Noel Standfast was born in Highgate, Middlesex, England, on the 12th December 1878, the son of George Edwin and Elizabeth Standfast (née Mitchell). His father was a leather merchant, and Noel was the second youngest of five children.
On the 12th June 1901, he joined the British Army and became 1367 Trooper Noel Standfast when he enlisted in Bethune’s Mounted Infantry and was sent to South Africa to fight in the Second Boer War. He later transferred as a conductor to the Imperial Transport Service, also known as Julius Weil’s Transport Company.
On the 27th October 1903, he married Ethel Muriel Percy in Simon’s Town, Western Cape, South Africa. It is believed that she died a few years later, and they had no children. Noel Standfast remained in South Africa after hostilities, returning to his
home in March 1909.
In July 1909, he travelled to Canada, and while there, he met Edith Gertrude Hutchinson, who was originally from Suffolk, England, and they married in Kelowna, British Columbia, on the 12th December 1910, which was the day of Noel Standfast’s 32nd birthday. The couple resided first in Peachland, Okanagan County, and then Northfield, Nanaimo, in British Columbia.
In the spring of 1915, he decided to travel to his native England and consequently booked third class passage on the May sailing of the Lusitania from New York to Liverpool. A record of passenger dead completed in February 1917 by Cunard shows him to have retired by the time he boarded the liner, so it is possible that this was through ill health, as it could have been reasonably expected that if he were of independent means, he would not have been travelling steerage!
The Lusitania left her berth at Pier 54 in New York just after mid-day on 1st May 1915, the sailing having been delayed from her scheduled 10 o’clock departure so that she could take on passengers, crew and cargo from the Anchor Liner Cameronia which the British Admiralty had requisitioned for was work as a troop ship at the end of April. Noel Standfast would have had his last glimpse of the New World not long after that.
After a fairly un-eventful voyage, the ‘Greyhound of the Seas’ was torpedoed and sunk six days out of New York, by the German submarine U-20 within sight of The Old Head of Kinsale in southern Ireland and only about fourteen hours sailing time from the safety of her home port!
One of nearly 250 third class victims of this action was Noel Standfast, who lost his life as a result and as his body was not recovered and identified afterwards, he has no known grave. He was aged 36 years.
A report in the Nanaimo newspaper, The Daily Herald, published on the 8th May 1915 stated that Noel Standfast was returning to England to re-join the British Army but this cannot be verified.
His widow, Edith, married again in Victoria, British Columbia, on the 11th August 1917. It is not thought she had any children in her lifetime.
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, London England Church of England Births and Baptisms 1813 – 1920, British Columbia Canada Marriage Index 1872 – 1935, 1881 Census of England & Wales, 1891 Census of England & Wales, 1901 Census of England & Wales, 1911 Census of Canada, UK Incoming Passenger Lists 1878 – 1960, Cunard Records, Second Boer War British Service Register 1899 – 1902, Daily Herald, Nanaimo Daily News, Newcastle Journal, PRO 22/71, PRO BT 100/345, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Peter Engberg-Klarström, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.