Edward Gleadall Uphill Robson was born in 1882, the son of Thomas and Ann Dean Uphill Robson. The family lived in Uphill House on Finchley New Road, Hampstead.
He was educated at Malvern College from 1896 - 1901, where he excelled at sport. He went to Clare College, Cambridge in 1901, where he was in the college football XI in 1903 and was captain in 1904. In 1903 he took part in a college athletics event in which he was entered for the 2 miles handicap. He graduated from Clare in 1904
In 1911 he was a tutor in Norfolk, living at Home Place, Cromer Road, Kelling. In 1913 he obtained a MA at Clare. He then trained for the priesthood at Leeds and was made a Deacon in 1912. In 1913 he was ordained a priest by the Bishop of St. Albans. He served as curate at the Malvern College Mission, Worcestershire from 1912-14, Canning Town, East London and then at Hitchin, Hertfordshire.
During the First World War Edward was a Royal Navy Chaplain aboard HMS Aboukir.
HMS Aboukir was a Cressy class armoured cruiser, launched on 16th. May 1900. Upon completion she was assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet and spent most of her career there. Upon returning home in 1912, she was placed in reserve. Recommissioned at the start of the First World War, she was assigned to the 7th. Cruiser Squadron. The squadron was tasked with patrolling the 'Broad Fourteens', an area of the North Sea, in support of a force of destroyers and submarines based at Harwich in Essex which protected the eastern end of the English Channel from German warships attempting to attack the supply route between England and France. During the Battle of Heligoland Bight on 28th. August, the ship was part of Cruiser Force 'C', in reserve off the Dutch coast and saw no action.
On the morning of 22nd. September 1914, Aboukir and her sister ships, Cressy and Hogue, were on patrol without any escorting destroyers as they had been forced to seek shelter from bad weather. A forth ship, Euryalus had to return to port due to lack of coal and weather damage to her wireless. A fifth ship, Bacchante never sailed and remaining in port. The three sisters were in line abreast, about 2,000 yards (1,800 m) apart and at a speed of 10 knots (12 mph - 19 km/h). They were not expecting a submarine attack and were not zigzagging but they had lookouts posted and had one gun manned on each side to attack any submarines if sighted. The weather had moderated earlier that morning and Commodore Reginald Tyrwhitt, commander of the Harwich Force, was en route to reinforce the cruisers with eight destroyers.
The submarine U-9, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Otto Weddigen, had been ordered to attack British transports at Ostend, Belgium but had been forced to dive and take shelter from the storm. On surfacing, she spotted the British ships off the Hook of Holland and moved to attack. U-9 fired one torpedo at 06:20 at Aboukir that struck her on the port side. Captain John Drummond thought he had struck a mine and ordered the other two ships to close to transfer his wounded men. Aboukir quickly began listing and capsized around 06:55 despite counterflooding compartments on the opposite side to right her. By the time that Drummond ordered 'abandon ship' only one boat was available because the others had either been smashed or could not be lowered as no steam was available to power the winches for the boats.
As Hogue approached her sinking sister, the ship's captain, Wilmot Nicholson, realized that it had been a submarine attack and signalled Cressy to look for a periscope. His ship continued to close on Aboukir as his crew threw overboard anything that would float to aid the survivors in the water. Having stopped and lowered all her boats, Hogue was struck by two torpedoes around 06:55. The sudden weight loss of the two torpedoes caused U-9 to broach the surface and Hogue's gunners opened fire without effect before the submarine could submerge again. Hogue capsized about ten minutes after being torpedoed as all of her watertight doors had been open, and she sank at 07:15.
Cressy under the command of Captain Johnson attempted to ram the submarine, but did not hit anything and resumed her rescue efforts until she too was torpedoed at 07:20. She also took on a heavy list and then capsized, before sinking at 07:55. Several Dutch ships began rescuing survivors at 08:30 and they were joined by British fishing trawlers before Commodore Tyrwhitt and his ships arrived at 10:45.
There was opposition to the 7th. Cruiser Squadron's patrols from many senior Royal Navy officers, including Admiral Jellicoe, Commodores Keyes and Trywhitt and even the First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill. They argued that the ships were very vulnerable to a raid by modern German surface ships and that the squadron shouldn't be patrolling the North Sea. The squadron gained the nickname 'the Livebait Squadron'. The Admiralty maintained the patrol on the grounds that destroyers were not able to maintain the patrol in the frequent bad weather and that there were insufficient modern light cruisers available.
Of the 777 ratings and 60 officers that survived, one was Kit Wykeham-Musgrave, who was 15 at the time and serving on Aboukir. When his ship went down, he managed, swimming against the suction, to escape and was pulled aboard the Hogue, just before it was struck. As this ship went down, Musgrave again slipped out of death’s fingers to board the Cressy. When this, too, went down, he clung to life on a piece of driftwood, unconscious, until being rescued by a Dutch trawler.
1,397 rating and 62 officers were lost in the attack. The officer of the watch on U-9 later wrote
"In the periscope, a horrifying scene unfolded... We present in the conning tower tried to suppress the terrible impression of drowning men, fighting for their lives in the wreckage, clinging on to capsized lifeboats..."
Aboukir lost a total of 527 men, one of those was Edward, aged 32. Had only been aboard Aboukir for 5 weeks and was the first British chaplain to be killed in the First World War. The chaplains on the other two ships, the Revd. George Henry Collier and the Revd. Wilfred Frank Proffitt Ellis survived.
Edward is commemorated on Panel 1 of the Chatham Naval Memorial in Kent and at Holy Trinity Church, Caister in Norfolk.
On his return to the naval base at Wilhelmshaven, Germany, Kapitänleutnant Otto Weddigenhe was awarded the Iron Cross First Class by the Kaiser, his entire crew received the Iron Cross Second Class.
Weddigen died while commanding the submarine U-29. On 18th. March 1915 U-29 was rammed by the British battleship HMS Dreadnought in the Pentland Firth. U-29 had broken the surface immediately ahead of Dreadnought after firing a torpedo at HMS Neptune and Dreadnought cut the submarine in two after a short chase. There were no survivors from the submarine.
The U-9 was one of only two ships which Kaiser Wilhelm II awarded the Iron Cross, the other being a surface raider. After April 1916 she was withdrawn from front line duties to be used for training. The submarined surrendered on 26th. November 1918 and was broken up at Morecambe, Lancashire in 1919.
In 1954 the British government sold the salvage rights to all three armoured cruisers to a German company and they were subsequently sold again to a Dutch company which began salvaging the wrecks' metal in 2011.
Name: HMS Aboukir
Class: Cressy class
Vessel type: Armoured cruiser
Builder: Fairfield Shipbuilding, Govan, Scotland
Laid down: 9th. November 1898
Launched: 16th. May 1900
Completed: 3th. April 1902
Fate: Sunk by U-9, 22nd. September 1914
Displacement: 12,000 tons
Length overall: 472 ft. (143.9 m)
Beam: 69 ft. 6 in. (21.2 m)
Max draught: 26 ft. 9 in. (8.2 m)
Installed power: 21,000 hp (16,000 kW)
Boilers: 30 x Belleville boilers
Propulsion: 2 x 4-cylinder triple-expansion steam engines
Shafts: 2
Speed: 21 knots (24 mph - 39 km/h)
Complement; 725 to 760 men
Armament:
2 x single breach loading 9.2 in. Mk. X guns
12 x single breach loading 6 in. Mk. VII guns
12 x single QF 12 pounder, 12 cwt guns
3 x 3 pounder Hotchkiss guns
2 x single submerged 18 in. torpedo tubes
Armour:
Belt: 2 to 6 in. (51 to 152 mm)
Decks: 1 to 3 in. (25 to 76 mm)
Barbettes: 6 in. (150 mm)
Turrets: 6 in. (150 mm)
Conning tower: 12 in. (305 mm)
Bulkheads: 5 in. (127 mm)