Thomas Frederick Crouchen

A Mate with Fishing Vessel Boy Jack (Lowestoft), Thomas died on 26th of July 1918 at the age of 38. 

Thomas was born at Blundeston on 8 August 1879, a son of John Howes and Hannah Maria Crouchen. He was baptised at Saint Mary’s Church, Blundeston, on 5 October 1879. In 1881 his family lived at High Street, Blundeston, and this was still their address in 1891. In 1893 Thomas began an apprenticeship as a fisherman with his father. This was cancelled in 1896. In 1901 his family lived at 10 Melbourne Road, Lowestoft, and Thomas was a fisherman. 

On 25 December 1901 Thomas married Margaret Elizabeth Garwood at Saint Margaret’s Church. Thomas was a fisherman living at 10 Melbourne Road, and Margaret lived at 125 Wollaston Road. In 1911 their home was at 28 White Horse Street and Thomas was the Mate with the trawler Kestrel, LT 1097. Later Margaret lived at 71 Queens Road.  

Thomas joined the Royal Naval Reserve, for temporary service, on 3 August 1915, service number 8334/DA. He was discharged on 25 August 1915. 

In 1918 Thomas was the Mate on the trawler Boy Jack. The following report, from The Illustrated Police News, 1 August 1918, page 2 (with additional details from the Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 29 July 1918, page 1), gives an account of what happened to the Boy Jack.

U BOAT MURDERERS

CAPTURED CREWS LEFT TO DROWN 

That the U boat murderers are outcasts from civilisation is proved again by their deliberate drowning of Lowestoft fishermen on Friday. After looting and sinking two smacks the Huns destroyed the small boats carried by them, took the lifebelts, and took the crews of the smacks aboard the submarine, there they were kept on deck, crowded forward of the conning tower, until the vessel dived suddenly and left them struggling helplessly in the sea. Every circumstance points to this dastardly crime having been premeditated. It was carried through in a spirit of callous levity that accentuated its cold-bloodied brutality. 

The victims were Thomas Croucher (mate), Frederick Simons  (fourth hand), and Thomas Claxton (cook), of the Boy Jack, of Lowestoft, and Frank Pieters, junior, a Belgian, the 22 year old son of the skipper of the God’s Good Night, a smack owned in Ostend.

Harry Howe (skipper) and George Underdown (fourth hand), in describing their experiences with the U boat said:-

‘The submarine began by machine-gunning our vessel, the Boy Jack. She came alongside and called us to go to her in our boat. We did so. All of us climbed aboard the U-boat except our skipper, who went back in the boat to the Boy Jack with two Germans. They looted our smack of all food, clothing, rope, buckets, and lifebelts. From our catch they picked out fish and took all into the submarine.   

The Germans seemed to be ravenously hungry. While overhauling our vessel they came upon some packets of biscuits. Promptly they tore open these and began eating the contents. They continued ‘scoffing’ biscuits as hard as they could all the time they were loading and unloading the boat. One of the first things they did after getting the stuff on board the submarine was to cook some of the fish and eat it.

Some of our crew were only partly dressed. The Germans would not give them the remainder of the clothes, but kept the lot. After sinking our vessel with a bomb they sank our boat. For two hours or more we stood, wet, shivering, and some of us half-clothed, on the forepart of the submarine as she steamed about with water breaking over her. It was about 6.30 when they fell in with the Belgian vessel and they sank her also.’

Frank Pieters, the master of the God’s Good Night, said, “Before they sank my ship the Germans took out of her everything they could move. The captain of the submarine himself overturned my small boat and sank it. He produced a chart and asked me to point out where minefields were, but I would not. He also asked to what part of Belgium I belonged. When I replied ‘Ostend’, he said, ‘We come from Zeebrugge.’

The submarine was about 90 ft. long. All her crew ere very young. Among them was a boy of about sixteen who was very seasick. The captain was only about twenty-five. As my vessel was sinking from the bomb they exploded in her the Huns took a photograph. Then nudging me they pointed to the sinking vessel and said ‘Look, look’, and laughed in my face. They kept asking questions and laughing.”

Two British patrol ships appeared in the offing the Huns, without a word of warning to their victims, shut the conning tower lid and submerged the submarine by driving her forward in the water. All those on deck were thus thrown into the sea. Pieter’s son was drowned while trying to swim by his father’s side. The three men missing from the Boy Jack’s crew were apparently sucked down by the submarine. After struggling for about half an hour in the water the survivors were picked up by the patrol vessels.