Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Son of Herbert COLEMAN
Of Walter Street, Smithfield, NSW

Henry returned from service in WW1. He was married with two young children when he died in Botany Bay returning from a day trip to Sutherland after the launch he was aboard was driven onto the breakwater at the mouth of the Cook river during a storm. All aboard were drowned.

BOTANY BAY TRAGEDY.
All Bodies Found.
SYDNEY, Sunday.
The bodies of Roy Edwards, 30, of Pymble, and George Ansell, 40, of South Rand wick, who were drowned when a launch sank inBotany Bay during Monday night's storm, were recovered yesterday. They were found floating in the bay. The bodies of all of the eleven who were drowned have now been recovered. Ansell was the owner of the launch.

The tragic foundering of the motorlaunch Bronya In Botany Bay on Easter Monday evening, with its 11 occupants, occupied the coroner's attention most of the day. According to the evidence, the fatality might have been averted had there been a light on the end of the training wall. Up to the present the Navigation Department, baulking at the expense of a light, has: "considered that a pile beacon was sufficient to mark this danger point. The coroner-thinks differently, and, in returning a finding of accidental drowning, he expressed an emphatic opinion that a light should be placed on the end of the breakwater. The victims of the Bronya's foundering were. Walter James Lawson, John Gordon Michie, Peter Baxter Marshall, James Jarvis, James Ch'as. Hankin, Frank F. E. Cook, Herbert Francis Hopel, Daisy May Hopel, Gordon Lewis Melville, Geo. Duxbury Ansell, and
Henry Roy Edwards.