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In memory of:

Second Radio Officer Alistair Murray Donaldson

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Merchant Navy emblem

Military service

Age: 19
Rank: Second Radio Officer
Force: Merchant Navy
Unit/Regiment: Canadian Merchant Navy
Division: S.S. Empire Blanda (London, England) (141931)
Birth: Comox, British Columbia
Death: February 18, 1941

Burial/memorial information

TOWER HILL MEMORIAL
Grave reference: Panel 130.
Additional information
Son of Richard Kennedy Donaldson and Elsie Margaret Greig, of Tayport, Fife, Scotland. Richard enlisted on September 23, 1915, at Vancouver, British Columbia, in the 6th Field Company, Canadian Engineers of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, regimental number 129685. A sergeant, he fought in France as a sapper. He was awarded War Service Badge number 131986, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal.

On February 19, 1941, the Empire Blanda was sailing with convoy HX-107 towards Grangemouth, England, when at 8:18 a.m., U-69 fired torpedoes in her direction 160 miles (258 km) south of Iceland. The explosion was so powerful that debris fell back onto the submarine. The Empire Blanda sank with her captain, 37 crew members, one gunner and a passage, position 60°45'N/18°36'W.

Related media

Second World War (1939 – 1945)

In the Books of Remembrance

Commemorated on:

Page 127 of the Merchant Navy Book of Remembrance.
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TOWER HILL MEMORIAL London, United Kingdom

THE TOWER HILL MEMORIAL stands on the South side of the garden of Trinity Square, a hundred yards East of Mark Lane Station, and just within the boundaries of the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney and the Liberty of the Tower. It is at the hub of maritime England. Behind it are Trinity House and the offices of the Port of London Authority, and the Thames stretches before it; the wide space of Great Tower Hill, leading down from it to the river, is the traditional forum of merchant seamen and their fellow workers. Lloyd's is on the North, the Custom House and Billingsgate Market are near it on the West, and beyond the Tower, Eastwards, is the long line of the Docks the greatest dock system in the world.

For more information, visit Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

 

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