Cromer Servicemen and Servicewomen in the First World War

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Name	Alfred Athelstan Lennox Fenner
Notes	Born at Cromer in 1886, he was the son of Dr. Robert Fenner and Edith Marion Fenner (née Carter), of 38, Portland Place, London. He joined H.M.S.Britannia in 1900 - the 1901 census has him as a Naval Cadet - and served his first commission as a Midshipman in the flagship H.M.S.Bulwark. Later he commanded the Submarine C.37 in her voyage from Portsmouth to Hong Kong. At the commencement of the war, as Gunnery Lieutenant in H.M.S.Warrior, he took part in the chase of the Goeben and the Breslau. He subsequently commanded submarines in the North Sea and Baltic, and was lost while in command of K.4 on 31st January 1918. He received from the Czar the Orders of Vladimir and Stanislaus. The incident in which Alfred Fenner lost his life was recalled in 2011 when the submarines K.4 and K.17 were discovered on the seabed. They had collided off the Island of May in the Firth of Forth in a series of catastrophic incidents that occured as they headed to sea to rendezvous with the Grand Fleet. In 2001 a memorial cairn was put in place to mark the loss of K.4.
Service Information	Lieutenant Commander, Royal Navy, H.M. Submarine K.4, Died on 31st January 1918, aged 31. Commemorated on Portsmouth Naval Memorial, Hampshire, Panel 28.
Date of Birth	1886
Place of Birth	Cromer
Date of Death	31/01/1918
Place of Death	Firth of Forth
Source	Roll of Honour, War Roll, services records, web sources
	Alfred Fenner's picture from the War Roll, Cromer parish church.
	Submarine K4 when she went aground on an earlier occasion, in January 1917.
	The Isle of May in the Firth of Forth, near where a series of collisions occured on January 31st, 1918.