John Pow
Place of birth: Barnstaple, Devon, England
Previous occupation: Fitter/turner
Service: Royal Navy
Rank: Chief Electrical Artificer 2nd Class
Service Number: M10022
Joined Hood: 15th May 1923 (Electrical Artificer 2nd Class)
Left Hood: 5th January 1925 (Acting Chief Electrical Artificer 2nd Class)
Biographical Information: The photo of John Pow was taken around 1918. He was a native of Devon, the fifth of nine children of a master plumber. John won a scholarship to The Devon County School, following which he became an indentured apprentice to Garnish and Lemon, Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, in Barnstaple. His apprenticeship completed, John joined the Douglas Engineering Company, of Kingswood, Bristol, makers of cars and motorcycles. He volunteered for the RN in Bristol, and signed up 18 days after his 21st birthday. and some five weeks after the outbreak of World War I.
John was already twenty-one years old, and his civilian training and experience as a fitter/turner meant that he joined as an Electrical Artificer Fourth Class – Artificers were skilled engineers.
John served afloat for much of that war in the elderly cruiser HMS Endymion, and was present at the Gallipoli campaign.
John joined HMS Hood on 15 May 1923 and remained until January 1925, during which time he was promoted to Acting Chief Artificer. He also participated in Hood’s circumnavigation of the world in the Empire Cruise. of 1923-4.
John Pow spent most of his career in West Country naval establishments, but also saw further sea service in the battleship HMS Queen Elizabeth and the new heavy cruiser HMS Norfolk. He was discharged to pension in September 1936, at the end of his 22-year engagement, but signed on again in late July 1939, as the clouds of war gathered over Europe once again. He continued to serve in the RN throughout World War II, spending much of the time in the Middle and Far East in the minelayer HMS Atreus, and narrowly avoiding capture at the fall of Singapore early in 1942.
John Pow died in Bideford, in his native Devon, in 1974. He was 80 years old.
Additional Photographs
None at this time.
No known memorials
Sources
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
'Register of Deaths of Naval Ratings' (data extracted by Director of Naval Personnel (Disclosure Cell), Navy Command HQ, 2009)
Service documentation on Ancestry.co.uk
The Empire Cruise by VC Scott O'Connor