Memorial plaque in St Andrew's church, Hingham, dedicated to Lieut. Sidney Wodehouse Upcher, killed on the H.M.S. Vanguard, 1917. A wavy-headed bronze plaque in a dark-wood frame. The inscription is in bronze lettering in relief, and topped by the crest of the Royal Navy.
The plaque reads -
IN HOPE OF THE RESURRECTION
SACRED TO THE MEMORY
OF
LIEUT. SYDNEY WODEHOUSE UPCHER R.N.
SECOND SON OF THE REV. ARTHUR CHARLES WODEHOUSE
UPCHER AND MARGARET ADA BARHAM UPCHER
HIS LIFE IN THIS WORLD WAS LOST TOGETHER WITH
800 OFFICERS AND MEN IN H.M.S. VANGUARD
JULY 9TH 1917. AGED 27 YEARS
"I hope to see my pilot face to face, when I have crost the Bar.""Sidney Wodehouse Upcher born Nov 189 was the second son of Canon Upcher & Margaret Ada Barham. He entered the Royal Navy as Midshipman Sep 1 1905 becoming Sub/Lt 30 Jan 1909 and Lieutenant on 1 Oct 1911. He served on varied ships until being posted to HMS Superb, Battleship ‘Bellerophon’ Class. In Feb 1914 he was on HMS Vanguard, of the same class. The ship was part of the Grand Fleet and took part in the Battle of Jutland (May 1916). Following a minor skirmish later that summer the Grand Fleet retired to Scapa Flow.
On the afternoon of 9 July 1917, the ship's crew had been exercising, practising the routine for abandoning ship. She anchored in the northern part of Scapa Flow at about 18.30. There is no record of anyone detecting anything amiss until the moment of the explosion at 23:20.A court of inquiry heard accounts from many witnesses on nearby ships.
They accepted the consensus that there had been a small explosion with a white glare between the foremast and "A" turret, followed after a brief interval by two much larger explosions. It was decided, on the balance of the available evidence, that the main detonations were in either "P" magazine, "Q" magazine, or both. ‘P’ and ‘Q’ were Port & Starboard Wing Turrets. A great deal of debris thrown out by the explosion landed on nearby ships; a section of plating measuring five feet by six feet landed on board ‘Bellerophon’. It was matched with a sister ship, and was found to be from the central dynamo room, which reinforced the evidence suggesting that the explosion was seated in the Magazines. It was further suggested that some of the cordite was beyond its useful life and that heat from nearby boiler rooms may have contributing to overheating of the cordite in these magazines.
A total of 843 Officers and Men were lost from a complement of 845."
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"HMS Vanguard was one of three St Vincent-class dreadnought battleships built for the Royal Navy in the first decade of the 20th century. She spent her career assigned to the Home and Grand Fleets. Aside from participating in the Battle of Jutland in May 1916 and the inconclusive action of 19 August several months later, her service during World War I mostly consisted of routine patrols and training in the North Sea.
Shortly before midnight on 9 July 1917 at Scapa Flow, Vanguard suffered a series of magazine explosions. She sank almost instantly, killing 843 of the 845 men aboard. The wreck was heavily salvaged after the war, but was eventually protected as a war grave in 1984. It was designated as a controlled site under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986, and diving on the wreck is generally forbidden.
The ship anchored in the northern part of Scapa Flow at about 18:30 on 9 July 1917 after having spent the morning exercising general evolutions concluding practising the routine for abandoning ship. The Captain made a speech to the ship's company in which he stated that under present conditions a ship would either blow up in a matter of seconds, or would take several hours to sink. Practically this meant that all would go down with the ship or that everybody would be saved. It is a remarkable coincidence that his words were to be so tragically proved in less than 12 hours. There is no record of anyone detecting anything amiss until the first detonation at 23:20. Vanguard sank almost instantly, with only three of the crew surviving, one of whom died soon afterwards. A total of 843 men were lost, including two Australian stokers from the light cruiser HMAS Sydney who were serving time in the battleship's brig. Another casualty was Captain Kyosuke Eto, a military observer from the Imperial Japanese Navy, which was allied with the Royal Navy at the time through the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. The bodies of 17 of the 22 men recovered after the explosion, plus that of Lieutenant Commander Alan Duke, who died after being rescued, were buried at the Royal Naval Cemetery at Lyness, not far from the site of the explosion. The others are commemorated on the Chatham, Plymouth and Portsmouth Naval Memorials.
A Court of Inquiry heard accounts from many witnesses on nearby ships. They accepted the consensus that there had been a small explosion with a white glare between the foremast and 'A' turret, followed after a brief interval by two much larger explosions. The court decided, on the balance of the available evidence, that the main detonations were in either 'P' magazine, 'Q' magazine, or both. A great deal of debris thrown out by the explosions landed on nearby ships; a section of plating measuring approximately six by four feet (1.8 by 1.2 m) landed on board the battleship Bellerophon. It was found to be from the No. 2 Hydraulic Room abaft 'A' barbette. It showed no signs of a blast from 'A' magazine, which reinforced the visual evidence suggesting that the explosion took place in the central part of the ship.
Although the explosion was obviously a detonation of the cordite charges in a main magazine, the reason for it was less clear. There were several theories. The inquiry found that some of the cordite on board, which had been temporarily offloaded in December 1916 and catalogued at that time, was past its stated safe life. The possibility of spontaneous detonation was raised, but could not be proved. It was also noted that a number of ship's boilers were still in use, and some watertight doors, which should have been closed in wartime, were open as the ship was in port. It was suggested that this might have contributed to a dangerously high temperature in the magazines. The final conclusion of the court was that a fire started in a four-inch magazine, perhaps when a raised temperature caused spontaneous ignition of cordite, spreading to one or the other main magazines, which then exploded."
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