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Sig. Edward Clarence Kendell
Royal Navy HMS Amphion
from:Plymouth
During the Great War Ted Kendell served in light cruisers based on Harwich patrolling the North Sea from Belgium to Norway lest the German Fleet came out of the Baltic or the North Sea ports.
On August 6 1914 his ship HMS Amphion was sunk by mines laid by a minelayer they had sunk the day before. He was in the water for two hours before being picked up. His chest was badly scorched and he would never swim in English seawater afterwards and blamed his bad chest in later years on this, but chain smoking was probably the real cause. He served in HMS Undaunted, another light cruiser, for the rest of the war, being at the battles of Heligoland Bight and the Dogger Bank, but not at Jutland or Zeebrugge because the ship had been damaged in other small actions.
He stayed on in the RN after the Great War, eventually becoming a reservist and serving in WW2. He died in February 1953 at the age of 59.
