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In September, 1914, he was granted a commission as Sub-Lieutenant in the RNVR, and served upon minesweepers until the summer of 1917, principally in the Channel and the Irish Sea. During this period his vessel was twice mined; in the second of these explosions he lost the third and fourth fingers of his left hand.

In September, 1917, he was promoted to Lieutenant and was posted to a so-called mystery ship, the Jane Ellen, of Bideford, under Commander D. A. Faulkner, RN. This vessel was a coastal schooner of some one hundred and fifty tons, normally trading in china clay and coal between the southern ports of Cornwall and the north-east coast. Under Commander Faulkner she was employed as a submarine decoy.

The action of the Jane Ellen (HMS Q 83) will be found described in a supplement to the London Gazette published shortly after the Armistice, together with the list of awards. Sir Arthur Mortimer, in the second volume of his ‘Naval History of the Great War’, gives a reliable account of the engagement, which he refers to as ‘one of the bloodiest naval actions ever fought’. Briefly, the Jane Ellen engaged the U187 at dawn, on April 18th, 1918, at a point some forty miles west of the Scillies. Casualties on the British vessel were extremely heavy and included the Commander, the ship’s company of forty-seven being reduced eventually to three in number. Finally the U187 was sunk by gunfire at about noon, the gun being manned by Lieutenant Stevenson and a midshipman. No survivors were rescued from the German vessel.