James Henry Bell was born in Darlington, County Durham c.1898.\u00a0 He is thought to have enlisted with the Royal Engineers (RE) in Gillingham.\u00a0 He was in the 1st\/3rd\u00a0Kent Field Company and was drowned in the \u2018Hythe\u2019 disaster on 28 October 1915 following a collision between the troop ship and another, larger vessel.\u00a0 His regimental number was 1184.<\/p>\n
At the time of his death aged 17, James\u2019 parents, George and Louisa, lived at 23 Commercial Road, Strood.\u00a0 His father was authorised to receive James\u2019 war gratuity.<\/p>\n
James\u2019 father, George, was an iron-moulder. At the time of the 1901 census the family still lived in Darlington, lodging with George\u2019s parents-in-law, but by 1911 they had moved to 3, Medway Cottages in Strood. In that year James was, at thirteen years old, the eldest child and still at school. According to the census form, his parents had had four children, three of whom were still alive at that point.<\/p>\n
Members of the 1st\/3rd\u00a0Field Company of the RE were mainly recruited in the Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells area after its establishment by the RE\u2019s Honorary Colonel (and former Mayor of Tunbridge Wells),\u00a0Sir David Lionel Goldsmid-Stern-Salomons.\u00a0 Sir David had formed a territorial unit of the Royal Engineers in 1908 and it officially became the 1st\/3rd\u00a0in May 1914.\u00a0 The company was mobilised on the outbreak of war and trained in Tunbridge Wells and later in Gillingham before leaving for the Mediterranean in October 1915.\u00a0 Sir David\u2019s own son (also David) was the commanding officer and he also perished on the \u2018Hythe\u2019.<\/p>\n
The ship, a former cross-channel cargo steamer owned by the South East and Chatham Railway Company was sailing from the Greek island of Lemos to Cape Helles when it was struck by another troop carrier, the Sarnia.\u00a0 The \u2018Hythe\u2019 was so badly damaged that it sank in a matter of minutes.<\/p>\n
Sapper James Bell is commemorated on the\u00a0Helles memorial\u00a0in Turkey. He is also remembered on a\u00a0memorial to the \u2018Hythe\u2019 victims\u00a0in St Matthew\u2019s Church, High Brooms, near Tunbridge Wells.\u00a0 The latter memorial\u2019s inscription is as follows:<\/p>\n
This memorial is erected to the memory of those of the 1st\/3rd\u00a0Kent Field Company of the Royal Engineers who volunteered to serve their King and Country in the War of 1914 and lost their lives off Mudros, when upon HMS Hythe which was struck in a collision with HMS Sarnia on the night of October 28th\u00a01915.<\/em><\/p>\n The names of all who perished are inscribed below\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n Sources: <\/strong>Census for 1911; England & Wales, Civil Registration Birth Index, 1837-1915\u00a0[database on-line]; National Army Museum,\u00a0Soldiers\u2019 Effects Records, 1901-60; NAM Accession Number:\u00a01991-02-333; Record Number Ranges:\u00a0226001-227500; Reference:\u00a0103; Soldiers Died in the Great War, 1914-1919\u00a0[database on-line].\u00a0 All Ancestry.co.uk<\/p>\n David A. Ellis, \u2018The HMS Hythe Disaster\u2019, http:\/\/www.kentfallen.com\/PDF%20reports\/HMS%20HYTHE.pdf<\/a>, (2008), correct at 6 March 2017.<\/p>\n