From the News

Dated:

WEST TORONTO

SEAMAN GAGE WENT DOWN WITH SHIP

Pupils of Old School Heard Letter Read and Afterwards News of His Death.

West Toronto, Jan. 12. -- Quite a number of "Old Boys" of King George School, St. John road, have gone into the service during the war, but few were more popular with the scholars of the school than young Gordon Wm. Gage, whose parents live at 312 St. John's road, West Toronto, and who became a "Jolly Jack Tar" before he was 18 years of age by joining the R.N.C.V.R. He enlisted in January last year, went across the Atlantic in the following month, and since that time has seen lots of active service "before the mast" on four different war vessels.

He was one of the lads to whom the teachers and scholars of King George School sent a box of Christmas cheer, and, following his usual custom of reading the letters received from the "old boys" to his pupils, when Mr. J. H. Beamish, the principal, read young Gage's acknowledgment of the receipt of the Christmas box, more than ordinary interest was evinced in the letter. That was at 12 o'clock yesterday, and the youngsters cheered the sentence in which the writer sent his kind remembrance to "all the friends at the dear old school."

When, however, the scholars returned to school in the afternoon there was sorrow throughout all the classrooms. During the intermission an official despatch had been received that the ship upon which he served had been sunk, and that the young sailor had found a watery grave.

Seaman Gage was apprenticed as a machinist in the West Toronto round-house, where his father is also employed. His grandfather was a sea captain; a life on the ocean wave appealed to the young mechanic, and deciding to "do his bit" he responded to the call of the local naval recruiters.

On one occasion since he has been away his mother suggested that she should make an effort to procure his discharge, and this is what the young sailor wrote in reply:

"You ask if you shall try and get me home. I say 'No!' I am doing my bit, and am going to stick to it till the end."