Seaman Adam Wharton

Seaman Adam Albert Wharton, Royal Naval Patrol Service. He was lost at sea aboard H.M. Trawler” Kingston Ceylonite”on 15th June 1942, aged 41. He was the son of Adam and Mary Elizabeth Wharton of Norham and is commemorated on the Lowestoft Naval Memorial. The Trawler, of 448 tons, had been requisitioned by the Admiralty and was used as an Anti Submarine vessel. In February 1942 she was lent to the U.S. Navy to help combat the submarine menace of the east Coast of the U.S. She was escorting a convoy between Key West and New York when off Virginia Beach they ran into a minefield newly laid by U-701.The Trawler sank with 18 lost and 14 survivors. U-701 was herself sunk by a U.S Hudson aircraft on 7th July 1942 with 7 survivors. ( The picture of the Trawler is not that of the Kingston Ceylonite but of a sister ship ).