Lt The Reverend Cuthbert (‘Bert’) BLACKMORE RNVR

Sheila Cartwright, a mutual friend, has drawn my attention to the death of Bert Blackmore in a hospice on 7 August. He was 91. Some years ago, Bert was kind enough to give me a personally inscribed copy of his book, ‘The Explosive Years’, which describes his wartime naval bomb & mine disposal experiences.

Cuthbert (Bert) Blackmore was born in Londonderry in Northern Ireland on 1 July 1917. In 1933 his family moved to England when his father, who worked in the Ships Surveyors’ Department of the Board of Trade, was transferred to Hull. Bert started work in the branch office of a London company engaged in the manufacture of engineering supplies. When war came he registered for National Service and joined the Royal Navy in June 1940. After new entry training at HMS Collingwood he served as an Ordinary Seaman in the ill-fated destroyer HMS Jersey, a ship in Lord Louis Mountbatten’s 5th Flotilla, and saw action in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.

In September 1941 he was commissioned in the RNVR and was injured by a bomb during the Blitz on Portsmouth. He immediately volunteered for service with the Directorate of Unexploded Bombs and after training at HMS Volcano, the RN’s bomb disposal school at Holmrook Hall near Ravenglass in Cumbria, he rendered safe and disposed of numerous types of bombs and mines in the UK and later in North Africa, Turkey, Greece (during the Civil War) and South East Asia. After being demobilised in September 1946, he transferred to the RNVR Supplementary Reserve. Surprisingly, it seems that he was never honoured or decorated for any of his hazardous work although he was belatedly presented with a medal by the Greek Ambassador in London in 1999 for his wartime service in Greece.

Out of uniform he married Mary, whom he had met on leave in 1941, and returned to work for his old employer in Hull, in due course taking over management of the branch. In 1957 he forsook the world of commerce and entered the Queen’s Theological College, Birmingham, to train for the ministry of the Church of England. Ordained in York Minster in 1959, he worked in parishes in York and the Scarborough area where, for a period, he was Rural Dean. He retired from the active ministry in 1983.

Bert and his wife Mary have helped me with my MCD Branch research on several occasions. I will miss him dearly and can only offer Mary and the rest of his family my deepest condolences.