The Sinking of the R.M.S. Leinster
 

People on board

Griffiths Williams

WILLIAMS, Griffith

Griffith Williams was born about 1871 to Hugh Williams and Letitia (Lettice) Owen, one of seven children. In the 1911 census Letitia Williams reported that only two were still alive. The family lived in Llanynghenedl on Anglesey where Hugh farmed twelve acres, and employed one boy, according to the 1871 census. Hugh died there in 1914 at the age of eight-six and Lettice died the following year.

In 1893 Griffith Williams was employed by the C.D.S.P.Co on the Ulster, then being used on the mail route between Holyhead and Kingstown. He married Maggie Ellen Jones in Holyhead in 1897 and they had seven children. In the 1901 census he was working for the London and North West Railway Company as a ‘Goods Porter’ and they were living in Gilbert Street in Holyhead. In 1908 he was back working with the C.D.S.P.Co as a Fireman and in the 1911 census he gave his occupation as ‘Fireman Marine’.

His youngest son, Hugh Griffith, died in 1911 at the age of one. His eldest son, Owen Richard, enlisted with the South Wales Borderers in April 1917 and served in France. In the 1918 Crew List, Griffith Williams was named as a ‘Greaser’, a promotion to the engine room. That was his role on the 10th of October when he was on duty on RMS Leinster. He did not survive the sinking but his body was recovered and returned to Holyhead on the SS Rostrevor on the following Monday. He was buried in Maeshyfryd cemetery beside his young son Hugh. His wife, Margaret, died in 1947. He received the Mercantile Marine Medal and the British War Medal and his name is recorded on the War Memorial in Holyhead.

 

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