World War One adventures of Maldon orphan William Caldicott

It was being run by a community of German, Carmelite, Sacred Heart nuns.

The superior was the 31-year-old, gloriously Wagnerian-sounding Bronislawa Frittner.

She was in charge of 12 other sisters, all aged in their 20s and 30s, and who doubled as nurses, gardeners, a secretary, doorkeeper and a cook.

In addition, there were two English servants.

‘St Joseph’s Home for Orphan Children’, as it was officially known, was a refuge for 47 “inmate boys”, most of them from London (although there were a couple from Germany and even one from America).

The youngest was just one year old, the eldest (three of them) were 11.

The older boys included a William Clarence Caldicott. Although the return gives his place of birth as 'London unknown', other records indicate that he was actually born on May 17, 1899, in Poplar, in the East End.

The circumstances surrounding his admission to the Maldon orphanage are unknown, but he seems to have settled well in his adopted town.

In some of his surviving correspondence he talks in fond terms of his time at the British School (now Maldon Primary) in its newly relocated premises off Wantz Road and with Mr Moss as his headteacher.

• The old orphanage building today

He mentions his role as a server and a member of the choir at the Catholic Church in Victoria Road (in what is now the church hall building).

He also made a number of friends and was a regular at one of the High Street tea rooms – Volta’s at 48 High Street (where M&Co is now located).

And it is precisely because of those close, personal and very human relationships that we know so much about what happened to William next.

Throughout 1917 and 1918 he wrote a series of remarkable letters home, outlining (albeit sometimes in slightly guarded terms) his adventures at sea.

Between 1911 and early 1915 William had worked as a 'house boy', undertaking general domestic duties in an unnamed property in Maldon, but then, on March 5, 1915, he entered HMS Ganges as a boy sailor.

Ganges had been located between the Rivers Stour and Orwell, on the Shotley peninsula, since 1906 (and continued there until its eventual closure in 1976).

William completed his training on June 17, 1915, and the following day was allocated to his very first ship – the pre-dreadnought battleship HMS Swiftsure.

His earliest surviving letter home is dated some 18 months later, on January 10, 1917, and addressed from that ship.

In it he hoped that the Maldon tea shop owner, Mrs Volta, remembered him – he was the boy that “used to serve at the altar with Mr J Waring and in the choir with Miss Baker”.

She clearly did, because he wrote to her again on April 15, 1917, having “just left West Africa, Sierra Leone, Freetown and (had) arrived in Devonport”.

What a huge change from Maldon and the surroundings of his former home at the orphanage.

He then seems to have taken a wound to his hand and, by June 12, 1917, he was a patient in Ward 11 of the Somerset Seaman’s Hospital, Greenwich.

He had by then extended his travels and had additionally been to “the Dardanelles, Greece, Gibraltar, Malta and Africa”.

Following hospital, he spent some time at the Royal Naval Convalescent Home at Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, but “wanted to get back to his ship” and he had “sent money to the children (in his old orphanage – which was by then being run by Dutch nuns as the German ones had left)”.

• A creased cap tally bearing the title HMS Swiftsure

However, HMS Swiftsure had been “paid off” on April 26, 1917, so William transferred to a shore base, HMS Victory I.

From there he joined the destroyer depot ship HMS Greenwich, writing from number 5 Mess in October 1917 and acknowledging the welcome receipt of some Maldon socks.

Following a short return to Victory I, on September 9, 1918, he was in another depot ship, HMS Diligence, then in the new S-class destroyer HMS Trinidad and he stayed with her until the Armistice.

William’s last letter home is dated September 14, 1918, and in it he says that he is trying for a transfer to HMS Osea – the secret island motor torpedo boat base in the Blackwater.

In the event we know that didn’t happen. William did, however, remain in the Royal Navy until his eventual retirement in October 1927.

The England and Wales Register for 1939 then has him as an 'RN pensioner', working as a driver and living in the port city and naval base of Portsmouth, along with his wife and two children.

William died prematurely in 1947 at the relatively young age of 48, but his letters survive, along with two precious enclosures – a faded sepia photograph of convalescing sailors (one with a bandaged hand) and a creased cap tally bearing the title HMS Swiftsure.

Both are a tangible, physical testament to the fascinating life of a Maldon orphan who went to sea.

More articles by Maldon historian Stephen Nunn

Stephen Nunn discovers history on his own doorstep

Exploring Maldon High Street's 1,000-year history

850 years of long lost ghosts

We're going on a Buffalo hunt

Stephen Nunn says loss of RAF Bradwell Bay would be a 'travesty'

War-time spoons stir up memories

Wickham Bishops: A lost landscape ... and a beheaded bishop!