Able Seaman Reginald Percy Stoyle
Royal Navy, HM Cable Ship Alert D/JX 29115
Date of Death: 24th of February 1945
Buried: Commemorated on Plymouth Naval Memorial
Awarded the 1939-45 Star and the War Medal 1939-1945
Son of Percy Frederick and Elsie Maud Stoyle of Shaldon, Devon.
HMTS Alert
On the 24th of February 1945, less than three months before VE Day, the cable ship Alert was sunk off the North Goodwin Sands on the Kent coast.
Designated HMTS (His Majesty’s Telegraph Ship), the Alert was built by shipbuilders Swan, Hunter and Wigman Richardson in 1918. Though she bore the HM prefix she was a GPO (General Post Office) ship rather than a commissioned Royal Navy vessel.
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HMTS Alert - By unknown photographer, credited to Postmaster General of the United Kingdom - K. R. Haigh, Cableships and Submarine Cables, Adlard Coles Ltd., 1968, Public Domain, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=59576315
Many of her crew – aged from 17 to 62 – were from the East Kent area, where a memorial plaque to the ship was dedicated on the 24th of February 2012, in Harbour Street, Broadstairs.
HMTS Alert is believed to have been torpedoed by a small two-man German “Seehund” (Seal) submarine.
HMTS Alert was not the intended target – the German submariners reported they had sunk the French destroyer La Combattante. However, this ship had been sunk by mines the night before.
Able Seaman Reginald Percy Stoyle, Royal Navy, HM Cable Ship Alert
