Frank P. Armstrong - Service in The Great War

Service in The Great War

Many men from British Columbia served in World War I which began in 1914. Steamboat men were no exception, even Armstrong although he could easily have stayed home because of his age. Instead, Armstrong supervised British river transport in the Middle East, on the Nile and Tigris rivers. The Tigris in particular was in a difficult and hard-fought theater of war. Armstrong was not the only one of the small community of steamboat men of Golden to serve. Armstrong's apprentice, John Blakely (1889–1963), the son of his former competitor, enlisted and went to Europe, where he became one of only six survivors when his ship was torpedoed in the English Channel.