A regular to the Navy before war had broken out, Charles had served for many years as a naval rating.  When war was declared a month previously and the nation’s fears had come to fruition, it would probably have been a mixed blessing for Charles as finally he would see some ‘action’ instead of the mundane routine of peacetime naval life.  At the same time, the fear of another Great War for Civilisation would concern both himself and the rest of the nation and it would have been with these mixed emotions that he set off to war aboard his ship, the Royal Oak.

          Just a month in, in one of the first engagements with the Axis forces the Royal Oak was torpedoed and sunk by U-Boat 47 which at the time was under the command of Leutnant Gunther Prien.  At the time the ship was anchored with the rest of the British Fleet in the Scapa Flow naval dock and totally unprepared for any enemy assault.  When the U-Boat emerged off the bow of the Royal Oak and launched four torpedoes at their bow there was little the stricken ship could do and within twenty minutes the ship had sunk with a loss of 810 officers and crew.  Only twenty three survivors of the original compliment of 833 were ever recovered out of the freezing water alive.  It was hailed as a great German victory and even Winston Churchill admitted at the time that it had taken a great deal of skill and daring to pull off such a raid.        Charles was the son of John William and Louisa Maud Bailey of 3, Carlton Road, Filey.