Hello, Here is am going to suggest a candidate for a future Pages of History - Major Francis John William Harvey.
Francis Harvey was born in Kent, England, on the 29th April 1873 and was descended from a military family, his great-great-grandfather John Harvey had been killed in the Glorious First of June in 1794 and his great-grandfather Admiral Sir Edward Harvey and grandfather Captain John Harvey of the 9th Regiment of Foot were also prominent military figures.
Harvey trained as an officer and a sailor at the Royal Naval college, Greenwich and over the years before the First World War he specialised as a gunnery instructor aboard many Royal Navy ships including the battlecruiser HMS Inflexible. In 1910 he was appointed a position aboard HMS Lion, the Flagship of the Battlecruiser fleet, Unfortunately under command of Rear-Admiral David Beatty.
In the opening weeks of the First World war, the battlecruiser squadron took part in the battle of Heligoland Bight, where HMS Lion and Harvey’s guns took part in the destruction of the German flagship SMS Cöln and cruiser SMS Ariadne. 6 months later, at the battle of dogger bank, Harvey’s guns would again score hits on German ships, specifically on SMS Seydlitz.
He would play a very important role at Jutland however, as the first engagement of the battle was between the German Admiral Hipper’s 1st scouting group, and the British battlecruiser squadron. During the opening stage of the engagement, Lion was hit several times by SMS Lützow, with one of the shells hitting the right upper corner of the left hand gun port at the junction of the face plate and the roof, and punching a piece of the 9-inch face plate into the turret before detonating, blowing off the armoured roof of the turret and starting a fire.
This shell killed all but 2 members of the turret crew, Harvey and his Sargeant. Despite severe burns and injuries that would prove to be mortal (potentially having had his legs blown completely off, sources differ), Harvey ordered his sargeant to go to the captain with a damage report as was procedure, before going to get his wounds treated. Harvey then, now alone in the turret house, quite literally with his final breaths, ordered down the voice pipe to have the magazine doors closed and flooded, so that the fire the shell had caused would not detonate the magazine and destroy the ship. This action saved the ship some 30 minutes later, when the fire progressed down into the shell handlign rooms and detonated the cordite charges stored there, causing a large explosion but not igniting the magazines as Harvey’s last orders had been carried out, and the doors were closed.
It was found after the battle, that the doors had been buckled by the blast, and it was only the water in the magazines that had held them closed, had they not been closed and flooded, the blast certainly would have detonated the magazine, and destroyed the ship much like what happened to the Queen Mary, Invincible and Indefatigable. Harvey’s body was found in the gunhouse, next to the voice pipe, having died from his injuries. His actions had saved every man on the ship, and he was Posthumously awarded the Victoria cross for them.
I believe Francis Harvey is a great candidate for a future Pages of History, as someone who is not very well known despite saving over 1000 lives at one of, if not the largest naval battle in modern history.
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