Distinguished members

Thomas Barton

Ship-owner

Brother Thomas Barton owned the privateer The Pilgrim, which captured a French ship, La Liberté. The cargo realised £190,000, then an immense sum.

The Rev. Brownlow Forde

Master of the Lodge, 1789

He founded eleven Sunday schools in Liverpool to teach poor children how to read. He was later appointed to Newgate Prison in London, where he attended the execution of Col. Despard, who had plotted to kill the King. Despard and his co-conspirators were the last men in England to be sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered.

He was also present as a clergyman when John Bellingham was executed for the murder of the Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval, in the House of Commons in 1812.

William Ewart

Merchant, joined 1788

In the early 1780s, the 17-year-old William Ewart rode down from Dumfries to start an apprenticeship with a Scottish merchant in Liverpool. Industrious and successful, he became one of the benefactors who sought to relieve the hardship of Liverpool’s poor, and grew rich and famous as an expert in foreign trade.

His name is remembered today for a different reason. He was a great friend of John Gladstone, who named his youngest son William Ewart Gladstone in his honour. The young Gladstone went on to become Prime Minister four times. Two of Bro. Ewart’s sons were elected to Parliament, and thanks to the efforts of William Ewart junior, an Act was passed enabling public libraries to be established in England.

Captain S.T.S. Lecky

Master mariner and navigator

An Irishman, he sailed in East Indiamen and for the Pacific Steam Navigation Company. In 1882 he took charge of the King of Portugal’s ship when the King’s own pilot refused the responsibility of bringing her into port, and was invested as a Knight of the Portuguese Royal and Military Order of Christ. He was also awarded the Queen’s Egyptian Medal and the Khedive’s Bronze Star for services in the Egyptian War.

His fame rested on his work as a nautical surveyor. A friend of Lord Kelvin, he wrote a book on navigation that ran to twenty-two editions and was adopted by the US Navy. In 1902 he was praised in the House of Lords by a peer unaware that he had just died; the record of proceedings was amended in his honour, the first time this had ever been done.

Tommy Lawton

Everton and England centre forward, joined 1944

He scored twenty-two goals in twenty-three games for England. Aged just 20 in September 1939 and at the peak of his form, he scored 152 goals in 114 games during the war, and netted 24 times in 23 wartime internationals.

Thomas Porter

Founder member, ship painter and Sergeant Major of the 20th Foot

One of our founders in 1780, he fought the French at the Battle of Minden in 1759, when his regiment, a single line of infantry, broke through three lines of cavalry. A historian later described him as an old and gallant soldier.

James Broadhurst

Watchmaker and able seaman

A Liverpool watchmaker, he served on HMS Namur at the Battle of Cape St Vincent in 1797. The ship astern was HMS Captain, with Commodore Horatio Nelson aboard, who famously captured one Spanish ship and used it as a platform to board and take a second. Bro. Broadhurst served under Nelson again on HMS San Josef in 1801.

Brother Jones

Merchant Navy

In 1873 the lodge received a letter from Lodge Zetland, thanking our brother for having saved Malcolm Rennil and the crew of the shipwrecked Kertch.

Inman Sealby

Captain of the White Star liner SS Republic

In 1909 the Republic was rammed in thick fog by the Florida, a ship carrying Italian immigrants. Eight lives were lost. Captain Sealby ordered his wireless operator to send out distress calls, the first time this had happened at sea, and all the remaining passengers and crew were rescued.

When the Republic finally sank, he was picked out by a searchlight clinging to the foremast, and was rescued with his first mate from a floating grating. Arriving in New York, he was carried shoulder-high through a cheering crowd.

Alexander Macnab

Marine engineer, Surveyor General of Ships at Singapore

Captured in 1941 and interned at Changi, he was badly beaten and survived on starvation rations while helping his fellow prisoners. His family understand that after his release he was offered a knighthood, but declined, holding that he had only done his duty.

George Payne

Stockbroker’s clerk and anti-tank gunner

Wounded and captured by the Afrika Korps in North Africa, he escaped after treatment in a German field hospital and rejoined his regiment. He fought in Sicily and Italy, including the battle for the Anzio beachhead, and in 1944 landed in Normandy, where he was wounded again by a landmine.

Stan Johnstone

Merchant Navy and ship’s gunner

After the war he became Shore Boatswain for the Blue Funnel Line. He never spoke of his experiences, which only came to light when the Russian Government awarded him a medal for service on the Arctic Convoys, described by Churchill as the worst journey in the world. It joined his Atlantic Star, Pacific Star, Italy Star, 1939–45 Star and Victory Medal.

His son-in-law, Bro. Alec Owen, received an award from the Liverpool Shipwreck & Humane Society for rescuing a woman and her two children from a blazing flat in Newsham Park.