拍品专文
A.M. London Gazette 8.5.1917 'H.M.S. Zulu was mined on 8 November 1916. The bottom of the after part of the Engine Room was blown out and the whole compartment reduced to a mass of debris and broken steam and water pipes. Immediately after the explosion Joyce and Kimber [a Stoker Petty Officer] went to the Engine Room, the former having just come off watch. The latter had just left the Boiler Room, after he had seen that the oil-burners were shut off and everything was in order, and had sent his hands on deck. Hearing the sound of moans coming from inside the Engine Room, they both attempted to enter it by the foremost hatch and ladder. As the heat in the Engine Room was intense and volumes of steam were coming up forward, they then lifted one of the square ventilating hatches further aft on the top of the Engine Room casing (port side) and climbed into the rapidly flooding compartment over the steam pipes, which were extremely hot. Scrambling over the debris, they discovered well over on the starboard side Stoker Petty Officer Smith, with his head just out of the water. A rope was lowered from the upper deck, and with great difficulty Smith, who was entangled in fractured pipes and other wreckage, was hauled up alive. At the same time, Stoker Petty Officer Powell was found floating in the water on the port side of the Engine Room. The rope was lowered again and passed round Powell, who, however, was found to be dead on reaching the deck. The water was so high that further efforts to discover the remaining Artificer left in the Engine Room would have been useless, and the attempt had to be abandoned'.
The Destroyer H.M.S. Zulu was mined off St. Margaret's Bay, near Dover, Kent. Such was the extent of the damage caused that her fore half was joined to the after part of the Nubian, another heavily damaged ship of the same type, the whole forming the 'Composite' Destroyer Zubian.
N.B.
In Heroic Endeavour, Major D.V. Henderson, G.M., states that Joyce, 'with another man, succumbed in his attempt to rescue a Stoker Petty Officer from the flooding Engine Room'. But the only Michael Joyce listed in The Cross of Sacrifice, Volume IV, is a Leading Stoker who was killed in action aboard H.M.S. Hecla on 10.10.1918.
The Destroyer H.M.S. Zulu was mined off St. Margaret's Bay, near Dover, Kent. Such was the extent of the damage caused that her fore half was joined to the after part of the Nubian, another heavily damaged ship of the same type, the whole forming the 'Composite' Destroyer Zubian.
N.B.
In Heroic Endeavour, Major D.V. Henderson, G.M., states that Joyce, 'with another man, succumbed in his attempt to rescue a Stoker Petty Officer from the flooding Engine Room'. But the only Michael Joyce listed in The Cross of Sacrifice, Volume IV, is a Leading Stoker who was killed in action aboard H.M.S. Hecla on 10.10.1918.