Ordinary Signalman John Victor Davies was born on the 10th of July 1891 in Elswick in the west end of Newcastle. He was the second youngest of Thomas and Harriet Davies’ six children. His father, a draughtsman engineer, was from Denbighshire, North Wales and his mother from Winsford, Cheshire. They married in Liverpool in 1883.
John grew up in Newcastle, working at first as a merchant’s clerk then as a commercial traveller. He was 19 years of age when he enlisted on the 24th of April 1912 at Tyneside but his first period of service didn’t start till the 6th of September 1914 when he was sent to Vivid 1, a training establishment at Devonport. On the 24th of November 1914 he joined the crew of the Laurentic, a luxury liner of the White Star Line which had briefly been commissioned by the admiralty as a troop ship for the Canadian Expeditionary Force before being converted to an armed merchant cruiser.
John served on the Laurentic for more than two years and engaged in patrol and transport duties off West Africa, Singapore, the Bay of Bengal and the Far East, North America and the West Indies. The Laurentic returned to Liverpool from Halifax, Nova Scotia on the 8th of December 1916 and the ship’s company were granted shore leave till the 22nd of December. On the 26th of December, the ship once again set sail for Halifax.
We do not know exactly when the Laurentic returned to Liverpool but we do know that the ship sailed out of the port of Liverpool again on 24th January, 1917, carrying £5,000,000 worth of gold bars, and £1,000,000 in silver. This was loaded on board under armed guard, and cloaked in secrecy. The gold and silver was for payment to the U.S. government for war materials. This was to be the Laurentic’s last voyage.
John’s body was never recovered after the sinking of the Laurentic.
Sources:-
https://www.naval-history.net/OWShips-LogBooksWW1.htm
https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/
The Legacy of the Laurentic 