Private John Coulson of the Royal Marines was killed at sea two days after his 26th birthday in one of the first naval disasters of the First World War. He was the son of Frederick Coulson and his wife of 23, St Paul's Street, Stamford, and was born at Glebe Farm, Tinwell, on 13 October 1888. He was a butcher before joining the Royal Marines on 9 October 1911. John was on board HMS Hawke, an old cruiser launched in 1891, when it was attacked by a German submarine in the North Sea off Aberdeen and sunk on 15 October 1914. She had been sailing with her sister ship HMS Theseus when they were attacked by U-9. The submarine's first torpedo missed Theseus but hit Hawke, igniting a magazine and causing an explosion which ripped much of the ship apart. She sank in a few minutes, killing her captain, 26 officers and 497 men. 70 crew members survived. John Coulson has no grave, and is remembered on the Chatham Naval Memorial, and on the war memorial in Tinwell.