William Gillon - Engine Room Artificer and artist

William Gillon is the next artist to be featured in the series of contributors to Arnold's sketchbook. William's records have him coming from Glasgow, Govan to be precise. Born in 1892 he was a similar age to Arnold and, of course, held the same position on the boat. Arnold refers to him as a "3rd watch Tiffey" Once interned, the two men were housed in the same hut, number 5, and had consecutive prisoner numbers, William 42 and Arnold 43. They would have known each other quite well, one could assume. William had been a stoker in the Royal Navy prior to becoming an ERA. His navy records list him as having brown hair, blue eyes and a fresh complexion. They also note that he could not swim - remarkable that firstly, he was prepared to go to sea, and secondly that he survived a shipwreck! After the ship went down, the Dumfries and Galloway newspaper reported that his mother had received a letter from him informing of his safety in Norway. He was granted leave to visit home in late December 1917 alongside Charles Cox, one of the other\ artists from the sketchbook. Apart from that, his time in the internment camp appears to be one of good behaviour as he does not appear in any other records.

William Gillon contributed a sketch of a woman in the sketchbook. It was drawn on the 20th January 1917. (Drawing of a girl by William Gillon, R.A. Clarke Sketchbook, courtesy of robertstjohnsmith.com, shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 licence)

The two pictures provided of William Gillon include one from the camp (the sepia toned photograph cropped from a larger photograph from the Clarke family archives) and the darker one from his merchant navy records.

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