Lieutenant Francis Studdy RN

It is with sadness that we have to report an eighth death since the war ended of an Old Dragon combatant.

Francis spent the final year of the war in Mesopotamia, some of it on a river gunboat and made some  interesting journeys to Ctesiphon and Bagdad. Having been promoted to the rank of Lieutenant, he returned home on leave in early 1919 and was present at the surrender of the German U-boats to Admiral Tyrwhitt at Harwich on November 20th 1918, about which he sent us a most interesting account .

In June 1919 he went out to China with HMS Columbo until it returned to re-commission at the end of the year. In January 1920, when he should have gone out again to the China Station, Francis was in hospital with malaria, so the ship went without him.

For the greater part of 1920 he remained in hospital, said to be still suffering from malaria, and it was not until he was at home on sick leave in January this year, that it was discovered he was suffering from rapid consumption. On February 24th he passed away and on the 28th was laid to rest beside his mother in the churchyard of Stoke Gabriel in Devon. As his ill health stems from his time on active service, he is recorded as having a war grave by the Imperial War Graves Commission.

Francis was one of those boys who determined on a career in the navy at an early age. He left the OPS in 1910, aged 13, to join HMS Conway as a naval cadet before moving on to Dartmouth College two years later.

He was in the middle of his first cruise on HMS Cumberland when war broke out in 1914. He was subsequently appointed a midshipman on HMS Juno, which ship was occupied in patrol duties in the Atlantic.

Francis spent the best part of 1915-16 on the North Sea with the second battle squadron. He was on HMS Temeraire at the Battle of Jutland, engaging with the German light cruiser Wiesbaden and the battlecruiser Derfflinger (which had helped sink HMS Invincible, with Old Dragon Charles Fisher on board).