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Sgt. Edmund Valentine Freeman
British Army 2/1st Battalion Essex Yeomanry
from:11 Churchill Rd., Great Yarmouth, Norfolk
(d.10th October 1918)
My grandfather, Serjeant Edmund Freeman, of the 2/1st Essex Yeomanry, was returning on leave from Ireland to his home in Great Yarmouth. He took passage, with many other service personnel from the Empire and the USA on the RMS Leinster.
RMS Leinster sailed from Dun Laoghaire (formerly Kingstown) just before 9.00am on 10th October 1918 and was on passage to Holyhead. Just before 10.00am she was torpedoed and sunk by German submarine UB-123. She went down just outside Dublin Bay at a point 4 nautical miles east of the Kish light. Over 500 people perished in the sinking, which is the greatest single loss of life in the Irish Sea.
My grandfather was just one of the 501 souls to perish out of the 771 people (crew and passengers) embarked. He was buried in the Commonwealth War Graves section of the Grangegorman Cemetery in Dublin. My grandfather left a widow, Clara, and three children, Edward (Teddy), Leslie and Phyllis, my mother. My grandmother remained a widow for a further 50 years.
UB-123 was commanded by Oberleutnant zur See Robert Ramm and was sunk with all hands on 19th October in a North Sea minefield on its passage back to Germany. The attack on a passenger ferry with the imminent end of the war already an undoubted fact was deemed an outrageous and unnecessary act of war.
