Roll of Honour

Hartlepool seafarers lost at sea

Stoddart, William

Rank(s) : 2nd Engineer

Address : 43, Colenso Street, West Hartlepool

Town/Country of birth : West Hartlepool

Date of birth : 1888

Date of death : 17/10/1917

William Stoddart was born in West Hartlepool in 1888 and was the first child of Richard Stoddart and his wife Hannah Elizabeth, nee Moody. The couple had married in Hartlepool in 1887.
William was baptised at All Saints Church, Stranton, West Hartlepool, on April 12th, 1888.

In 1891, they were living in Chelmsford Terrace West Hartlepool with Hannah's widowed father William, a stonemason, who had been born in Northumberland and had married his late wife Frances Reed in Stockton in 1852. William's father Richard was a labourer and he and Hannah had a further young boy, George aged 1 year.

By 1901, the family were in Studley Road, father Richard was a coal trimmer and there were three further children Elizabeth, Frances and Richard junior.

1911 finds them in Cornwall Street; William Stoddart had commenced work as a fitter at Central Marine Engine Works and there were two further sisters, Catherine and Anne.
William married Lily Gibbon in 1915 and she was informed of her husband's death at their Colenso Street home.

William lost his life on the Gray-built and West Hartlepool-owned steamship Manchuria, on October 17th, 1917, when she was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-53 enroute from La Goulette to West Hartlepool, with a cargo of iron ore.