- See Edgar Claude Donovan’s entry on the Board of Trade’s Ancestry public tree.
- This information updates the group’s previous research published on the former DTI website (now archived by the National Archives).
- Do you have any more information about Edgar Claude Donovan? If so the War Memorial Research Group would love to hear from you
Name recorded on Board of Trade Memorial: E. C. Donovan
Born: 4 December 1884 in Hoby, Leicestershire, England
Date of Death: 26 April 1917
Age at death: 32
Service, Regiment, Corps, etc: Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve
Unit, Ship, etc: RN Siege Guns, Dunkirk
Enlisted: January 1915
Rank: Sub-Lieutenant (Service No: LZ 1262)
Decorations: WW1 Service Medals (Victory Medal, British War Medal and 1915 Star) and Croix de Guerre with Palm (France)
War (and theatre): WW1 (France and Flanders)
Manner of Death: Killed In Action (KIA)
Family Details: Son of Reverend A. and Mrs Donovan, The Vicarage, Garton in Holderness, Hull. Husband of Bertha Donovan, Barbara Cottage, Nafferton, Yorkshire, England
Residence:
Home Department: Board of Trade – Labour Department (Yorkshire & East Midlands Division)
Civilian Rank:
Cemetery or Memorial: Coxyde Military Cemetery, Koksijde, Belgium; Board of Trade War Memorial; Memorial to the Staff of the Ministry of Labour; Hull War Memorial; Beverley Minster; St Michael’s Church, Garton-in-Holderness; De Ruvighny’s Roll of Honour 1914-1918
Biography:
Edgar was the fourth son of Jeremiah Alexander Donovan (BA) (1849-1952) who was vicar of St Michael’s Church at Garton-in-Holderness for over 35 years. His mother was Esther Bell O’Callaghan (1857-1940). He was one of six children including Richard Bartholomew Donovan (1878-1949) and Philip Rae Hungerford Donovan (1880-1953), Alexander Charles Douglas Donovan (1881-1952), Edmund Lawrence Donovan(1887-1966) and Norman James Donovan (1893-1964). Three of his brothers also served in WW1 – two in the army and one in the navy.
He was educated privately at a Private School in Englefield Green and at Pocklington Grammar School and on the HMS Schoolship Conway. He worked for the Asiatic Steam Navigation Company and then had a merchant marine career with Thomas Wilson, Sons and Co Ltd which became the largest privately owned steamship fleet in the world. The company was founded in Hull in 1840 from a joint venture formed by Thomas Wilson (1792-1869), John Beckinton and two unrelated partners called Hudson in 1822.
He was awarded the Croix de Guerre 1914–1918 which is a French military decoration created on 2 April 1915, to recognize French and allied soldiers who were cited for courageous and service during World War One. It is similar to the British ‘mentioned in dispatches’, but with multiple degrees equivalent to other nations’ decorations for courage.
Edgar Donovan’s fascinating war history has been fully documented. His story was initially researched by previous Department for Trade and Industry (DTI) colleagues and featured in an illustrated article in the DTI News (April 2002) and was published on the DTI War Memorial Research Group blog. This is now reshared here for a new generation of colleagues to be aware of his story:
“Edgar Claude Donovan, the son of an East Yorkshire vicar, was born on St Barbara’s Day , 4 December in 1884. In 1901, after two years as a cadet in the training ship HMS Conway, he joined the Merchant Navy, serving on the trade routes to India and ‘local work’ out of Bombay, gaining his Mate’s certificates in 1905 and 1906 and his Master’s certificate in 1909. Promotion was slow, however, as the master of the Queen Mary recalled in his memoirs in 1936: “…in my younger days one might sail for years as a second mate, although carrying a master’s certificate in one’s locker” and Edgar decided to leave the sea and enter the Civil Service.
He was appointed to the Hull Labour Exchange in 1910. The Labour Exchanges Department has been created in 1909 by the then President of the Board of Trade, Winston Churchill, with William Beveridge as its head. Records of Edgar’s work have not survived, but he evidently did it well enough to gain promotion, for an article in the Goole Times of 31 May 1912 entitled “Labour Exchange for Goole to be opened on Monday” reported that Mr E C Donovan is the local manager, and a more courteous young gentleman could not have been found”.
The Divisional Officer for Yorkshire at this time was a colourful character named J B Adams who would play a prominent part in Edgar’s story up to and beyond the end of his life.
Lieutenant Jameson Boyd Adams (Royal Naval Reserve or RNR) was second-in-command of Ernest Shackleton‘s Nimrod expedition to the Antarctic and accompanied Shackleton on his epic trek to within 97 miles of the Pole, the furthest south ever reached at that time.
On his return in 1909, Adams applied for the post of Divisional Officer in the Labour Exchanges Department. Reminiscing in 1960, he observed: “I am not in a position, even after all these years, to tell you how it was wangled, but eventually I was interviewed by the President of the Board of Trade, Mr Churchill.”
In fact, he was interviewed twice, as the first interview was entirely taken up by accounts of his polar experiences and Churchill eventually had to be reminded that other candidates were still waiting! At his second interview, he was quizzed about Beveridge’s book on unemployment. “Couldn’t understand a bloody word, mate!” Adams replied. He was duly appointed.
By 1913, Adam’s Division covered Yorkshire and the East Midlands and Edgar Donovan was promoted to head a department at the Divisional Office, moving to Doncaster with his wife Bertha, daughter of Thomas Kirk, a master clockmaker, whom he had married in 1912.
When war came in 1914, Adams returned to the Navy as Flag Lieutenant to Rear-Admiral Hood, with whom he had served before joining Shackleton. Hood, commanded the Dover Patrol, charged with securing the Channel and conducting operations against German positions on the Belgian coast. In October 1914, Adams took part in Hood’s first offensive action, bombarding German forces advancing down the coast towards Nieuport. This operation won time for the Belgians to open the sluices on the Yaer Canal, flooding the low-lying country inland and thus halting the German advance. The narrow sector between the inundations and the sea would remain the anchor of the left flank of the Western Front throughout the war. Adams would return there in 1916 and later be joined by Edgar Donovan.
Although a merchant master, Edgar did not hold a naval reserve commission and so had not been called up in 1914. In January 1915 he enlisted in the Public Schools Battalion (PSB), Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) as Ordinary Seaman LZ 1262. The Navy at that time had more men than ships and, at the instigation of Winston Churchill, by then First Lord of the Admiralty, the surplus had been formed into the Royal Naval Division (RND) to fight on land. Its officers included the poets Rupert Brooke and A P Herbert, Arthur Asquith, son of the Prime Minister, and Bernard Freyberg, who won the Victory Cross (VC) in 1916 and was a general in the Second World War.
Edgar’s unit, the PSB, was incorporated into the RND as D Company of the Hawke Battalion, which the battalion’s historian, Douglas Jerrold, describes as a “miscellaneous, cheerful and wholly undisciplined collection of babes, bookmakers and beachcombers.”
After initial training at the Crystal Palace depot, Edgar and the Hawke Battalion moved to the RND’s base camp at Blandford in Dorset in March 1915, shortly after most of the Division had sailed for the Dardanelles. D Company promptly came down with measles and was isolated in its huts. Several weeks of training then followed, during which D Company displayed rather more enthusiasm than proficiency and, according to Jerrold, hoped that “It will be all right on the night”.
On 10 May 1915 the Hawke Battalion embarked at Avonmouth on the Cunard liner Ivernia. The voyage to the Mediterranean was stormy and many of the men were further debilitated by reactions to vaccinations. Edgar’s seafaring experience must have spared him this, but ironically, have also given him time to regret, like many other mariners in the RND, that he had been denied the opportunity to serve afloat.
The Hawke landed at Gallipoli on 27 May 1915 and Edgar received his baptism of fire on 4/5 June when it relieved units of the Naval Division whose assault on the Turkish lines – the third Battle of Krithia – had been repulsed with heavy casualties.
Throughout the summer fighting Edgar served in the machine gun section. As officer casualties mounted, the battalion was repeatedly combed for men of officer calibre. Edgar must have been an obvious candidate and it remains a mystery why he was not selected.
Sickness was rife and dysentery decimated the British Expeditionary Force at Gallipoli. Edgar “soldiered on” through August and September, but finally succumbed on 23 October 1915. Five days later he was evacuated to hospital in Alexandria, and on 25 November he was invalided to England aboard the liner Aquitania. After three weeks in Haslar Hospital, near Gosport, Hampshire, Edgar was discharged to duty with the 3rd Reserve Battalion at Blandford on 31 December 1915.
J B Adams, meanwhile had been recalled from the Navy and seconded, together with other senior officials of the BoT Labour Department, to Lloyd George’s newly formed Ministry of Munitions. His task was to organise the “dilution of labour” – releasing able-bodied men by replacing them with women and with men unfit for military service.
On 14 February 1916, perhaps not coincidentally, Edgar Donovan was “temporarily demobilised, subject to recall, to civil employment” and left Blandford to join the Ministry of Munitions in London.
Adam’s return to Whitehall, almost certainly saved his life, as his mentor Admiral Hood perished with 1,020 officers and men when the battle cruiser HMS Invincible blew up at the Battle of Jutland on 31 May 1916.
With Edgar’s assistance, Adams drove forward the dilution programme, at the same time “angling” to return to naval service. In August 1916 he secured an appointment with the Royal Navy Siege Guns (RNSG) on shore in the Nieuport sector of Flanders, which he had last seen from the seaward side in 1914.
The RNSG was attached to the Dover Patrol and manned long-range naval guns emplaced in the sand dunes between Nieuport and Coxyde. Its mission was to support British bombardments from the sea and to assist the French, whose own military was no match for the powerful German naval batteries sited around Zeebrugge and Bruges, which were also capable of engaging targets on land.
In late 1916, a new battery was constructed, with two gunpits, each housing a 9.2 inch naval gun in a reinforced concrete emplacement, topped with a deep covering of sand. Lieutenant Commander Adams was given command of this new battery, which was named “Carnac“.
Carnac was frequently made available to the French for counter-battery work, and a strong bond of cooperation was formed with the French artillery. When Carnac’s second-in-command was recalled to the Fleet, Adams asked for the position to be filled by Edgar Donovan, who, perhaps not coincidentally, had been granted a temporary commission as sub-lieutenant RNVR on 12 February 1917.
Throughout the early spring, Carnac Battery was in constant demand for “destructive shoots” on German batteries. The gun crews lived in Barbara Camp (St Barbara being the patron saint of artillerymen) and supplemented their rations by growing vegetables, which apparently thrived in the sandy soil.
Towards the end of April 1917, at the request of the French, Carnac turned its attention to the German heavy mortar batteries which theatened the Allied front line on the north bank of the Yaer. Successful shoots were inevitably answered with savage counter-bombardments by the enemy’s naval batteries, and on 26 April 1917 Carnac was “hammered” with more than 300 high explosive and gas shells. A shell penetrated the gun part of Carnac’s right gunpit and Edgar Donovan and two members of his gun crew, were killed instantly. Their loss was a heavy blow, as casualties were surprisingly light among the siege gunners, and the grateful French organised a splendid funeral with full military honours.
On 28 April 1917, Adams wrote to Bertha Donovan:
My dear Mrs Donovan, Your husband was laid to rest today in a lovely little cemetery between Coxyde and Coxyde Bains. No words can express the extent of the tributes paid to him by the French and English. The French General conferred on him the highest honour by pinning on his coat, which was laid on the coffin, the Croix de Guerre (with palm leaves). I will send you the coat with the decorations still on. I am too sorrowful to say more. There were nearly twenty wreaths, and one from Prince Alexander of Teck (brother of Queen Mary), who came to the funeral. Yours affectionately, J B Adams.
Edgar’s obituary, published in the Hull Times, contains a further tribute from Adams: “He was the cleverest and gamest man I ever knew”.
Edgar’s citation for the Croix de Guerre with Bronze Palm was signed by the Commander-in-Chief of the French Army, General Robert Nivelle. Today it rests on a ledge in St Michael’s Church, Garton-in-Holderness, East Yorkshire, beside the wooden cross, inscribed in French, which originally marked Edgar’s grave. Above them is a magnificent stained glass window, dedicated in 1927, which depicts Edgar as St George.
Edgar’s grave in Coxyde Military Cemetary is flanked by those of gunners Harry Benton and James Broomhead. They, and the surviving officers and men of Carnac Battery, were later also awarded the Croix de Guerre. J B Adams remained with the siege guns until March 1918 and was awarded the DSO.
Edgar Donovan is commemorated on four memorials – the parish memorial at Garton-in-Holderness, the East Yorkshire memorial in Beverley Minister, the Board of Trade memorial and the Ministry of Labour memorial. The inscription on the latter “Let those that come after see that their name be not forgotten” was written in 1922 by J B Adams.
The team who carried out the research for this article, Michael Forsyth, Chris Lund (who lives at Barbara Cottage, Nafferton, East Yorkshire, which was given its name in 1918 by Edgar’s widow, Bertha) and Jill Knight, are proud to have obeyed Adams’s injunction and grateful to all those who have helped them in their task.”
(Photographs on this page courtesy of Mrs J Sykes, M Forsyth, E Lambrecht and Mr & Mrs K Lund).
To round of this story, it is worth noting that Jameson Boyd Adams was later knighted. He died in 1963. He was also awarded the Croix de Guerre.
The men who died alongside Edgar on 26 April 1917 were firstly Able Seaman Harry Benton who was born on 2 June 1893. He died aged 23 and was from Cleckheaton, Yorkshire. His parents were William and Annie Benton. Harry is remembered on the Drighlington Memorial in Leeds, Yorkshire. The second man was Able Seaman James Broomhead who was born on 10 January 1896 aged 21. He was Sheffield, Yorkshire and his parents were John Thomas and Martha Ann Broomhead. Before the war he worked as a grocer’s errand boy.
Edgar’s wife Bertha Kirk (1883-1965) died at Tranby Nursing Home in Tranby Rise, Hessle, Yorkshire on 29 January 1965. She did not remarry and did not have children.
Edgar is also remembered by an entry in the De Ruvigny’s Roll of Honour (1914-1924) which is an important source of information for WW1 historians. Melville Henry Massue, the 9th Marquis De Ruvigny (1868-1921) aimed to produce a permanent record of every officer, non-commissioned officer and man who died in WW1. It was an epic project and he produced 5 volumes containing biographies of over 25,000 casualties and over 7,000 photographs.
Edgar’s grave bears the inscription: “And all our souls more loftily attuned by our sweet memory of you”. He certainly made an impression and a difference to those who met and worked with him.
Board of Trade War Memorial 