People on board

FISHWICK, William Henry

William Henry Fishwick was born in 1880 in Ruyton Eleven Towns, Salop (now Shropshire) to John Fishwick and Augusta Burgoyne. In the censuses John, a Gardener, said that he was born in Fermoy, Co Cork while Augusta was from Herefordshire. William was the eldest of their fifteen children, eleven alive in 1911, who had been born in Shropshire, Lincolnshire and Somerset. From about 1898 the family was living in Shrewsbury.

In 1901 William was a Tailor’s Apprentice but he joined the Royal Welsh Fusiliers Reserve in 1902 and in the 1911 census he gave his occupation as ‘Soldier Reservist’. From 1914 he was in base depots in England and Scotland, served in the Balkans in 1915 and in November 1917 was sent to Kinsale, Co Cork. He was recorded a Sergeant in the 3rd Battalion in 1918.

He married Amy Langford in early 1914 and a son Gerald was born in March 1915 in the village of Brampton Bryan in Herefordshire. After 1918 her address was Castlefields, Shrewsbury and Gerald lived in Shrewsbury until his death in 1973. Amy died in 1932.

William Fishwick was returning to England on leave when he travelled on RMS Leinster on the 10th of October 1918 along with twenty other members of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. He was one of the fourteen who lost their lives when the ship was torpedoed, but his body was recovered and he was buried in Grangegorman Military Cemetery in Dublin.