Third Officer William Gardiner Shannon MBE, SS Gloucester Castle was born 1909 in Londonerry, the son of William and Mary Hamilton Gardiner.

On the 9th of December, 1939 at St Philip, Battersea, he married Moyna Violet Barry. The marriage register records that William, aged 30, was a Navigation Officer residing at Magilligan, Derry, the son of William Shannon, a factory owner. Moyna, aged 17, was resident at 9, St Philips Square, Battersea, the daughter of John Augustus Barry, a Navigation Officer. The couple later resided at 108 Empire Street, Wembley Park, Middlesex. 

William was educated at Foyle College and commenced his naval training as a cadet on HMS Conway before entering the Merchant Navy and serving on the SS Dundrum Castle, a cargo ship launched in 1919 and operated by the Union Castle Line.

On the 16th and 17th of June, 1940, she was one of thirteen ships that embarked 98,000 troops and refuges from St Nazaire, just before the fall of France.

[One of the ships involved was the SS Lancastria of the Anchor (Cunard) Line. The ship’s official capacity was 1,300 passengers but in the emergency of the time, that number was far exceeded and may have been as many as 7,000 people on board, the number will never be known. At 15.50 on the 17th, Lancastria was struck by three or four bombs and sank within twenty minutes. There were 2,477 survivors but the death toll will never be known; the names of at least 1,738 people are known. In any event, the sinking of the Lancastria represents the largest single-ship loss of life in British maritime history.] 

To return to William Shannon on the Dundrum Castle. The ship had already received many passengers from the harbour and then went to the aid of the Lancastria, and rescued “over 120 survivors”, before sailing to Plymouth with a total of six hundred and fifty men on board. The only food available on the ship was hot soup but under the circumstances, nobody would have complained.

For his part in the rescue, The Press and Journal for the 21st of August 1940 was one of a number of newspapers reporting on awards to the Merchant Navy, published the previous night in the London Gazette. The paper notes that

“...Among the awards is that of the OBE to Chief Officer David Patrick Horndon Klasen and the MBE to Second Officer William Gardiner Shannon, both of the SS Dundrum Castle, who were responsible for the rescue of over 120 men when HM Troopship Lancastria was sunk by enemy aircraft off St Nazaire”.

At some time, William was posted aboard the Union Castle liner, SS Gloucester Castle. The ship was built by Fairfield at Govan and launched in 1911. At the outbreak of the Great War she was requisitioned by the government as a transport and in 1915 was converted to a hospital ship. As such she had a lucky escape in surviving being torpedoed on the 30th of March 1917 by UB-32 (Kapitänleutnant Max Viebeg) off the Isle of Wight. Post war she returned to her work sailing to and from Cape Town and Beira. By the start of the Second World War, she was laid up out of service but was again requisitioned.

On the 21st of June 1942, Gloucester Castle sailed Birkenhead to Cape Town. After dark on the 15th of July, off the Ascension Islands, the ship was was attacked and shelled by the auxiliary cruiser Michel, commanded by KzS Helmuth von Ruckteschell. The first shells that struck destroyed the bridge and radio room and therefore prevented an SOS from being transmitted and it seemed to the allies that the ship had vanished without trace. The Gloucester Castle was sunk with the loss of ninety three crew members. There were sixty one survivors, and these were transferred to a supply ship and taken to Singapore and Japan where they were interred until the end of the war. It was only upon the release of those that survived internment that the fate of the ship was uncovered.

William Gardiner had died in the sinking. He has no known grave and is remembered on the Tower Hill Memorial. At the time of his death, his parents were resident at Magazine Street, Londonderry.

[The raider Michel (HSK-9) was built for the Polish Gdynia America Line. Taken over by the Kreigsmarine after the invasion of Poland, it was converted to a hospital ship and later to an auxiliary cruiser, named Michel and given the call sign Schiff 28. Known to the Royal Navy as “Raider H”, the ship was commissioned in September 1941 and was the last operational German raider of the Second World War. With a main armament of six 5.9 inch guns, as well as a motor torpedo boat and two seaplanes, the vessel was a potent raider. During her service she sank fifteen allied merchant ships, totalling 98,586grt.

The end came on the 17th of October, 1943 when torpedoed and sunk in the Pacific by the American submarine Tarpon. In 1946 Helmuth von Ruckteschell was imprisoned in Spandau for war crimes, dying there in 1948.]