Remembering World War II

Name: Andrew Wright McKerrow Rank: Trimmer Service Number: 224302 Service: HMS Manistee, Naval Auxiliary Personnel (NAP), Royal Navy Date of Birth: January 25, 1913 Place of Birth: Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada Date of Enlistment: Unknown Place of Enlistment: Unknown Date of Death: February 24, 1941 Age: 28 Memorial: Liverpool Naval Memorial, Lancashire, England Reference: Panel 16, Column 2 Not currently commemorated in Canada’s Second World War Book of Remembrance Andrew Wright McKerrow was the son of Robert Tate MacKerrow (1885–1918), and Mary Seaton (Begg) MacKerrow (1884–1956), and the brother of John Seaton Begg McKerrow (1914–1974). Both of Andrew’s parents were born in Lanarkshire, Scotland. They both immigrated to Canada; his father moved in 1904. He became a naturalized Canadian in 1906, and married Mary Begg in 1912 in Sydney, Cape Breton, NS. Robert served Canada in the First World War (Service Number 415072) and died of hid wounds August 29, 1918, at the Somme in Picardie, France. Andrew and his mother moved back to the UK where he grew up in Scotland. He was working as a butcher’s boy from an early age and moved back to Canada at the age of 16 in 1926 to work as a farmworker at the Vimy Ridge Training Farm near Guelph, Ontario. In 1923, the British government, in conjunction with the government of Ontario, purchased Ballagh Farm located on lots 9 and 10 of the 5th Concession of Puslinch township, Wellington County near the city of Guelph. Named Vimy Ridge Training Farm, it was used as an agricultural training farm for the young boys coming to Canada with the Oversea Settlement Committee. Andrew married Barbara Guy Handley (1911–1967) of Paisley, Renfrewshire in Gorbals, Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Scotland in 1935. Andrew died at sea serving aboard the HMS Manistee of the Royal Navy. For roughly 20 years, the SS Manistee transported cargo, mail and some passengers between the Port of Bristol in England and Central America and Jamaica. On July 7, 1940, the defensively equipped merchant ship (DEMS) successfully repelled an attack by German U-boat, U-99, according to Uboat.net. It was returning unescorted from Cameroon. Later that year, the Manistee was requisitioned by the British Admiralty for service in WWII as a convoy escort. With pennant number F104, the ship was commanded by Lt. Commander Eric Haydn Smith, of the Royal Naval Reserve. The HMS Manistee served in the Battle of the Atlantic, until it was sunk by U-107 on February 23, 1941. All 141 on board were deemed lost. Trimmer Andrew Wright McKerrow has no known grave and is commemorated on the Liverpool Naval Memorial at Pier Head along the Mersey River in Liverpool, Lancashire, England. It is also known as the Memorial to the Missing of the Naval Auxiliary Personnel of the Second World War.

Andrew Wright McKerrow

Source: Commonwealth War Graves Commission