Harry Wilson Sowdon

Date of birth: 16th May 1906
Place of birth: East Hendred, Oxfordshire, England
Service: Royal Navy
Rank: Able Seaman
Service Number: J105991
Joined Hood: 19th June 1923 (Boy 1st Class)
Left Hood: 7th May 1925 (Able Seaman)








Biographical Information: Harry Wilson Sowdon joined the Royal Navy as a schoolboy from the boys training establishment, HMS Arethusa, prior to which he attended Bushey Royal Masonic School because his father, another Harry Wilson Sowdon, who had been a tenant farmer, and a mason, died when he was only 9. The younger Harry was called Ted because he always carried a teddy bear as a young boy and he was known by that name (or Sal) throughout his life. He served as a gunner on many ships. He joined HMS Impregnable 19 July 1922 and then Hood. Other ships in which he served included Wakeful, Durban, Daffodil (on which he qualified as a diver) Dorsetshire, Barham, Royal Sovereign, Warwick, Trinidad ('the ship that torpedoed herself from which he was last with the first lieutenant to abandon ship) on Arctic Convoys, and Bangor. He then served successively in two King George V class battleships: Duke of York and then KGV herself. Thereafter he went to Malta to join St Austell Bay on the 'Palestine Run, before his discharge from HMS Drake as a Petty Officer on 16 June 1949. On 'time-expiry' he joined the Ministry of Public Building & Works until retiring in 1971 from the Civil Service. He died in 1974.

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