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Captain & Mrs Rotherham lived at “Tahuna” on Exmouth Road from the about the mid-1940s.  He died in July 1947 and is buried in St. Peter’s Church Cemetery and his wife continued to live at “Tahuna” until 1981 (1). 

Eustace Rotherham was born in Meriden Warwickshire in 1892 and was the son of Kenneth Rotherham a silk dyer.  Eustace entered the navy and in 1911 was a midshipman on HMS Basilisk, a Beagle class destroyer.  He became a sub-lieutenant in 1912 and was in the First Battle Cruiser Squadron on HMS Invincible.  He passed as a Lieutenant in February 1913 and moved to the Battleship HMS Centurion.  He was promoted to Lieutenant-Commander in 1921. He had taken courses and qualified for engine room duties and as a gunnery officer at the Portsmouth Gunnery School.  He also attended the Senior Officers Technical Course. He was promoted to Captain in 1933 (2, 3).  

Eustace married Louisa Eleanor Hope Mansell in Winchester in 1925 (his name was misspelt Rotheram and the marriage was recorded twice for some reason in the last two quarters of the year!).  Shortly afterwards he was lent to the Australian Navy and was attached from May 1927 to HMAS Cerberus which was a naval training establishment.  He was in the Australian Naval List until 1929. When they returned to England I believe it is likely that he later either had a shore posting, or was on half pay, because a Commander E Rotherham was living at Landreath near Twyford from 1932-1938 (1). 

At the outbreak of the Second World War Rotherham was given command of HMS Hawkins.  HMS Hawkins was a heavy cruiser that had been decommissioned in 1937 and stripped of its armament as a result of the London Naval Treaty of 1936 for the Limitation of Naval Armaments (the reaffirmation of earlier treaties in 1922 and 1930 and which, not surprisingly, the Germans did not sign).  

Hawkins had been reduced to serving as a training ship in 1938 but was hurriedly re-fitted and re-armed at Portsmouth in September 1939.  Eustace Rotherham was given the job in November of working the ship up and doing the sea trials off Portland before taken the ship for patrol work off the South American coast.  

In December the ship became the flagship of Rear Admiral Harwood after the Graf Spee incident, and Rotherham was the Captain.  The ship continued patrol and interception work in the area from the Falkland Islands up to the West Indies until September 1940.  Rotherham was however replaced on the May 6th 1940 and returned to England (4). 

He appears then to have been made the Commander of HMS Royal Arthur which was a camp at Skegness which was the central reception depot for new naval entries.  It had been a Butlins Holiday Camp before the war.  He was presumably given this job because of his experience in Australia.  Thousands of recruits went through these camps, including men from abroad (5).  Some of the men were from Norway and after the war Captain Eustace Rotherham received the King Haakon VII Liberty Medal presumably for this service.  

The camp was decommissioned in 1946 but moved and recommissioned on January 2nd 1947 in Westwells Road, Corsham, Wilts, as a leadership training establishment, and one of several assessment camps where new recruits were assessed, kitted out and sent to their various depots (5).  Its most notable trainee was the then Philip Mountbatten, before his wedding to Princess Elizabeth, however that was shortly after Rotherham died.  This had occurred in Budleigh Salterton in July 1947 while he was still in post at HMS Royal Arthur (6).  

Mrs “Hope” Rotherham was a long term resident of Budleigh Salterton after her husband’s death.  She was born in Plumstead on April 6th 1894 and her father was a Captain in the Royal Artillery (8).  She was a member of the Budleigh Salterton Croquet Club and a very fine player of the game.  She was a member of the England Team in 1956 that beat New Zealand 5-2 in the 5th Test Match thereby winning the MacRobertson Shield.  She was also the Open Champion of the Budleigh Salterton Club on several occasions, particularly in the 1960s (1960-62 inclusive, and 1966 & 1967).  Miss Joy Gawne informs me that she was also a leading member of the local Civil Defence group during the Cold War.  She died in Exeter (presumably in the Wonford Hospital) in the summer of 1981. 

Eustace Rotherham had a cousin Geoffrey Alexander (“Hank”) Rotherham who was in the Fleet Air Arm during WW2.  He had the distinction of being the observer who navigated a small reconnaissance bomber expertly in atrocious weather precisely to the fiord near Bergen where the German battleship Bismarck was known to be berthed.  In the face of heavy flak all the way along the fiord he was able to determine that Bismarck and Prinz Eugen had slipped away in poor visibility and his radio message set in train the extremely important hunt for the Bismarck.  

Hank Rotherham was awarded an immediate DSO and his two colleagues also received medals (4,7).  He emigrated to Canada after the war.  His mother was Mrs A. Rotherham who was living at 7 The Lawn in Budleigh Salterton between at least 1960 and 1968 (1).  She was the widow of Dr Arthur Rotherham, a psychiatrist and former mental hospital superintendant who later served on several government committees; Arthur was Eustace Rotherham’s uncle.  She was born in 1879 as Winifred Kate Dudgeon, married Arthur Rotherham in 1905, and died in 1972 in the Devon Central Registration District (which includes Budleigh).  

Compiled and Researched by Roger Lendon, © 2010 

(1) Telephone Directories

(2) London Gazette entries

(3) Naval List 1929

(4) www.uboat.net/allies/commanders/index.html?letter=R

(5) Wikipedia

(6) www.devonheritage.org/../Budleigh%20Salterton/BudleighWarMemorial1939to1945.

(7) Obituary Times Newspapers Ltd

(8) 1901 Census

103 BS-B-00035 Biography any