Merchant Fleet in WWI

[Tony Walker]

Nick Colley and I both have censored items from a correspondence between a ships Master H Hillender and a Mr Oasley of Purley in Surrey in WWI.  My two cards are dated in 1916 and 1918.

My two PPCs (of Greece) have the cachet ON ACTIVE SERVICE plus a separate MFA B6120 cachet, plus the distinctive Censored by master, all in a grey-blue colour.  The censor marks on each card have also been signed H Hillender, the sender of the postcards and presumably the master or captain of MFA B6120, a Merchant Fleet Auxiliary.  The censor mark is now listed in Vol 2 of Gould as 3B38

An H Hillender appears to be listed under the Crews List 1863 - 1920 on Ancestry, but I cannot get further than that.

Can anyone dig a bit deeper?

Cheers
Tony

[Alan Baker]

On Ancestry, he is listed as Master of SS Avocet from 1913 and SS Imber from 1916. Imber was built in 1914 by Swan Hunter in Newcastle and operated by the Cork Steamship Co Ltd.

On 13th July 1918 she was torpedoed by UB50 off Cape St Maria di Leuca (near the heel of Italy) but survived the attack. There were no casualties.

There is nothing on FWR or anything else on Ancestry as far as I can see

[Tony Walker]

Thanks Alan, that's very helpful.  Nick will pick it up too I expect!

Cheers
Tony

[Nick Colley]

Noted!  :)
Well done, a good result, the pair of you....

N

[Nick Colley]

Well, this doesn't add much, but offered anyway:

https://uboat.net/wwi/ships_hit/2985.html

chrs
N