HOLT, William Enoch

William Holt was the son of Alice and the late Daniel Holt of 56 Bell Street, Brierley Hill, and had volunteered for the Royal Navy before 1914. He was serving as Stoker 1st Class on HMS Bulwark at the outbreak of war. Bulwark was one of the Formidable class of pre-Dreadnought battleships and entered service in 1902. In 1914 she was in the 5th Battle Squadron and attached to the Channel fleet and from August was engaged in patrols in the Channel. On the 26th November, while anchored at Sheerness, she was sunk by a huge internal explosion in which 736 men were killed. The subsequent enquiry estimated that the disaster had been caused by the over-heating of cordite charges in a magazine. Stoker First Class William Holt was 21 years of age and is commemorated on the Portsmouth Royal Naval Memorial and on the Brierley Hill, Brierley Hill church and Men’s Bible Class Memorials.