Horace James Leonard Cox
1885-1917
Horace James Leonard Cox was the eldest son of James Leonard and Ada Eliza Cox of The Bryn. His mother Ada, one of 13 children of Samuel and Eliza Baker of Great House, had married James, a farmer, at Redwick church on 28 June 1883. Horace was baptised in Redwick church on 18 October 1885 by the vicar of Magor and Redwick, Rev. Henry MT Bidwell. Horace had three younger brothers (John Wyndham, born 1887; Clifford, born 1895; Keith Leonard, born 1900) and two younger sisters (Annie Marie, born 1891; Kathleen, born 1893. Horace’s father died in 1904 and, in 1907, his mother, still living at The Bryn, remarried – to the widowed farmer William Samuel Gale.
At some point Horace joined the Merchant Navy. The only record found to date is in the Board of Trade Inward Passenger Lists at The National Archives. That shows him arriving at Liverpool from Sekondi in Ghana, aboard the SS Mendi on 26 August 1915. [BT 26/609/15]
[Launched in 1905, the SS Mendi was in the British and African Steam Navigation Company, working the Liverpool-West Africa trades. She was requisitioned as a troopship by the Admiralty in 1916 but on 21 February 1917 the much larger cargo ship Darro ran into her in fog in the English Channel near the Isle of Wight. The Mendi sank within half an hour with the loss of 646 people, mostly black South African troops. It was a controversial case investigated by the Board of Trade and was one of the 20th century’s worst maritime disasters in UK waters.]
In 1917 Horace was working as Third Engineer on board the SS Daleby – a 3,628 ton steamship built in 1900. In April 1917, under the captainship of Charles Hord, she was heading for Garston Docks, Liverpool. Carrying a cargo of copper and silver ore, she was torpedoed and sunk 180 miles north-west of Fastnet Rock by the German submarine U70, on 29 April 1917.
See [WW1 - Daleby to Dawdon - those who lost their lives]
Only two men survived: Gunner Wilson and Fireman Davies were picked up by a steamer and taken to Avonmouth. Horace drowned, along with 24 other men; he was 31. As well as being on the Magor War Memorial, Horace is also remembered on the Tower Hill Memorial, alongside the 24 other crew members from the SS Daleby who drowned.
U70
The U70, ordered in February 1913, was commissioned in September 1915. From then until 15 September 1918, she was captained by Otto Wunsche and, from 16 September 1918 until the end of the war, by Joachim Born. During the war, U70 sank 77 ships (totalling 153,630 tons) and damaged a further six ships (totalling 25,317 tons). After the war, U70 was surrendered and broken up at Bo’ness, Scotland in 1919/20.
Kapitänleutnant Otto Wunsche
Kapitänleutnant Otto Wunsche was born in 1884 and became a sea cadet in 1902. In December 1917 he was awarded the highest Prussian award for valour - the Order ‘Pour le Mérite’ (he had already received both classes of the Iron Cross and the Knight's Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with swords). He commanded U126 for the last month of the war, from 7 October to 11 November 1918. He died on 29 March 1919 at Kiel. In 1940, the German navy named a submarine escort vessel after him, which later served until the 1970s in the Soviet Navy.
First World War
Research is ongoing as to how many Redwick residents served in the First World War. If you have any information on any such residents, please get in touch using our Contact page.
Redwick does not have a war memorial, but it is not a ‘Thankful Village’ - i.e. a parish in the UK (including Eire, which was then part of the UK) where everyone returned from service in the First World War.
[‘Thankful Village’ was a term made popular in the 1930s by the journalist, author and topographer, Arthur Mee. He had identified 32 such parishes, but in 2013 further research put the number at 51 in England and 3 in Wales, with 13 English parishes and one Welsh parish being ‘doubly thankful’ by also not losing any member of the armed forces in the Second World War.]
Although everyone returned from the Second World War, one person from Redwick did not return from the First World War and is remembered on the War Memorial in Magor Square: Horace Cox.