Thursday 19 May 2011

Image of the Day - 19th May 2011

Today's image is another from the album owned by my wife's grandfather. Frustratingly none of the photographs are named or have any text at all on the back, so we are left with a series of puzzles.

The couple in today's image are unknown. My wife doesn't know of any of her family that served in the Navy, and her father (who might have been able to identify some of these images) is sadly no longer with us.

What we do know is that the sailor at one point served on board HMS Implacable.

Implacable was a Formidable-class battleship, launched in 1899 and commissioned in 1901. She was the second ship in the Royal Navy to bear the name.

She served for almost the entire duration of the First World War, bombarding German troops on the Belgian coast, and then supporting the Dardanelles campaign. Later she helped reinforce the Italian Navy and saw service at Salonika.

Already outclassed when the war began, she served as a depot ship from March 1918, paid off in 1919 and sold in 1920. She was sold for scrap in 1921, and finally scrapped in 1922.

Where did this sailor serve on her? We can only wonder whether he saw Salonika, or the Dardanelles. Perhaps he was only on board during her time as a depot ship. Perhaps he even served on her pre-war? Like many of the images we post on the blog, we have more questions than answers.

Click on the photo to see a larger version, and as always, please email us, post a comment here, or on our Facebook page if you can provide any further information on this image.

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