Noel Marcus Francis Corbett (1887 – 1962) – British Royal Naval officer and poet

Born in Lyme Regis, Dorset, UK on 20th December 1887, Noel’s father was the actor Thalberg Corbett and his mother was Edith Corbett, nee Harvey. 

Also known as T.B. Thalberg, Noel’s father was born in Gloucestershire in 1864 and died in Cornwall in 1947.

Noel was educated at Stubbington House School, was known as "the cradle of the Navy", which was founded in 1841 as a boys' preparatory school in the Hampshire village of Stubbington, around 1 mile (1.6 km) from the Solent. The school was relocated to Ascot in 1962, merging with Earleywood School, and closed in 1997.  

Noel joined the Royal Navy and was appointed a Midshipman in June 1904 and Sub-Lieutenant in August 1907. Promoted to the rank of Lieutenant on 30th November 1909, he served aboard the battleship HMS London, from October 1910 - February 1912. He was aboard the ship when in December 1911 she was called upon to give aid to the passengers and crew of the P. & O, liner S.S. Delhi, which had run aground near Cape Spartel, Morocco. Amongst the passengers were the Duke and Duchess of Fife (The Princess Royal) and their two daughters, which only gave further urgency to a grave situation. For his services in the rescue of the passengers and crew of the Delhi and for saving the life of Able Seaman Luxton, Noel was awarded the Sea Gallantry Medal and the Royal Humane Society Medal in silver. 

In 1915, Noel married Alice Jane Averina Hughes and the couple had a daughter, Daphne Edna H. Corbett (1916 - 1983), and a son. 

Noel served on HMS Indomitable during the First World War and was at the Battle of Jutland. He was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-Commander on 30th November, 1917 and left the ship when appointed to the light cruiser HMS Aurora as First Lieutenant on 19th February, 1918.

HMS Indomitable

HMS Indomitable was one of three Invincible-class battlecruisers built for the Royal Navy before the First World War and had an active career during the war. She tried to hunt down the German ships Goeben and Breslau in the Mediterranean when war broke out and bombarded Turkish fortifications protecting the Dardanelles even before the British declared war on Turkey. She helped to sink the German armoured cruiser Blücher during the Battle of Dogger Bank in 1915 and towed the damaged British battlecruiser HMS Lion to safety after the battle. She damaged the German battlecruisers Seydlitz and Derfflinger during the Battle of Jutland in mid-1916 and watched her sister ship HMS Invincible explode. Deemed obsolete after the war, she was sold for scrap in 1921.

On 3rd November 1914, Churchill ordered the first British attack on the Dardanelles following the opening of hostilities between Turkey and Russia. The attack was carried out by Indomitable and Indefatigable, as well as the French pre-dreadnought battleships Suffren and Vérité. Indomitable was ordered to return to England in December. 

HMS Aurora was an Arethusa-class light cruiser that saw service in the First World War. She 

HMCS Aurora 1931

participated in the Battle of Dogger Bank and was a member of the Grand Fleet when the main fleet of the Imperial German Navy surrendered to it in 1918. Following the war, Aurora was placed in reserve and in 1920, the cruiser was transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy. Her service with the Royal Canadian Navy was brief, being paid off in 1922. The cruiser was sold for scrap in 1927 and broken up.

On 27th November 1919, Noel was appointed from Aurora for the new battlecruiser H.M.S. Hood.  For his services during the First World War, Noel was awarded the French Croix de Guerre (London Gazette 30 November 1917). 

HMS Hood was a battlecruiser of the Royal Navy (RN). Hood was the first of the planned four Admiral-class battlecruisers to be built during the First World War. Already under construction when the Battle of Jutland occurred in mid-1916, that battle revealed serious flaws in her design despite drastic revisions before she was completed four years later.

HMS Hood 1924

(On 24 May 1941 during the Second World War, early in the Battle of the Denmark Strait, Hood was struck by several German shells, exploded, and sank within 3 minutes, with the loss of all but three of her crew of 1,418.)

On 30th June 1922, Noel was promoted to the rank of Commander.He was placed on the Retired List at his own request with the rank of Captain on 20th December 1933. The following year he was appointed Superintendent of the training ship “Cornwall”. 

HMS Cornwall

HMS Cornwall was a 74-gun third-rate Vengeur-class ship of the line built for the Royal Navy in the 1810s, commissioned in 1815 as HMS Wellesley. She was built out of teak which made her incredibly resistant to rot, and spent most of her service in reserve and was converted into a school ship in her later years.  

The ship was badly damaged during the Blitz on London in the Second World War.

Alice Corbett died on 6th May 1936 and Noel died on 20th January 1962 in Sutton

Noel’s WW1 poetry collection was “A naval motley, verses written at sea during the war and before it” (Methuen, London, 1916) and his poems were in 4 WW1 anthologies.  Here is one of his poems:

"Lines Written Somewhere in the North Sea" by Noel F. M. Corbett

The laggard hours drift slowly by; while silver mist-wreaths veil the sky

And iron coast wheron, flung high, the North Sea breaks in foam.

When flame the pallid Northern Lights on seeming age-long winter nights,

Then oftentimes for our delight God sends a dream of Home.

And once again we know the peace of little red-roofed villages

That nestle close in some deep crease amid the rolling wealds

That northward, eastward, southward sweep, fragrant with thyme and flecked with sheep,

To where the corn is standing deep above the ripening fields.

And once again in that fair dream I see the sibilant, swift stream -

Now gloomy-green and now agleam - that flows by Furnace Mill,

And hear the plover's plaintive cry above the common at Holtye,

When redly glows the dusky sky and all the woods are still.

Oh, I remember as of old, the copse aflame with russet gold,

The sweet half-rotten Scent of mould, the while I stand and hark

To unseen woodland life that stirs before the clamant gamekeepers,

Till, sudden, out a pheasant whirrs to cries of "Mark cock, mark!"

And there are aged inns that sell the mellow, cool October ale,

What time one tells an oft-told tale around the friendly fires,

Until the clock with muffled chime asserts that it is closing time,

And o'er the fields now white with rime the company retires.

How long ago and far it seems, this peaceful country of our dreams,

Of fruitful fields and purling streams - the England that we know:

Who holds within her sea-girt ring all that we love, and love can bring;

Ah, Life were but a little thing to give to keep her so!

Sources: Find my Past, Free BMD

Catherine W. Reilly “English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography” (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1978),  p. 96 

https://archive.org/details/museinarmscollec00osbouoft/page/xxxiv/mode/2up

http://www.dreadnoughtproject.org/tfs/index.php/Noel_Marcus_Francis_Corbett

http://www.authorandbookinfo.com/cgi-bin/auth.pl?C010876

https://www.ancestry.com.au/search/collections/1030/?name=Alfred_Hughes&birth=1886&death=1936&pcat=42&qh=e%2FTMFsWBfVuBhW%2BjFZUDig%3D%3D

https://www.theirvingsociety.org.uk/the-thalbery-mystery-by-alex-bisset/