William Robert Rippon

William Robert Rippon was born on 8th September 1890 at Heage near Belper in Derbyshire. At the age of seventeen he enlisted in the Royal Marine Artillery on 16th March 1908 and began a seagoing career that took him from ship to ship around the fleet in the years before the First World War.
While serving aboard HMS Vanguard, when the ship was in port at Portsmouth, he met Daisy Ellen Dennett whose family lived in Hambledon. The couple married in April 1911 and their first child, Reginald, was born later that year, followed by a daughter, Marjorie, in January 1914. His life was that of a regular serviceman, frequently away at sea while his young family remained ashore.

In the months leading up to the war he served in HMS Goliath, HMS Vanguard and HMS Monarch, before transferring at the end of July 1914 to the armoured cruiser HMS Good Hope. The ship became part of the squadron sent to the South Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to hunt German raiders threatening British trade routes.

On 1st November 1914 the squadron encountered the German East Asia Squadron off the coast of Chile in the Battle of Coronel. Outgunned and silhouetted against the evening sky, the British ships were heavily hit. HMS Good Hope was struck repeatedly and exploded with the loss of all hands. William Rippon was twenty-four years old.

His body was never recovered and he has no known grave. He is commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial and remembered in Hambledon, where his widow and young children remained. His death came in the opening months of the war, far across the ocean from the village that had become his family’s home.