THE ARMED Forces had no monopoly on bravery during the First World War, nor of men who laid down their lives.

Merchant sailor John Sawyer Gostling was one such man, meeting his death while bringing much-needed supplies across the seas to the beleaguered British Isles.

Keighley man John was aboard the SS Elve, sailing from Newcastle to Oporto in Portugal, when it was sunk by the German submarine U-22 in 1917.

John was born in Leeds in 1897 and grew up Keighley, leaving Keighley Boys Grammar School as a teenager to spend four years apprentice to the shipping company Furness, Withy and Co, serving on ships sailing between Bristol and North America.

In 1917, while war was raging, he gained his second mate certificate and joined the Blue Funnel Line as third officer on the SS Elve.

John is remembered on the Tower Hill Memorial in London for Mercantile Mariners who died in the wars.

In an obituary for John, school magazine the Keighlian paid tribute to the Mercantile Marine as equal to the Royal Navy.

It stated: “Our food supply has depended entirely on their devotion to duty and self-sacrifice. It is such a noble body of men that click documents in belonged.”