Today I returned to my home village of Carlton Colville near Lowestoft in Suffolk, I have wanted to write about this incident that happened over 100 years ago, I had seen the graves in the local churchyard that even then was known as the ‘New Churchyard’ it is not next to the church not a few yards up the road just up from what was the old school-house, in the centre surrounded by now tall yew trees is a large grave with a towering stone cross.

You are drawn to the large cross as you enter the Churchyard, and it was here I first saw the names and the ages beneath at the time I was younger and they seemed so much older and mature to me then but when I visited today they are all so young.

On Whit Monday June 1st 1914 Six members of the 1st Carlton (St Marks) Troop of Sea Scouts drowned on the River Waveney beneath Somerleyton bridge after their boat capsized, I have found quite a detailed account here Broadland Memories that goes in to more detail of the event.

Unknown to me then I was later to find there was a family connection as my Great Uncle Billy Hall was the son of a boat builder in Norfolk. Uncle Bill’s Father and Grandfather had their Boatyard in Reedham Norfolk and the main trade for ‘Halls’ boatyard was to build the Norfolk Wherry, a trading barge used on the Norfolk Broads, he told me he remembered his Father and Grandfather having to make the coffins for the scouts and their leaders, he believed the bodies may have been brought to the yard, at the time he may have been around the same age so this would have had an impact on him.

The Scouts and their leaders were buried on June the 5th 1914, the Bishop of Norwich conducted the funeral and thousands of people including 300 scouts lined the route from Oulton Broad to Carlton Colville and there were forty’ mourning coaches’

The victims were:

And maybe there is one more sad footnote to this Tragic event, there was one scout Stanley Wood who was saved in the disaster, he must have been racked with guilt that he had survived as in the book ‘Carlton Colville Chronicles’ Canon Bignold describes Stanley Woods ‘as a bright, clever boy, respected and popular with everybody’, Canon Bignold had told Stanley that God had reserved him for greater things, Stanley was killed in the Battle of the Somme in July 1916, aged 19.

A sad story that seems so sad even now.