Invariably, I end my search by looking into the eyes of my cousin, Cyril Shepherd, and remember clearly the morning in May 1941 when I returned home after collecting some pieces of Ack-Ack shrapnel which had littered our road after an air raid. My distraught but calm mother was holding a telegram which confirmed that Cyril was among the 1,400 crew who had drowned in the icy waters of the Denmark Strait after the “mighty” HMS Hood had sunk within three minutes after an explosion in its magazine thought to have caused by a shell fired from the German battleship Bismarck.

Author: Provided by the family;

I was seven years old and Cyril was eighteen. He had served on the Hood for just over one year being eager to follow the family tradition by “doing his bit for King and Country.

That was in the days when everyone stood to attention when the White Ensign and the revered Union Jack were hoisted each morning and then, all too often, lowered to half mast following news of the latest tragedy. It was a reflection of the spontaneous public commemoration of the signing of the Armistice at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in the year 1918 when the activities of the entire nation came to a halt to observe two minutes of unbroken silence.

If Cyril had been one of the three survivors of the sinking of the Hood, he would now be aged 103 and one of the very few veterans of WWll who could be called upon to attend the Cenotaph parade,

But I doubt if he would have heeded the summons of the present King and Country. His father and uncles often expressed the bitterness with which they recall the sacrifice of so many lives in a ship which, for the sake of national kudos, had been heavily armoured resulting in her waterline being four feet below design. This resulted in seawater running over the quarter deck when at speed and penetrating the ventilation system to the lower decks. The cause of the explosion has never been verified, The theory of a single shell causing such havoc is doubted.

When the wreck was located in 2015, the ship´s bell was recovered and now hangs in the Museum of the Royal Navy at Portsmouth. I hope that eight bells will be rung at the end of the silence of 11-11-11-2026 to commemorate the sacrifice made by my cousin and his gallant shipmates just eighty-five years ago.

Note. This essay is a sequel to “11-11-11-2024” published two years ago in The Portugal News.

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