Royal Navy – HMS Viknor
Frederick Charles Grimes was born on 5 September 1874 at St Paul’s, Cheltenham and baptised in the local parish church on 27 December.
His Navy service record states the year of birth incorrectly as 1875. He was the son of Isaac and Rose Hannah Grimes.
Upon leaving school he became a gardener before joining the Royal Navy, as a Boy entrant, in August 1891. He served on a variety of ships in Queen Victoria’s navy and rose to the rank of Leading Seaman. He became a member of the ship’s company of the Royal Yacht Victoria & Albert, when it was commissioned in 1901 and served on board until 1908. He joined the Royal Fleet Reserve in 1909.
Upon the outbreak of war, he rejoined the Royal Navy and joined the crew of HMS Viknor on 12 December 1914. Viknor was the former Royal Mail ship RMS Atrato which had become a cruise liner (as SS The Viking) before being requisitioned by the Admiralty in December 1914 and converted into an armed merchant cruiser. It was assigned to the 10th Cruiser Squadron, who patrolled between Iceland and the north of Scotland, intercepting and inspecting neutral shipping suspected of carrying contraband war materials to Germany.
On 28 December 1914 Viknor sailed from the River Tyne and on 1 January 1915 joined up with a patrol off the north coast of Scotland. Orders had been received from the Admiralty for the patrol to locate, stop and search the Norwegian America Line ship Bergensfjord, as it was believed that
a German spy was aboard. The Bergensfjord was intercepted and escorted to Kirkwall, Orkney. The suspected spy and other prisoners were transferred to the Viknor, which sailed for Liverpool. It never arrived and sank in heavy seas near to Tory Island, off Co Donegal, Ireland on 13 January. No distress signal was received and the exact cause of the sinking has never been fully established but it is believed that the ship hit one of the two hundred mines recently laid by the Germans in that general area.
Leading Seaman Grimes was one of the 295 lives lost in the sinking and he is commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial and on the Cheltenham War Memorial.
HMS Viknor