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One of the royals who was one of the lads

Aug 23 2009 by Paul Loraine, Sunday Sun

Lord Mountbatten was killed by an IRA bomb

FROM street signs to pictures on pub walls his legacy lives on . . . a little known link between a North East town and royalty.

Thirty years since his cowardly assassination by the IRA, Lord Louis Mountbatten still has a tangible place in the hearts of Hebburn folk.

The close links between the Tyneside shipbuilding town which Prince Charles’s favourite ‘uncle’ made his second home, was forged when he commanded, HMS Kelly.

Built at the Hawthorn Leslie site in Ellison Street, whenever the Kelly returned to its home base, Mountbatten was there.

“The Kelly, Mountbatten and his crew have never been forgotten in Hebburn,” said John Diamond, a historian with the Jarrow and Hebburn local history society.

“Former crew members and their families have regularly visited the Kelly memorial in the cemetery year after year.

“Lord Mountbatten would go to the pub with the shipyard workers and buy them drinks – he was one of them.

“Everyone in Hebburn was horrified by what happened to him – he was so important to the town.”

Mountbatten – latterly the Earl Mountbatten of Burma, the uncle to Prince Phillip – died on August 27, 1979, off the coast of Mullaghmore in County Sligo on the North West tip of Ireland.

He was assassinated by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), who planted a bomb in his boat.

His reputation in Hebburn is built on the time he spent as commander of the World War Two destroyer HMS Kelly.

The ship was built on South Tyneside over two years and was launched on October 25, 1938. Mountbatten was appointed to command the ship around a year later.