Life story retold by Yota Dimitriadi
Steward (Stuart) Bladen Nelson BOLTON was born in September 1898 in Carmarthen. He was the second son of Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Heely BOLTON, Indian Army, and Mary BOLTON of Elm House, King Street, Laugharne. The family had a long association with the Services, including the Nelsons and the Muspeatt families. The paternal grandfather was Col Douglas Shand Bolton, Sidmouth. It was from this association that Stuart and his brothers were given their Christian names (all three brothers had the middle name Nelson). Their dad Colonel Arthur Hely Bolton died on Monday 15 March 1937 at the age of 72. For 30 years he was part of the Indian Army (9th Bombay Staff Corps) taking part in early expeditions to the Tibet. He concluded his active service as Acting General of the Calcutta Brigade.
The 1901 census shows the family living at Fullerton House, next to the Browns Hotel at Langharne with their aunt, Elizabeth Leach, their sister Mary and two servants. Their youngest brother Elliott Nelson BOLTON was not listed in that census. Elliot married grew up to work as a junior engineer for the de Havilland Company (1934) before he moved on to work for Blackburn Aero Engineering Co.
He and his brother John were educated at Suffolk Hall, Cheltenham.
He entered the Royal Naval College, Osborne, in the summer term of 1910 and was at Dartmouth in 1912. Osborne, located in the grounds of Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, served as the junior training establishment for the training of naval cadets of the Military Branch of the Royal Navy from 1903 to 1921. Cadets spent two years under study there before transferring for two years’ further study at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth.
Stuart was appointed to the Doris on the outbreak of war. He was selected by Rear-Admiral Phipps Hornby as one of his midshipmen, and went with him to the Glory, also to the Lancaster and the Cornwallis. Afterwards he returned to the Glory, and travelled in her to the East. He was selected for service in another ship that took part in the bombardment of Turkish forts. Stuart was on service in the evacuation of Gallipoli. Returning home he was appointed to the battle cruiser HMS Indefatigable.
Stuart died on 31 May 1916, aged 18, when the HMS Indefatigable was hit by shells from a German ship in the Battle of Jutland and sunk on that day. She was hit several times in the first minutes of the “Run to the South”, the opening phase of the battlecruiser action. Shells from the German battlecruiser Von der Tann caused an explosion ripping a hole in her hull, and a second explosion hurled large pieces of the ship 200 feet (60 m) in the air. Only two of a crew of 1,018 survived.
Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205320068
Nine months earlier his eldest brother, Lieut. John Ritso Nelson BOLTON, Royal Field Artillery, died of wounds after the battle of Loos, in France on September 27, 1915 while their father was also in active service ‘in one of the theatres of war’ Gloucestershire Echo – Friday 16 June 1916.
Both are remembered on the Laugharne War memorials. Stuart is also commemorated at the Plymouth Naval Memorial. The brothers are also mentioned on the Cemetery Junction Wargraves site.
The two brothers are commemorated on the maternal family grave at Reading Old. Their grandparents, Marian and Fred John KERLY, both died in 1913 within months from each other. Marian died in Reading and Fred in Totnes. It is not clear why the family chose Reading as their burial ground.
Commemorated in Division 69, Row B, Plot 14