Miller, James Adam 928EA ( - 1915)

Engine Room Artificer, Royal Naval Reserve, HMS "Bayano"

Buried at Portsmouth Naval Memorial

Commemorated at Hillhead High School

E.R. Artificer James A. Miller was the only son of Mr. and Mrs. James Miller, 7 Sutherland Terrace, Hillhead, and later of Millbrae Crescent, Langside. He was an exceptionally bright and intelligent boy, with a strong bent for Mathematics and hand work.

On leaving School he became indentured as an apprentice engineer to Messrs. J. & W. Weir, Cathcart. While there he, along with several others, joined, at the special request of his employers, the R.N.R. Part of his training included two periods of about three months each in the engine room of one of H.M. warships.

By special arrangement the time so spent counted towards his prescribed apprenticeship period. A year before the outbreak of hostilities he received an appointment with the Burmah Oil Company, by whom he was regarded as one of the most promising of their junior technical staff. When war was declared he had no doubts as to where his duty lay, and he came home at once in a captured German vessel, which, however, had a narrow escape from being seized by the "Emden."

Reporting at once to R.N.R. headquarters, he was posted to the engine-room staff of the "Bayano," then fitting out on the Clyde. He sailed from Glasgow on the evening of 10th March, 1915, and the next morning there appeared in the papers the intimation that she had been torpedoed in the night time when off Ailsa Craig.

Artificer Miller, with many more gallant youths from this city, was drowned. It was a tragic ending to so gallant an adventure, but his old School will specially treasure the memory of sons who like James A. Miller came so far and so speedily to the help of the Motherland.