Forgotten Marine Hero Honored in his Home City
The end of the Great War, the bodies of only three heroes were ever brought back to England and given state funerals; those of the nurse Edith Cavell, the Unknown Warrior, and of a Southampton born ferry captain called Charles Algernon Fryatt.
The stories of Edith Cavell and of the Unknown Warrior have come to be well known, but the merchant seaman who sailed between England and Holland with cargo and civilians while the sea was alive with enemy submarines and who, at the time, gained fame across the World has long since been forgotten.
‘Captain Fryatt – The Martyr of Bruges’ is a special exhibition that will tell the story of the captain who, to save his passengers, crew and ship, attempted to ram a German submarine and how, for this gallant act, was later to be captured and executed in Bruges.
The exhibition will set out his astonishing life and it will explain how he came to be captured off Zeebrugge and sent to an internment camp near Berlin before being returned to Bruges to be court martialled and sentenced to death. Finally, the exhibition will tell of the reaction around the World to his death and the subsequent repatriation of his body and the many memorials erected in his honour.
The exhibition, by historian Mark P. Baker, will be open on Saturday and Sunday, 2nd & 3rd September 2017 in the Masonic Hall, Albion Place, Southampton, SO14 2DD, between 10.00 am and 5.00 pm both days. Admission will cost £3 for adults and £1 for accompanied children under 16, and tickets will be available on the door or can be booked in advance online at www.historico.co/tickets.
The exhibition has been planned to coincide with the annual Merchant Navy Day Memorial Service to be held on Sunday 3rd September, which has been organised by the Solent Branch of the Merchant Navy Association and which will be held at Holy Rood Merchant Navy Memorial on Southampton’s High Street.