~ HMS Opossum ("Opossum" Class T/B Destroyer) ~

Lieutenant Stuart was serving on the Q-ship HMS Pargust in 1917 when the ship was attacked by a U-boat. Q-ships posed as defenceless merchant ships (they were in fact fitted with concealed armament) that would tempt U-boats to the surface to attack - sometimes a 'panic party' was employed to deceive the U-boat crew into thinking the ship was being abandoned - some of the crew would leave the ship    some disguised as women, carrying a stuffed parrot for added verisimilitude. While the U-boat closed in to attack, the remaining crew on board the Q-ship would open fire. On 7 June 1917, a U-boat fired a  torpedo at the Pargust. A panic party was sent away and the U-boat closed in - when she was about 50 yards from the Pargust, her commander gave the order to fire and the submarine was blown out of   the water. The Victoria Cross was awarded to the whole ship - the men were allowed to nominate one officer and one rating by ballot to receive the medal and Lieutenant Stuart and  Seaman William Williams were chosen. 

Ronald Neil Stuart was born in 1886 and was the son, grandson and great grandson of seamen. His father was a master mariner and the family lived in Liverpool where Stuart attended Shaw Street College. He went to sea as an apprentice in 1902 on board the barque Kirkhill and later joined the Allan Line which was taken over by Canadian Pacific in 1915. Stuart became a probationary Sub-Lieutenant Royal Naval Reserve in 1914 and was promoted to Lieutenant in 1916. He commanded the destroyer HMS Opossum and in 1917 was awarded the United States Navy Cross while commanding the Q-ship Tamarisk. He had come to the aid of the US destroyer Cassin after she had been torpedoed by a U-boat towing her back to harbour. Stuart was promoted Lieutenant Commander RNR in 1918.

After the war, he returned to work for the Canadian Pacific Line but still remained an officer in the RNR and was promoted to Captain in 1935. He retired from CPR in 1951 where he had risen to the rank of Commodore in 1934. He became general manager of the company from 1938 until his retirement. Captain Stuart died in 1954.

Vice-Admiral Sir John Edgell, ,KBE., C.B., served for fifty-one years in the Royal Navy, forty-three of them in the Surveying Service. He was Hydrographer of the Navy from 1932 till his retirement in 1945. He was born at Teddington on 20 December 1880. His father, James Edgell, second son of the Rev. William Edgell, was Solicitor and Clerk to the Surrey County Council. His mother, Mary Beatrice, was the eldest daughter of the Rt Rev. Bishop Henry Lascelles Jenner, D.D. On his father's side he was descended from Martin Folkes, who was primarily an antiquary though he had studied classics, philosophy and mathematics, and was elected a Fellow of the Society in 1713 and President from 1741 to 1752. More recently there was Rear-Admiral Henry Folkes Edgell, 1767-1846, who saw service against the French and fought in the Battle of Cape St Vincent, and against the Dutch, being present at the capture of Java, and his son, Vice-Admiral Harry Edgell, who saw service in the Crimean and Second China Wars, and brought the Canning Marbles from Bodroum. On his mother's side Sir Herbert Jenner-Fust, Dean of Arches, was his great-grandfather, and Henry Lascelles Terence, youngest son of Sir Herbert and first Bishop of Dunedin, was his grandfather. The eldest son, Herbert Jenner-Fust, who captained Cambridge in the first inter-varsity cricket match, was afterwards President of the M.C.C., and is said to have played his last game of cricket at the age of 95.

The young John Augustine was intended for the Church, but in 1890 when living at Bembridge. Isle of Wight, his father asked him if he would like to join the Royal Navy. He went to Eastman's Royal Naval Academy to train and passed into H.M.S. Britannia in 1894 at the age of 13½. Three years later he was appointed to Naval Cadet in H.M.S. Blenheim. He described a visit of the fleet to Vigo with 8 battleships, 4 cruisers and 4 torpedo-gunboats with the splash of 16 bower anchors all at the same moment. He was promoted to Midshipman in June 1897 at about the time of the Diamond Jubilee Naval Review which marked the end of sail and the gate-crash of the turbine.                                                                                           

He afterwards served in another cruiser H.M.S. Flora, in a gunboat H.M.S. Onyx and a destroyer H.M.S. Opossum. It is at about this time that his father wrote to the Admiralty to ask if his son might serve in Australian waters, with the result that he was sent to South America. Only once, many years later, did Edgell write to their Lordships on the same lines: to seek an appointment in home waters after continuous service abroad from 1903 to 1912.