Today marks the 100th anniversary of the first Bermudian to be killed in the First World War.

William Edmund Smith drowned when his ship, HMS Aboukir, was torpedoed by a U-boat off the Hook of Holland on September 22, 1914.

Historian and National Museum Director Dr Edward Harris hailed Mr Smith and the scores of other Bermudian’s who paid the ultimate sacrifice as ‘true heroes of Bermuda’.

“Upwards of 500 Bermudians served in various corps of the British Army and other services, such as the Royal Navy and Royal Flying Corps, in the Great War, as well as in the Canadian forces,” he said.

“A number also served in Bermuda in the two local entities, Bermuda Militia Artillery and Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corp.

“Ten men were lost in Bermuda in accidents or illness and eighty met their Maker in overseas theatres.

“Those men, and later, others who died in the Second World War, are commemorated on Remembrance Day each year.”

Mr Smith had worked at the Royal Naval Dockyard in Sandys Parish and left Bermuda to go to sea in 1912.

He was serving aboard the British cruiser HMS Aboukir when it was torpedoed in the North Sea in September 1914, just weeks after the war’s outbreak.

Mr Smith and more than 400 of his HMS Aboukir shipmates drowned in the German U-boat attack that sank three ageing British warships in a little less than two hours.

His mother received a letter signed by Winston Churchill, conveying the sympathy of the King and Queen.

A total of more than 1,400 Royal Navy servicemen were killed in the incident which established the submarine as a major weapon in the conduct of naval warfare.

“All those who gave their lives so that Bermuda and other countries of what was the British Empire could continue to live their lives in peace and part of their legacy is the privileged life that is enjoyed by most in this island today,” Dr Harris said.

“It is right that those fallen Bermudians should be remembered each year on the day once called Armistice Day, and also at certain commemorations, such as the current one that marks the beginning of the Great War.

“Such commemoration and remembrance signifies that we understand and are grateful for their ultimate sacrifices, especially when made as volunteers, when they could have remained in Bermuda, which was fortunately not invaded or engaged in the front line of battle.”

“These are the true heroes of Bermuda, the like of which we may never see again.”

Mr Smith, a black Bermudian, who hailed from Sandys was just 22 when he died.

He was the son of William Felix Smith and his wife Emma Jane, née Douglas.

Their homestead on Herman’s Hill, Somerset overlooks the Great Sound on one side and Sound View Road on the other. It is now the residence of Mrs Margaret Smith Heyliger, Emma’s granddaughter.

Mr Smith’s name is on a War Memorial at a churchyard in Kent; St James Parish Church, Somerset and in the Somerset Methodist Church on Long Bay Lane, along with the names of other black Bermudians who were killed during the First World War.