Perth Voice Interactive

An entry from our Summer Reading competition.

MY grandfather Herbert William Lee (1875-1921) was a professional soldier. 

A company sergeant major drill instructor, he served in the Boer War and the Great War in the 1/28th Battalion as a member of the WA Mounted Rifles.

Herbert was an Englishman and married a Welsh girl Mabel Frances Finch-Davis. 

They migrated in September 1902 to Western Australia and lived in the Fremantle Drill Hall.

He was discharged medically unfit and it seems his injuries were sustained from falling off a bike (probably drunk going on my father’s memories of him) while on duty in England during World War I.

Herbert and his wife are buried in Fremantle Cemetery.

His brother Reginald Robinson Lee (1870-1913) was notable for the fact he was lookout on the Titanic, in the crow’s nest at the time of collision with the iceberg.

Reg spent his early working life in the Royal Navy. 

He was discharged in 1900 because he was “unreliable where alcohol is obtainable”. 

In 1912 he was lookout on the Titanic – perhaps there was a lack of due diligence on crew appointments on the great ship. 

He survived the Titanic but he could not survive his demons

The two brothers only lived to their mid-40s. 

Both had a weakness for alcohol.

A friend visited the Kew records office to look for the service record of RR Lee and could not understand how a naval officer could have thrown away a career in the navy for a life as an able seaman in the merchant navy.  

He made these notes…

He left the RN under a cloud – he was placed on the retired list on 1st Feb 1900 – because he had a severe drink problem.

The captain of his last ship wrote on July 1899: ‘Performance of duty not at all satisfactory, cannot be depended on to do his work punctually and carefully without constant supervision.

On the whole a very unreliable officer. He cannot be trusted when liquor is obtainable. He has intemperate habits.’

He had previously been sent home from Jamaica on the SS Spartan in 1898 after a spell in hospital suffering from Delirium Tremenal caused by his drink problem. 

Bearing in mind that as a paymaster he was responsible for all the ship’s stores, he would have had unlimited access to the ship’s rum supply.

Would he have been cold stone sober when he was a lookout on the Titanic some 12 years later?

My experience of 23 years in the Royal Navy tells that those with an alcohol problem do not shake it off easily.

It probably also ruined his marriage.

So resplendent in his naval officer’s uniform, achieving 85 per cent in his paymaster’s exam and throwing it all away. What a shame!

by GORDON LEE