Every year, countless people drive past Nightingale Crescent, off Big Bay Point Road in south Barrie.
Likely none of them knows that the street honours a young Innisfil man who lost his life in the First World War. Who can blame them? The war was a long time ago and this young man was just one of more than 66,000 Canadians who fell fighting the Central Powers.
But let’s for a moment reflect on the life and sacrifice of William ‘Willie’ John Nightingale.
Born in Craigvale on January 1, 1895, William was the son of farmers William and Sarah Nightingale. He had one sibling, a sister three years his elder, named Mary Florence Nightingale after the famed English woman credited with being the founder of modern nursing. There doesn’t seem to be any familial link to Florence Nightingale, however, so William and Mary seemed merely to have been honouring a celebrity of the day.
William was working on the family farm in 1914 when war erupted. He remained aloof from it for over a year — some sources say he was a slight young man with a condition of some sort that saw recruiters deny efforts to volunteer for the army, but it’s equally likely that for his own personal reasons he simply chose not to sign up.
That changed in January 1916, shortly after his 21st birthday. William read that the Royal Navy was desperate for manpower and was reaching out to Canadians for volunteers. Stirred into action, he took a train to Toronto and enrolled in the Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve. After a short period of training, he was sent overseas and mustered aboard a RN vessel, HM Trawler Loch Eye.
During the war, Germany laid over 43,000 mines around the British Isles. They devasted maritime trade, sinking 500 vessels. The Royal Navy, desperate to combat this enemy, took up hundreds of fishing trawlers for use as minesweepers. The Loch Eye was one.
The 225-ton vessel was built for the Empire Steam Fishing Co. by J. Duthie Torry Ship Building Co. in Aberdeen. Loch Eye was never used in her intended role, however. Immediately upon completion she was taken up by the Royal Navy.
Clearing mines from shipping lanes was a monotonous but dangerous job. Hundreds of trawlers were sunk by U-boats (German submarines) or the mines they were intended to clear. One April 20, 1917, after less than a year of sea-borne duty in England, Willie Nightingale discovered just how hazardous the job was.
HM Trawler Loch Eye was operating off the south coast of Ireland when there was a violent explosion and the whole vessel momentarily rose from the water. A huge hole had been torn in the hull and the vessel was quickly taking on water. She was clearly doomed, and so her small crew dove overboard. Two wouldn’t survive to be rescued. Willie Nightingale was one, either drowned or killed in the initial blast.
Newspaper reports initially claimed Loch Eye was lost in some heroic sea battle, involving boarding actions and cutlasses. Some later sources indicate she was torpedoed. In fact, Loch Eye was sunk by a mine laid by the submarine UC 33, captained by Martin Schelle. Schelle was something of a U-boat legend, sinking 39 vessels and two warships by a mixture of torpedo, gunfire, and mine.
UC 33 was, in turn, rammed and sunk by a Royal Navy vessel the next year, gaining a measure of revenge for both Loch Eye and young Willie Nightingale.
