Branch Meeting, 15 July 2017.
Richard Tichborne Montgomery
Lieutenant
Royal Navy Reserve
HMS Redbrest
Killed In Action, 15 July, 1917.
Richard was born on 21 April, 1857, at Beaulieu, Co. Louth, the second of six children of Alexander John and Alice Montgomery, the family being descended from Henry Tichborne of Beaulieu, who had been made a Baron in 1697.
The next record we have of him is in the 1901 Scottish Census, when he is shown as being the 1st Mate on the Duke of Argyll, which at that time was in Glasgow. Two years later in 1903 he married Belinda Mary Cockburn, the marriage being registered in Dublin South, and children, Alexander Richard Tichborne and Frances Salisbury Tichborne Montgomery were born on 1907 & 1909 respectively, with both births registered in Dublin. On the night of the 1911 England & Wales Census he was staying in the Piccadilly Hotel in Westminster and was now working as a railway contractor.
At some stage after the outbreak of war Richard was called up to the Royal Navy Reserve and was posted to HMS Redbreast. The Redbreast had been requisitioned by the Admiralty in July 1915 for service as a Fleet Messenger and also acted as a Q Ship, by September she was in the East Mediterranean, where she appears to have stayed for the next two years.
There is no record of when Richard joined the Redbreast, but in the London Gazette of 31 May, 1916, he was mentioned for ‘Good service whilst employed on transport duties at the Dardanelles’
On 11 July, 1917, the Redbreast was at Port Mudros, four days later on 15 July, she was torpedoed and sunk by U38 in the Aegean Sea while on passage from Skyros to the Doro Channel. Richard was one of the forty-two crew members killed, all of whom are remembered on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial.
Ian Chambers. July 2017.
