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In memory of:

Second Engineer Walter Lerne MacDonald

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Merchant Navy emblem

Military service

Age: 34
Rank: Second Engineer
Force: Merchant Navy
Unit/Regiment: Canadian Merchant Navy
Division: S.S. Westminster (London, England) (120634)
Birth: July 3, 1882 Saint John, New Brunswick
Death: December 16, 1916 East of, Malta

Burial/memorial information

TOWER HILL MEMORIAL
Additional information
Son of John Angus MacDonald, a sea captain, and Rosella Mary Coady of Saint John, New Brunswick. Rosella died at sea en route to Great Britain and her body was returned to the ocean. Brother of John Angus MacDonald, conscripted into the U.S. Army on 29 August 1942, service number 2402. He did not see action in the Second World War.

On 14 December 1916, the Westminster was torpedoed without warning and sunk by UB-43 196 miles (315 km) east of Malta, in the Mediterranean, position 35°35'N/18°23'E. Fourteen sailors were killed. The submarine surfaced and machine-gunned the survivors. The captain and chief engineer were murdered and their boat sunk. The second and third engineers were not recovered and were never seen again.

Related media

First World War (1914 – 1918)

In the Books of Remembrance

Commemorated on:

Page 45 of the Merchant Navy Book of Remembrance.
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TOWER HILL MEMORIAL London, United Kingdom

THE TOWER HILL MEMORIAL stands on the South side of the garden of Trinity Square, a hundred yards East of Mark Lane Station, and just within the boundaries of the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney and the Liberty of the Tower. It is at the hub of maritime England. Behind it are Trinity House and the offices of the Port of London Authority, and the Thames stretches before it; the wide space of Great Tower Hill, leading down from it to the river, is the traditional forum of merchant seamen and their fellow workers. Lloyd's is on the North, the Custom House and Billingsgate Market are near it on the West, and beyond the Tower, Eastwards, is the long line of the Docks the greatest dock system in the world.

For more information, visit Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

 

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