Hugh Annesley Gray - Cheape
1878 - 27th May 1918
HUGH ANNESLEY GRAY-CHEAPE DSO and Bar
Lieutenant Colonel
Q.O. Worcestershire Hussars (Worcester Yeo.)
who died on
Monday, 27th May 1918. Age 39
Son of the late Col. and Mrs. Cheape, of Wellfield, Fife; husband of Carsina Gray-Cheape, of Carse Gray, Forfar
THE CHATBY MEMORIAL, ALEXANDRIA. MEMORIAL INDEX NUMBER M.R. 41. CHATBY War Memorial Cemeterv, Alexandria, is one of a group of cemeteries on the East side of the town. It contains the graves of more than 2,100 British officers and men who fell in the Great War, and the Register containing their names has been published. At the East end of it is a stone building, to the walls of which are fixed panels containing the names of 982 officers and men who have no other grave than the sea; and this Register relates particularly to these panels, which constitute the Chatby Memorial. From 1914 to 1919, transports and Hospital Ships traversed the seas to and from Alexandria, bringing reinforcements for Egypt, Gallipoli or Palestine and carrying the sick and wounded out of the theatres of war; and from sickness, wounds or accident some hundreds of men died on the high seas and received the same burial as the sailor who dies at sea. Their graves are the sea itself; and this Memorial records the burial at sea of two sailors of the Mercantile Marine Reserve, 102 soldiers of United Kingdom Corps and Regiments, three men of the Royal Air Force, 135 Australian soldiers, and three men of the Cape Corps. From 1915 to 1918 a greater danger beset the transports and Hospital Ships which covered the sea routes to and from Egypt. The enemy submarines were active in these waters as in others; and the Allied Navies and the Auxiliarv Patrol could not completely safeguard the routes, or save every life from a torpedoed vessel. The unburied dead from six vessels, torpedoed or mined in the Eastern Mediterranean, are named on this Memorial, and they are 737 in number. The S.S. "Persia", a P. & O. liner, was torpedoed and sunk on the 30th December, 1915; 71 miles South-East by South of the coast of Crete, with the loss of 334 lives. She was a defensively armed passenger vessel, carrying 201 passengers, 317 crew, mails and a general cargo from Tilbury to Port Said, Aden and Bombay. She sank in five minutes; and among the dead were 21 British officers and one British N.C.O. of the British and Indian Armies, whose names appear on the Memorial. The Hired Transport "Cameronia" was torpedoed and sunk on the 15th April, 1917, 150 miles East from Malta. She was carrying reinforcements for Mesopotamia; and 127 of the soldiers on board are named on the Memorial. The Hired Transport "Cameronian" was torpedoed and almost instantly sunk on the 2nd June, 1917, 50 miles North-West by North from Alexandria. The Master and ten of the crew were drowned; and an officer and 47 men of the Royal Army Service Corps, with an officer of the London Regiment, were drowned and are named on the Memorial. The Hired Transport "Aragon" was torpedoed on the 30th December, 1917, while entering the harbour of Alexandria. The Master and 18 of the crew lost their lives; and the bodies of no fewer than 380 soldiers (induding one Canadian flying officer) were not recovered. The Hired Transport "Osmanieh" struck a mine on the following day and at the same place, and sank; and 76 names of soldiers who sailed in her (including one Indian medical officer) appear on the Memorial. The Hired Transport "Leasowe Castle" was torpedoed and sunk on the 27th May, 1918, 104 miles West by North from Alexandria; and 83 soldiers (mainly of Yeomanry regiments), who were among the dead, are named on this Memorial. The Register records particulars of 982 dead.
http://www.royalhighlanders.co.uk/aberlemno.htm
