People on board

DOUBLE, Arthur Patrick, Pte.

Arthur Patrick Double was born in Hull, Yorkshire in April 1900 to Captain Charles Henry Double and Lucy Dutdson. They had been married in Hull in 1888 when Charles gave his occupation as ‘Sailor’. When Arthur was born Charles was a ‘Fish Merchant’ and Managing Director of the Double Steam Fishing Co. The family were still in Hull in 1901 but had moved to Fleetwood in Lancashire by 1911. The census of that year shows that thirteen children had been born and twelve were living.

An edition of the Fleetwood Chronicle of October 1918 described Captain Double as being R.N.V.R. and on active service for three and a half years. The article detailed how six of his sons had also volunteered to serve and that the two youngest were in the Church Cadets and Boy Scouts. One of those sons, Seaman Harry Double, aged twenty-four, had died on HMS Gaillardia at Falmouth the previous March. The article had begun with the announcement of the death of Private Arthur Patrick Double on RMS Leinster, aged just eighteen years. He had enlisted in Preston in March with the Loyal North Lancashire regiment and was returning to duty from a holiday in Ireland. Before enlisting he had been employed as a clerk with a trawler owner in Fleetwood.

The Lancashire Evening Post of 14 October published a letter received by Captain Double from a comrade who had been with Arthur Double since they enlisted in Preston - “He was all a good soldier should be – cheerful, contented and willing to give a helping hand to any of his friends’. He said that Arthur was confirmed by the Bishop of Meath in the church in Wellington barracks and that his body was lying in the King George V Hospital in Dublin.  Private Arthur Patrick Double was buried in the military cemetery in Grangegorman.