Flight-Commander Percy Cuthbert Douglass, R.N.A.S., was
born at St. Mary's, Scilly Isles, on 28th September 1886.
He was
educated at Marlborough College and under private tutors, and at the age
of nineteen was articled to his father, the late
Mr. W. T. Douglass,. of Westminster.
He received the practical side of his engineering education from
1906 to 1908 at the works of Messrs. Andrew Barclay and Co., Kilmarnock,
the Steel Co. of Scotland, and Messrs. Simons and Co., Renfrew, after
which he returned to assist his father in the preparation of plans,
specifications, and inspections of lighthouse lanterns, apparatus,
machinery, steel towers, gas buoys and gas-making plant.
In 1910
he was appointed assistant resident engineer for the Buckie Harbour
Extension Works, which his father was building.
Two years later
he returned to work in the London office, but was only there a few
months before his father died. He then became head of the firm and
carried on the work until shortly after the outbreak of the war. The
chief work carried out by him in that year was in connexion with Buckie
and other harbours in Banffshire, also the parade and marine drive at
Exmouth, and his duties as engineer to the Royal National Lifeboat
Institution.
In April 1915 he received a Commission as
Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Naval .Division, but at the request of the
Admiralty he shortly transferred to the Royal Naval Air Service for
balloon work, with which he was well acquainted, owing to his pre-war
experience in a Territorial Balloon Company. He went immediately to
Gallipoli with a kite-balloon section, and during the campaign he was
given command of the section and promoted to Lieutenant.
On his
return to England in April 1916 he was lent temporarily to the Aerial
Construction Corps and given command of a camp. Early in 1917 he again
went to the Eastern Mediterranean, and when there transferred to the
aeroplane branch of the service. In September he was promoted to
Flight-Commander.
His death took place from an aeroplane
accident on 10th December 1917, at the age of thirty-one. He was elected
a Graduate of this Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1907, and an
Associate Member in 1912. |
