PETTY OFFICER PATRICK JOHN ARCHDEACON
ROYAL NAVY
31ST MAY 1916 AGE 33
BURIED: STENBJERG CHURCHYARD, DENMARK
Although I have no firm evidence for this, I would suggest that Patrick John Archdeacon was a Roman Catholic since this is a classic Roman Catholic inscription. Archdeacon died when his ship, HMS Black Prince, bombarded at close range by at least five German ships during the night of 31 May 1916, caught fire and sank off the coast of Jutland. As the circumstances of his death denied him the last rites - the necessary prayers and rituals that prepared a soul for death - Archdeacon's mother chose this formulaic prayer for her son's headstone in the hope that it would ease the progress of his soul through purgatory.
Archdeacon's is the only war grave in the churchyard in Stenbjerg, a remote community in Jutland on the west coast of Denmark. There is another member of the Black Prince crew buried at Skagen on the most northerly tip of Jutland, one in Kviberg, Sweden and two in Norway, one close to the Swedish border at Fredrikstad and one just to the west at Tonsberg.
Patrick John Archdeacon, born in Queenstown, County Cork, Ireland, joined the Royal Navy in 1900 whilst he was still 16. Aged 17 he was serving on the battleship HMS Majestic stationed at Gibralter and in 1911 was at HMS Fisgard, the naval training establishment at Portsmouth. He qualified as a petty officer in December 1911 and had been on the Black Prince since 4 April 1914.