Royal Navy - Battle of Jutland - etc

[paxisnz]

Not sure if this is the right place for this request but here goes....
Am searching for William GOULD born Handsworth, Staffs in 1883.
He was an ORD Seaman on HMS Onyx - a torpedo gunboat - in 1901.
He took part in the Battle of Jutland - unknown ship.
He died at sea - was torpedoed - unknown year - aboard HMS Wildfire - but understand this is actually the name of the shore base - not the actual ship he was on.
Any help with locating records of his service greatly appreciated.

[Berlin-Bob]

Hi Paxisnz,

try this site: http://www.cwgc.org/  Commonwealth War Graves

I tried "Gould W WW1 navy" in the search engine and it came up with

No. Surname Rank Service Date of Death Age Regiment Nationality Grave/Memorial Ref. Cemetery/Memorial Name
1 GOULD, WILLIAM ERNEST Stoker 1st Class 298004 09/01/1918  37 Royal Navy United Kingdom 29. CHATHAM NAVAL MEMORIAL

Age 37 is two years off, as that would have him born in 1881, but that is still within the range of "plausible error".

Google gives various entries for "HMS Wildfire", mostly the newer establishment.

Somebody on RootsChat can probably point you to some Naval sites, aswell.

Hope this helps.

[paxisnz]

Thanks Bob - no that is not him unfortunately. William survived The Battle of Jutland and died later on - perhaps even after the War so is not on the War graves site. Although his ship was supposed to have been torpedoed -  so that sounds like wartime!!

[Jane Taubman]

There might well be records at the PRO.
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/familyhistory/military/navy/
I have used the following site to obtain records for both army and naval personel and although not cheap,  it worked out cheaper than going up to London to do the searches myself.
http://www.militaryresearchon.com/

The site also contains quite a lot of good information about doing military research.