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Description: | First World War period portrait on silk of Captain Charles Fryatt.
Captain Charles Algernon Fryatt (1872-1916) was a Merchant Navy Captain in command of the Great Eastern Railway steamer 'Brussels'. Fryatt had regularly sailed on the Harwich-Rotterdam route since the start of the war in open defiance of the German Blockade. In March 1915, the German navy made two attempts to sink the Brussels. On 3 March 1915, Captain Fryatt successfully avoided an attack on his ship by a U-Boat and sailed into his home port to considerable public acclaim. The Great Eastern Railway Company presented him with a Gold watch to mark his efforts. On 28 March a U-Boat made a further attempt to sink the Brussels. Fryatt saw the U-Boat surface and as it was positioning to fire a torpedo, Fryatt changed direction and heading towards the U-Boat in an attempt to ram it, forcing the submarine to crash dive. For this action Fryatt was awarded another Gold watch by the Admiralty. He continued to sail across the North Sea on a regular basis for another fifteen months until, on 23 June 1916, the Brussels was cornered by a flotilla of German torpedo boats and escorted into the harbour at Zeebrugge. Fryatt was tried by a Court Martial held in Bruges on 27 July when he was found guilty and condemned to death as a 'franc-tireur'. Fryatt was executed by firing squad that same day. Following on from the execution of Nurse Edith Cavell in Brussels the previous October, there was an enormous outcry in Britain at what the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith called 'this murder'. Almost forgotten now, the capture and execution of Captain Fryatt in 1916, was as much a cause celebre as the detention, trial and execution of Nurse Cavell.
Master | Publisher: | http://www.iwm.org.uk | Source: | Imperial War Museum | Creator: | Godfrey Phillips | Identifier: | http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/o... | Go to resource |
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