Able Seaman Sidney William Back Hatherly
HMS Watchman, Royal Navy
Date of Birth: 1899
Place of Birth: Bishopsteignton, Devon
Date of Death: 11 September 1920 aged 21
Buried: Teignmouth Cemetery, Teignmouth, Devon
Awarded the British War Medal and the Victory Medal
Able Seaman Sidney William Back Hatherly age 21.
Born in Bishopsteignton in 1899, the son of Edgar & Alice Hatherly.
In 1901 he was living with his parents at 8 Landscore Road, Teignmouth; the family were still there in 1911. His mother was later shown living at 27 Bitton Avenue.
Sidney was working as a grocer's assistant when he joined the Royal Navy, service number J/49371(Dev), on 31 March 1917. He was classed as Boy 2nd Class. Shown on the absent voters' list of 1918 as serving aboard HMS New Zealand.
He was serving on board HMS Watchman when he died on 11 September 1920. Sidney was buried on 15th September in Teignmouth Cemetery, Teignmouth.
HMS Watchman
The Watchman was a W-class destroyer of the British Royal Navy ordered under the Emergency War programme in 1916.
HMS Watchman at anchor in Plymouth Sound © IWM (FL 10518)
She was commissioned on 26th January 1918 and saw service in the final months of the First World War.
HMS Watchman was assigned to the Grand Fleet, and based at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands and served there until the end of of the war.
The Watchman later saw service in the Russian Civil War, and in World War II during which time she attacked U-boats in Lyme Bay and sank U1195 in the Channel.
