Alfred Bernard Clark

Alfred B. Clark, 1912.
From the Historic Collections Library of the Institute of Naval Medicine, by kind permission of the Commanding Officer and the courtesy of Jane Wickenden.

Surgeon Captain (retired) Alfred Bernard Clark, (28 January, 1887 – 24 September, 1980) served in the Royal Navy in the Great War and documented his service in small naval vessels in a photograph album.

Life & Career

Born at Rotherham, Clark was one of twelve brothers.

He entered the navy as a Surgeon Lieutenant in November 1911 and began his training at Haslar Royal Naval Hospital, during which time he was awarded the Admiralty Prize for the Hygiene Group of Subjects.

His naval service afloat soon followed, and his career has an unusual parallelism to that of Oswald Tylston Hodgson, a navigation specialist seven years his senior. Clark would follow Hodgson in several of his commands of small vessels, taking photographs of the ships and men along the way. Together between 1912 and 1914, they served in the torpedo gunboat Skipjack, the destroyer Wear and the torpedo gunboat Seagull.

Later in his career, Clark served at Chatham Royal Naval Barracks, and in the convoy sloop H.M.S. Bryony, H.M.S. Vivid, Royal Oak, Cochrane and Proserpine. Through the 1920s, at least, he was contributing on a professional level to R.N. medicine, contributing articles on Chicken Pox, nitrous oxide and disinfection methods.

Clark was placed on the Retired List as a Surgeon Captain in 1946.

Clark died at Exmouth in the nursing home at age 93.

Acknowledgement

• Jane Stemp Wickenden, Historic Collections Librarian at the Institute of Naval Medicine discovered and provided to me most of the information herein.
• James Payne, historical photography expert brought my attention to Clark's photographs, which he offers for sale in vivid digital form

Bibliography

• Obituary, Journal of the Royal Naval Medical Service, Vol 67. p. 54. 1981
• S.J. Eyre. Surgeons of the Royal Navy in the First World War (Leamington Spa, OMRS, 1916)