consolidated Company.

Amos’s Royal Naval Reserve record from the First World War shows that he enlisted in the RNR on 11/10/1914, initially based at Yarmouth. Vessels he served on during the war included Victory, Agatha II, Portland, Osiria, Valhalla II and Pekin.

He qualified in signals on 05/01/16 and passed for 2nd Hand on 09/11/17

He was awarded the 1914-15 Star, British War Medal and Victory Medal.

Discharged on 20/01/19.

On the RNR record, he is described as 5ft 6in tall, with a fair complexion, grey eyes and 34.5 in chest, with a heart and a name tattooed on his right arm.

In May 1933, Amos made the Hull Daily Mail when the trawler he was skippering, the Pelican, hauled in the body of a man and pieces of wreckage whilst fishing 70 miles north-west of Heligoland. The man was dressed in a leather coat and airman’s helmet and a receipt on his body from the De Haviland Aircraft Company for a new aircraft costing £575 revealed him to be Wilhelm Mantheg Olmsted of Vingeren near Oslo, who had taken off from Heston Aerodrome on 21st January with Lieutenant Sigurd Aagnes to fly to Oslo. The aircraft had disappeared in poor visibility. Olmsted’s body was returned to the sea after his identity had been established.

Prior to his death, Amos Barker had previously survived the bombing attack on the Grimsby trawler Rutlandshire in the Namsenfjorden off Norway on 20/04/40.

Cause of death: Illness

Place of death on burial records given as Central Naval Store, Royal Docks

Address at time of death: 3 Neville Street, Cleethorpes

Grave ref: Section E, Grave E5

The family was to suffer further tragedy when son Owen, also a fisherman, died on 26/11/1943 at the Corporation Hospital in Grimsby, aged only 17 (cause of death not known). He is buried in the same plot as his mother’s parents. Amos’s widow Gertrude died on 04/08/49, aged 54. She is buried with Amos and his mother.