©B sylvester

This is to their grandson JACK MARSHALL EVANS who was born to their daughter Lydia (1889 - 1975) on 30th December, 1916.

He joined the Royal Navy in January 1935 and later became part of the submarine service until his death on H.M. Submarine Triad which was sunk on 20th October 1940 in The Gulf of Toranto, Italy, with the loss of all hands - a complement of 53..  

The following is an Admiralty report of the loss:-

Triad was assigned to the Mediterranean. On 9 October 1940 she sailed from Malta to operate in the Gulf of Taranto, with orders to reach Alexandria on completion of her patrol. She failed to make port and by 20 October the submarine was declared overdue. She was believed to have been lost in a minefield or sunk by Italian anti-submarine aircraft. New evidence suggests that Triad was engaged and sunk with all hands on the night of 14/15 October by the Italian submarine Enrico Toti. 

At 01:00 on 15 October, Enrico Toti sighted a large submarine 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) to port: both boats manoeuvred into attack position. Italian accounts claim the British opened fire first, but all of Triad's shells missed. She also fired a torpedo which Enrico Toti avoided by turning sharply, then closed on the enemy submarine at top speed, firing as she approached. Soon, machine gun fire compelled the British gunners to abandon the exposed deck. As the British submarine started to dive, Enrico Toti fired a torpedo and hit the British submarine with two 120 mm shells. The boat rose vertically then disappeared without survivors. The action lasted around 30 minutes.

The writer of the letter left is: Edward Keith-Roach CBE (Born 1885 Gloucester, England - died 1954). Keith-Roach was the British Colonial administrator during the British mandate on Palestine, who also served as the governor of Jerusalem from 1926 to 1945 (excluding a period in the 1930s when he was governor of the Galilee).

(I have not been able to identify the source of the newspaper article.]

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