Sub Lieutenant Peter Gascoyne BEARD RNVR
HM Trawler Agate, Royal Navy

Date of birth: 24th September 1915
Date of death: 6th August 1941

Killed in action aged 25
Commemorated on the Royal Naval Patrol Service Memorial, Lowestoft Panel 4 Column 3
He was born at Palmerston North, New Zealand on the 24th of September 1915 the only son of the Reverend Hugh Spencer Gascoyne MA, Vicar of St Peter's Church, Palmerston, and Winifred Amy (nee Parr) Beard of Palmerston North.

He was educated at Oakham School, Rutland where he was in School House from 1929 to 1934 and was a member of the Cricket XI. He went on to St Catherine's College Cambridge where he won an Exhibition and gained both a BA and a MA. On leaving university he accepted a position as an assistant master at the Junior King's School from September 1937 to July 1940.

A keen sailor, he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve as an ordinary seaman but soon afterwards he was commissioned as a Sub Lieutenant and was posted to the 627 ton Gem Class anti submarine trawler HMS Agate (formerly the trawler Mavis Rose).

On the 6th of August 1941, HMT Agate, under the command of Lieutenant Leonard Henry Cline RNR, was escorting east coast convoy FS 559 on a voyage from Methil, in Tyne and Sutherland, to the Thames. In poor visibility HMT Agate ran aground on Haisborough Sands off Cromer at 3.59am and was wrecked. Despite the attempts to warn the other vessels in the convoy, seven cargo vessels followed HMT Agate on to the sands and were torn apart by an unseasonal storm.

The other vessels involved were:-

The cargo vessel SS Oxshott, the steam merchant ship SS Gallois, the steam coastal cargo ship SS Deerwood, the steam cargo shipr, SS Aberhill, the steam cargo ship SS Afon Tawy, the steam collier SS Betty Hindley, and the Estonian steam cargo ship SS Taara.

In total one hundred and nine lives were saved by the Cromer lifeboats, "H.F. Bailey" and "Harriott Dixon" along with the Great Yarmouth and Gorleston lifeboat "Louise Stephens" as well as an unknown number saved by the Harwich trawler “Bassett.

Three officers from HMS Agate, the Captain, Peter Beard and Sub Lieutenant Arthur George Tree RNVR were lost along with sixteen ratings. All were assumed to have drowned with only one body, that of Seaman Sidney Ernest Hood, being recovered and buried at sea. Eight of the crew were saved.

He is commemorated on the war memorial at St Catherine's College, Cambridge and on the memorial at Oakham School but is not currently commemorated on the memorial at the King's School Canterbury.
Junior King's School

Back