Current Information:

Age-33

30, Mawdley Buildings, Webber Row, Waterloo

Abney Park Cemetery, London

HMS Spey started life as a River Gunboat operating in China but since 1905 had been a diving tender based at Sheerness. On 7th March 1917, She was working in this capacity in the Thames estuary when the weather turned rough and she headed back to Sheerness. It was whilst on this return trip that she was in collision with the Steam Ship Belvedere, carrying sludge from London to be dumped at sea. HMS Spey was struck a glancing blow on her starboard side and within three minutes had sunk. Some of the crew got away on a raft, others in a cutter and those still remaining took to a skiff. By now a gale was blowing and the raft was swamped and when it drifted ashore on the Isle of Grain that evening, all thirteen men aboard were dead from exposure. Those in the cutter fared better and it made it back to Sheerness dockyard. There were only three survivors from those who took to the skiff which was also washed up on the Isle of Grain. Altogether twenty men lost their lives in this incident, one of whom was Alfred Harris.