People on board

PILGRIM, Herbert Robert

Herbert Robert Pilgrim was born in 1886 in Camberwell, London to George Pilgrim and Sarah Leach. He was the fourth of their six children. George was a Chemist Assistant and then a Chemist in successive censuses. In 1895 Sarah Pilgrim died aged thirty-six and George remarried in 1897 to Jane Ann (Annie) Hailstone. In the 1901 census the family was living in Fenwick Road in Camberwell, and Herbert, then aged fifteen, was working as a Locksmith. George died the following year, aged just forty-three.

Herbert enlisted in the Navy in January 1904 and worked as a Signalman from 1905. He was classed a Yeoman Signalman, i.e. a Signals Petty Officer, from 1915. He served on a number of ships throughout his career, including five periods aboard HMS Victory which was then a depot ship. He was registered in Portsmouth in the 1911 census. He married Ethel Whitear in 1917 in Portsmouth even though he was then stationed on the depot ship HMS Colleen in Queenstown Cork.

He was returning to England on leave when he travelled on RMS Leinster on the 10th of October 1918. There were three other navy personnel from HMS Colleen on board that day and none survived the sinking. Hebert Pilgrim’s body was recovered and he was buried in Grangegorman Military Cemetery in Dublin.