George William Farrow

An Engineman with H.M. Drifter Protector, George died on 2nd of March 1916 at the age of 31. 

George was born at Kessingland on 7 March 1885, a son of George and Mary Ann Farrow. He was baptised at Saint Edmund’s Church, Kessingland, on 26 April 1885. In 1891 his family lived at Church Road, Kessingland, and this was still their address in 1901 when George was a general labourer. By 1911 they were living at Whites Lane, Kessingland, and George was a fisherman. 

On 28 December 1911 George married Maud Mitchell. They lived at 2 Shamrock Villas, Kessingland.

George joined the Royal Naval Reserve on 19 April 1915 and served on the trawler East Briton. On 4 February 1916 he joined the drifter Protector. A report in The Dover Express, of 17 March 1916, page 6, explains what happened to George:

Sailor Drowned in the Wellington Dock

Another Victim of the Dark

An inquest was held at the Esplanade Hotel on Tuesday by the Borough Coroner (Mr. S. Payn), on the body of George Farrow ages 29 years. Mr. Gilbert Deverson was chosen foreman of the jury.
Mr. J.C. Mitchell, father-in-law of the deceased said: I am a boat-owner, living at Kessingland, near Lowestoft. I have been to the Mortuary, and identify the body there as that of George Farrow, my son-in-law, aged 29 years. He was engineer on the patrol boat “Protector”. He lived at No. 2 Shamrock Villas, Kessingland. He was a married man with two children. He left home three weeks ago last Saturday, he was a teetotaller.
Skipper Walter Read, of a patrol boat, said: the deceased was chief engineer on board my vessel, and had been on board about five weeks. The vessel was on the Slip, being repaired. The deceased left my ship on the 2nd March to join another patrol boat lying in the Wellington Dock near the Commercial Quay. I last saw him at 8.15 p.m. on March 2nd. He left my boat by a ladder and went along the Commercial Quay alone. He never reached the other vessel. The only way to get aboard was to go over the slipway where the Rover Dour empties itself into the dock. There is no fence there, and it was very dark that night.
The Coroner: Can you suggest anything captain?
Witness: There ought to be a fence round the corner of Commercial Quay.
George Hobbs, a labourer, living at 7, Adrian Row, said: I was at the dock yesterday when Mr. Mitchell came to me and told me that he had lost a son-in-law in the dock and offered 10s. to anyone who found the body. I got a grapnel and threw it over the corner by the right-hand side of the archway on the Quay. At the first attempt the grapnel hooked the body. Which was pulled out of the water and carried to the Mortuary.
Police-constable Fagg said: At about 3.05 p.m. yesterday I was on duty at Snargate Street, when I was called to the Slipway, where I found the last witness with the body of a man, having a rope round the deceased’s waist. He hauled the body to the quay side, where it was at once identified by Mr. Mitchell and taken to the Mortuary. On searching the body I found a £1 note, a sovereign, 2s., and a sixpence. There were no marks of injuries on the body.  
The Coroner, in summing up, said that, being a stranger, the deceased probably fell over the Slipway, not knowing the way round. It was a very dark night, and there was no fence there to keep people from falling over. Docks were always dangerous, and now they were more dangerous still. If a fence was put up there, it would, no doubt, be the means of saving life, and would cost but very little to erect.
The jury returned a verdict of accidental death.