Born 1898 – died 1982

Richard Edward Vaughan was born on 12 July 1898 in Wingfield, Derbyshire, the eldest son of Wynn and Elizabeth Vaughan. His father was a gamekeeper. At the time of the 1911 census he was living at Hall Gardens, Alfreton. He had three brothers and a sister. Richard worked as a coal miner before becoming a stoker.

He joined the Royal Navy on the 9th May 1918 aged 19. Following training he was posted to the Dover Patrol, a unit of destroyers and other small vessels based at Dover. The shore base was HMS Attentive II and Richard is listed as serving on HMS Zubian. This was a tribal-class destroyer constructed from the forward end of HMS Zulu and the rear and mid sections of HMS Nubian. These two destroyers had been badly damaged in late 1916 and rather than scrapping both hulls at the height of World War I, the Admiralty ordered that they be rebuilt as the composite Zubian and put back into service. She was commissioned into the fleet in June 1917. The name Zubian is a portmanteau of the names of the original ships.

HMS Zubian saw extensive service in the final two years of the war as part of the Dover Patrol. She sank the German U-boat UC-50 in February 1918, while she was on patrol in the English Channel. In late April, she participated in the First Ostend Raid as an escort for the bombardment force. Richard would have missed these actions as he joined shortly before the end of the war. After the war, Zubian was sold for scrap and broken up by December 1919.

Richard married Jessie May Pratt in 1932 in St Mary’s Church Chaddesden near Derby. His occupation was given as Colliery Winder and his address as Oakerthorpe, South Wingfield. He died in 1982 at North Walsham, Norfolk.