Eric William Anthony Searle Pape 1919 – 1939

and HMS Royal Oak at Scapa Flow

Eric Pape was born on 16^th August 1919. His father was William Anthony Douthwaite Pape and his mother was Elizabeth Jordan. They had been married in July 1918 in Cornwall.

Eric Pape’s grandfather was William Pape, a hosier and glover who had a business in the Blackwellgate area of Darlington in 1881. Pape’s wife was Florence, daughter of David Graham, a Scotsman, and also a draper in the town. Pape employed three women. He had moved to Newcastle in 1891 and by 1901 was in 2 Leazes Place in Durham. In both instances he was a draper’s assistant. The 1901 Census saw Eric’s father, William Anthony Douthwaite Pape, appear as a thirteen-year-old boy in the family home in Durham.

He was listed as a council clerk, aged twenty-three, in the 1911 Census, still in 2 Leazes Place. His mother and father were still alive, and he lived with his two sisters, Hilda, and Ethel. They never married, possibly one of the consequences of the large loss of life in WW1.

His mother, Elizabeth Mary Jordan, was working as a waitress in a café in Saddler Street in Durham in 1911. Her uncle, Thomas Henry Searle Tripcony, was the manager. She was originally from St. Keverne in Cornwall, as was her uncle. Tripcony’s father had been a tailor.

Eric was a member of the Scouts while living in Shincliffe.

Eric’s parents were living in 22 Queen’s Road in Blackhill in Consett in 1939. He was a district education clerk. His grandmother and aunts were still living in 2 Leazes Place just off Claypath. Eric would not have been listed in the 1939 Register as he was an active serviceman in the Royal Navy on board HMS Royal Oak.

HMS Royal Oak was built at Devonport Dockyard, laid down on the 15th of January 1914, launched 17th November 1914 and commissioned into the Royal Navy on the 1st of May 1916. She saw service at the Battle of Jutland but was not damaged. Between the wars HMS Royal Oak was rebuilt with the removal of torpedo tubes and the addition of AA twin 4-inch guns replacing single mounted 4-inch AA guns. She was attacked by three torpedoes and sank in just thirteen minutes at Scapa Flow by U - 47 on 14th October 1939. Eight hundred and thirty-five lives were lost, including one hundred and thirty-four boys. It is now a designated war grave. Incredibly, three hundred and eighty-six men were pulled from the water alive.

Coming just weeks after the outbreak of World War Two, it was one of Britain’s worst naval disasters. It was an even worse shock because it happened inside a famous and supposedly impregnable naval base. Scapa Flow, in the Orkney Islands, was the Royal Navy’s home base in World War One. Its well-organised defences gained it a reputation as a secure anchorage, where British ships were completely safe. But in the interwar years the defences were neglected and, when war broke out with Germany in 1939, they were in very poor shape.



William Pape died at the family home in Consett in 1971. Eric’s mother died in 1981 in Penzance, having returned to the area in which she was born.