Born in 1900, Randolph Charles Lemon was the son of Edith Louisa Lemon and Charles Henry, a schoolmaster. In 1911, they were living at 176 Union Road, Leytonstone. He attended the Coopers Company School from 1913 to 1916 and was apprenticed into the Mercantile Marine. According to Randolph’s 1919 probate, he was lived in 65 South Park Drive, Seven Kings.
On 27th March 1918, Randolph Lemon died after his ship was hit by a mine explosion. His vessel, the HMS Exe, together with two other A class destroyers (HMS Kale and Waveney) were sailing from the Humber to Portsmouth when the trio steered six miles to the east of the mine swept channel into a British minefield. Both the Exe and the Kale hit mines. The HMS Kale sank, and the Exe was badly damaged but able to return to port, having lost several of the ship’s crew including 17-year-old Midshipman Randolph Lemon.
Randolph Lemon is commemorated at Gillingham (Woodlands) Cemetery, England.
Some information / extracts have been reproduced with kind permission of Karen Pack from her book ‘Coopers’ Boys & Coborn Girls: Their Part in the Great War’ © Karen Pack, 2015
Sources:
Ancestry.com
ICHS school records and magazines
Commonwealth War Graves Commission