Current Information:

Age-34

11, Royal Naval Houses, Penge

Dar es Salaam War Cemetery, Tanzania

In 1914 HMS Pegasus joined the Cape Squadron at Simonstown, South Africa. Based at Zanzibar she patrolled the coast but continuous steaming for weeks on end reduced the ship’s performance and on 19th September, 1914 she arrived at Zanzibar harbour for engine repairs. At the same time the German light cruiser Konigsberg was less than two hundred miles away in the Rufiji Delta and on receiving news of the whereabouts of HMS Pegasus, set sail and when she arrived off Zanzibar at sunrise the following morning immediately opened fire. Out gunned and outranged HMS Pegasus was disabled within eight minutes, and the ship reduced to a shambles with thirty-eight killed and fifty-five wounded. One of the dead was John Drake.