255130 LEADING SEAMAN ALFRED BOYLES
H.M.S. LAFOREY ROYAL NAVY
DIED BY DROWNING
23RD MARCH 1917
AGE 27 YEARS
Alfred had been born at Rumburgh on the 24th October 1889, the youngest son of John a bricklayer and Maria (née Foreman). By 1901 the family were living at No. 9 Chediston Street, Halesworth, where on leaving school Alfred found employment with Mr Took the provisions grocer of Bridge Street. It was from here that on his sixteenth birthday he left Halesworth to enlist into the Royal Navy becoming 235130 Boy 2nd Class on the training ship H.M.S. Impregnable based at Devonport. After completing his training, he was posted to his first ship the cruiser H.M.S. Hague in September 1906 now with the rank of Boy 1st Class. Two years to the day of enlisting on 24th October 1907 Alfred signed on for twelve years’ service with the rank of Ordinary Seaman. A short time later he was posted to one of the Navy’s newer Battleships H.M.S. Duncan. In December 1908 he then became one of the three thousand five hundred British Seamen to qualify to be awarded by the King of Italy the Italian Messina Earthquake medal. This was when ships of the Royal Navy Mediterranean Fleet had sailed to the coast of Sicily to aid the Civil Powers in the rescue and treatment of civilian casualties injured during the earthquake. This is said to remain one of the single most deadly natural disasters ever experienced in Europe.
The studio portrait of Alfred above shows him proudly wearing this medal. A study of Alfred’s service sheet shows that although only standing five feet five inches tall he must have been a fairly fiery character when possibly under the influence, as between 1909 and 1916 he was sentenced to various periods of cells (jail) on no less than five occasions.
Whilst on leave spent in Halesworth in the first quarter of 1914, Alfred married Alice Tibnam from Norwich just over a year later their first and only child Irene was born possibly at home with Alfred’s family in Chediston Street.
At the start of World War One Alfred was under training at the Navy’s torpedo school H.M.S. Actaeon from where he was posted to the naval base at Chatham in Kent. From here he spent the next three years serving on ships of the Dover patrol until on the 20th January 1917 when he joined the crew of the torpedo equipped Destroyer H.M.S. Laforey. At this time, she was part of the 6th Destroyer Flotilla tasked with escorting cargo and troop ships on the Folkestone to Dieppe route. On the 23rd March 1917 after seeing their latest convoy safe into the harbour the escorts immediately began the return trip to England. At around 16.30 the Laforey hit what is believed to have been a British laid mine. The ship broke in half with the stern sinking in seconds and the bow shortly after. Of a crew of seventy-six aboard at that time only eighteen survived. With his body not recovered Alfred is now remembered on the Chatham Naval Memorial to those lost at sea.
On hearing of her loss his wife Alice would have applied for a Naval Pension for herself and baby Irene, this was granted in the sum of £1. 0s 0d (£1.0p) per week. This would have been paid with annual increases up until her daughter reached the age of sixteen years.
Alfred’s medal group of the 1915 Star Trio and the Messina Medal are now in a private collection, whilst the locations of his Memorial Plaque and Scroll are not known.
ALFRED’S MEDAL GROUP
