(Bob Hollick was the brother of Mary Elizabeth Burgess, nee Hollick, referred to in "Harry Burgess & Lizzie Hollick" under "Chrons- South Aust").
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Robert Victor HOLLICK
Soon after the outbreak of war in 1914, and still a teenager, Bob joined the Royal Navy as an Able Seaman, and was assigned to the Armed Merchant Cruiser “HMS Macedonia” in the role of “Seaman and Communicator”.
The “Macedonia” – 10,500 tons, built in 1903 as a passenger ship for the UK-Australia run – was requisitioned by the navy in August 1914 and refitted for active service in just 9 days, including 8 x 4.7 inch guns (later upgraded to 8 x 8.6 inch), as she was designed to be used as an armed fleet service vessel (which, as one old hand described it, “...rolled like a pig!”).
Admiral Von Spee commanded a German squadron of two armoured cruisers, three light cruisers, and the colliers SS Baden, SS Santa Isabel, and SS Seydlitz, and attempted to raid the British supply base at Stanley in the Falklands. The British squadron consisted of the battlecruisers HMS Invincible and Inflexible, the armoured cruisers HMS Carnarvon, Cornwall and Kent. The armed merchant cruiser HMS Macedonia, and the light cruisers HMS Bristol and Glasgow, had arrived in the port the day before.
Visibility was high, the sea calm, the day was bright and sunny, and the vanguard cruisers of the German squadron were detected early. By nine o'clock that morning, the British battlecruisers and cruisers were in pursuit of the German vessels, and all except Dresden and Seydlitz were hunted down and sunk.
This was the Macedonia’s Captain’s log for Dec 8th 1914...
Falkland
Islands
9.30am:
Enemy's ships sighted & reported by Flagship
Fleet ordered to weigh
9.45am:
Anchor aweigh & proceeded to anchorage inside the mine field
9.55am:
Anchored with entrance to Port Stanley SSE
10.30am:
Fleet proceeded to sea & Eastwards
11.05am:
HMS Bristol left harbour
11.30am:
Three merchant ships reported off Point Pleasant, weighed anchor &
proceeded to sea
12.20pm:
Ordered to close on HMS Bristol, full speed
2.20pm:
Observed smoke to SE, altered course S80E & gave chase
3.20pm:
"Action", two colliers ordered to stop or we would fire
4.30pm:
Eased engines
4.37pm:
"Stopped", captured SS Baden, HMS Bristol the “Santa Isabel"
All prisoners put on board
"Macedonia" & both prizes fired at from short range, 500yds
5.40pm:
Opened fire on SS Baden
7.53pm:
Baden sank
8.00pm:
“Bristol” steered ENE, “Macedonia” standing by until "Santa Isabel"
disappeared, we fired 8 shots into “Santa Isabel” to hasten her despatch
8.15pm:
Opened fire on "Santa Isabel"
9.30pm: “Santa Isabel” sank, set course & speed for Port Stanley.
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| The "Scharnhorst" going down in the Falklands |
Having seen action early, and been accorded her Battle Honours, for Able Seaman Bob Hollick and the “Macedonia” it was mainly back to more mundane service duties for the rest of the war, spent mainly in the Southern Atlantic, shuttling between South America, West Africa, and home.
It appears that Bob Hollick stayed on in the Navy for a year or two after the war, but on Xmas Eve 1919 he was at the Birmingham wedding of his brother John’s best mate Harry Burgess (both from the Somerset Light Infantry), where John was Best Man and Bob gave the bride away. And then in mid 1922 Bob himself married in Birmingham, to Staffordshire girl Annie Didlick.
Some time in the mid 1920s, now out of the Navy and with the promise of a better life, Bob and Annie emigrated to South Australia, following his parents who’d already left with their younger children, and also his brother John and his wife, and brother-in-law Harry Burgess and his young family.
But the Depression hit all of them hard, and Bob and Annie, and John and Helena, decided that if they were going to be unemployed they might as well be unemployed back home, and sailed back to England, leaving the old couple and their younger siblings in Adelaide.
Bob and Annie appear to have lived out their days in the Birmingham area, Bob dying there in 1970, and Annie in 1973.