According to his service record, Arthur William Sartin was born on 4 August 1877, in Preston, Weymouth, Dorset. However, that date doesn’t tally with birth and baptism records, which suggest he was born in 1880, in Blandford Forum, Dorset.
He joined the Navy in 1897, with his basic training taking place at Portsmouth in HMS Victory II, a land-based training establishment for stokers and engine artificers.
In the 1901 UK census he is listed as crew member on HMS Prince George, at that time anchored in Gibraltar. He is described as a ship’s stoker, from Preston, Dorset. The census says he is aged about 23, and single.
Stoker Sartin served on many ships during his Navy career, and in the 1911 census, taken on 2 April that year, he is serving on HMS Attentive, then harboured in Portland, Dorset. By this time, he is listed as being married.
Shortly after the census, HMS Attentive set sail for Orkney, as part of the Second Destroyer Flotilla, and the ship arrived in Scapa Flow on 4 April.
On 10 April, Sartin was asleep in his hammock when his shipmates woke him up to tell him that the mail had been delivered – he had told them that he was expecting a letter from his wife. He seemed confused and disorientated, and he died just a few minutes later. The medical cause of death is given on his service record as an aortic aneurysm.
Sartin’s body was removed from the ship and taken to the mortuary of the Orkney Combination Poorhouse on Scapa Road, where a post-mortem was carried out. He remained there until the day of his funeral, a few days later. The Poorhouse, built in 1884, became the Orkney County Home in later years, and is still in use today as Andersquoy sheltered housing.
On 13 April 1911, in the early morning, a party of men from HMS Attentive was landed with a gun carriage, and they transferred Sartin’s body to the Drill Hall of local volunteers the Royal Garrison Artillery. The Drill Hall still exists and is now the Home Collections furniture shop on Junction Road, and the stone tower which now houses the Northlight Apartments.
At the appointed hour Sartin’s shipmates, and ratings from other ships in the Flow, made their way to the Drill Hall, from where the procession set off along Junction Road.
The Orkney Herald of 18 April 1911 described the scene:
The day was a dull, cloudy one, with a leaden sky…The hour fixed for the funeral to take place was 2.30 pm, and by 2 o’clock contingents from several vessels of the flotilla had been landed. These proceeded to the Drill Hall, where the Territorial Band, under command of Sergt-Major Rowney, was in waiting. The company then formed up. The firing party, with arms reversed, led, followed by the band; then came the coffin, mounted on a gun-carriage, to the rear of which was a large following of bluejackets, a file of marines, and a number of artificers and officers of the flotilla. The order “Slow March” was given, the band struck up “The Dead March” and the procession moved slowly up Junction Road, Castle Street, and Broad Street, and when opposite the Town Hall halt was made, and the coffin, borne shoulder high, was taken to St Magnus Cathedral. Here the Rev. P Rowlands, chaplain on HMS Blake, conducted the impressive Church of England service for the dead, after which the hymn “Abide with me, fast falls the eventide,” was sung.
Local photographer Tom Kent, whose workshop was directly across the road from St Magnus, was on hand to take photos of the solemn procession. The images show the gun carriage approaching the cathedral along Broad Street, pulled by the Navy ratings (the ‘bluejackets’) and led by the brass band.
The Orkney Herald continued:
From the Cathedral to the churchyard is only a matter of a few yards, and there another short service was held. After the coffin was lowered into its last resting-place and the grave filled in, three volleys were fired into the air, the ‘Last Post’ sounded, and the mournful ceremony was over. The proceedings were witnessed by a large number of townspeople, and many were visibly affected. Much sympathy was felt for the widow of the deceased, who had arrived from Portsmouth on the previous evening, and who was present at the service.
Kent was also on hand to take photos of the coffin as it left the cathedral. Carried by his shipmates, Sartin made his final journey, followed by his grieving widow. According to newspaper reports she and Sartin had a child, presumably left in the care of relatives in Portsmouth.
In the photograph showing the coffin on its way to the graveyard, there is a group of people visible further up the path in the graveyard – they are gathered around the site of the grave.
The Orkney Herald stated:
There is scarcely an occasion on which the ships of HM Navy visit Kirkwall or Scapa that there is not a death aboard one or other of the vessels; and, although the sight of a naval funeral passing through the streets has become a somewhat familiar one, yet it appeals to one’s emotional nature as few things do. The silent ranks, slowly marching past with bowed heads, the weirdly mournful strains of the “Dead March,” the clatter of the gun carriage —all these combine to produce a saddening effect.
A later photo by Tom Kent shows Arthur Sartin’s grave. Unfortunately, the glass plate negative for this photograph no longer exists, but a postcard was printed of the grave which shows the image. At Sartin’s head is a decorative wooden cross. Covering his grave is a series of immortelles – glass domes with ceramic flowers, popular memorials during the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Neither the wooden cross nor the immortelles have survived; indeed there is no sign of Arthur Sartin’s burial place at all. However, by studying the photo and identifying the gravestones round about, it is possible to locate the grave site. Sartin lies next to another Navy man, John Thompson, carpenter of HMS Blake, who died the previous year in 1910. Whether they knew each other in life is not known, but here they now lie, shipmates in death.
Thanks go to Neil Leask for the image of Arthur Sartin’s grave.