Families came together on Saturday morning to remember their loved ones lost on HMS Royal Oak in 1939 at a service held at HMS Excellent.
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00:00 [wind]
00:22 [chatter]
00:30 Could you introduce yourself please?
00:32 I'm Mandy Messenburg, I'm from Portsmouth.
00:35 And can you explain a little bit about where we are today as well?
00:39 We're on HMAS Excellent, Waley to me, and I'm here for the Royal Oaks Memorial Service.
00:47 And can you tell us a little bit more about why this is so important to you and why you're here today?
00:53 Yeah, I'm here to represent my grandad, he served on the Royal Oak.
00:58 He was lucky he survived, but obviously he dealt with the after trauma of it all.
01:04 So he still, although he left the Navy, we still had ties to the Navy because they used to run the post office here on HMAS Excellent.
01:14 So it's a stomping ground for me as a child, and I was also christened over the bow when I was a baby.
01:22 So yeah, so I'm here today to sort of pay respects to him and his colleagues that he lost.
01:29 Okay, well obviously we're going to head down to the church in a minute, but I hope that today is a very special day for you.
01:36 Yeah, it will be.
01:37 And I hope it all goes smoothly.
01:38 Yes, thank you.
01:39 Alright, nice to meet you, thank you.
01:40 Thank you.
01:41 [Music]
01:56 Could you introduce yourself please?
01:58 My name is Brian Hackett and I've become this year the chaplain of HMAS Royal Oak Association.
02:04 I'm a parish priest based on Portsea Island, but I've had a connection with this group for a number of years now
02:10 and taken over this responsibility. It was a great privilege and I'm leading the service for the first time this year.
02:15 Lovely, and tell us a bit more about what's happening here today.
02:18 Today is the annual service of remembrance. This is the day on which the Royal Oak was sunk in Scarborough Flow in 1939,
02:26 the first big ship of the British fleet to be sunk in the Second World War.
02:30 And what's so important for people in Portsmouth, in Hampshire and in this Royal Naval Yard
02:36 is that many of those who died were Portsmouth men and boys. 835, many of them from the local area.
02:44 And so obviously this means a lot to a lot of the families here today.
02:47 Yes.
02:48 Have you had a chance to speak to them and how do they feel about it?
02:52 It's a very important event in their lives, in the memory, the folk memory of families and friends and so forth.
02:59 So although there are no survivors of the sinking left, there are children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews,
03:06 people who knew those who sank and died.
03:08 Yeah, so an important day for them.
03:10 Yes.
03:11 Thank you very much for talking to us.
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