People on board

WILLIAMS, Griffith

Griffith Williams was born about 1871 to Owen and Elizabeth Williams. Owen Williams was a Stone Mason in Holyhead.

In 1893 Griffith Williams was employed by the City of Dublin Steam Packet Co on the RMS Leinster, then being used on the mail route between Holyhead and Kingstown. He married Maggie Ellen Jones in Holyhead in 1897 and they had seven children. In the 1901 census he was working for the London and North West Railway Company as a ‘Goods Porter’ and they were living in Gilbert Street in Holyhead. In 1908 he was back working with the C.D.S.P.C.o as a Fireman and in the 1911 census he gave his occupation as ‘Fireman Marine’.

His youngest son, Hugh Griffith, died in 1911 at the age of one. His eldest son, Owen Richard, enlisted with the South Wales Borderers in April 1917 and served in France. In the 1918 Crew List Griffith Williams was named as a ‘Greaser’, a promotion to the engine room. That was his role on the 10th of October when he was on duty on RMS Leinster. He did not survive the sinking but his body was recovered and returned to Holyhead on the SS Rostrevor on the Monday. He was buried in Maeshyfryd cemetery beside his young son Hugh and his wife Margaret, who died in 1947. He received the Mercantile Marine Medal and the British War Medal and his name is recorded on the War Memorial in Holyhead. His pocket watch was donated to the Holyhead Maritime Museum.