Joseph Bowden

Son of George and Eliza Ann Bowden; husband of Elizabeth Alice Bowden, of 2, Mount Pleasant, Bollington Macclesfield. Service Number: 63651, 24th (Denbighshire Yeomanry) Bn. On 15 April 1917 HT ARCADIAN was en route from Thessaloniki (Salonika) to Alexandria with a company of 1,335 troops and crew and escorted by a Japanese Navy destroyer. Shortly after completing a boat drill, while 26 miles north east of the Greek island of Milos, ARCADIAN was hit by a single torpedo from the German submarine SM UC-74 and sank within six minutes with the loss of 279 lives. The CWGC Historical Notes adds HT "ARCADIAN" "was torpedoed and sunk on 15 April 1917, 41.5 kilometres north east from the island of Milo (Melos), carrying reinforcements for Egypt." Jonathan Martin is known to have died on this date and is commemorated on the Mikra Memorial with others from this maritime disaster which commemorates "almost 500 nurses, officers and men of the Commonwealth forces who died when troop transports and hospital ships were lost in the Mediterranean, and who have no grave but the sea."