ONE 16-year-old boy stood fatally wounded on the deck of the HMS Chester, quietly awaiting orders as his shipmates lay dead around him.

It was May 31, 1916, the day of the Battle of Jutland, and the British ship had been hit 17 times by German cruisers.

The boy on the deck was John Travers "Jack" Cornwell, who was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross (VC) for his bravery after his story became the talk of the country.

Jack was born in Clyde Place, Leyton, in 1900, to parents Eli and Lily. He was their second child of four, and had two half brothers from his father's previous marriage.

The family moved to a small cottage in Alverstone Road, Little Ilford, in 1910. Jack went to the Walton Road School close to his home and is known to have been a keen Boy Scout.

After leaving school, he worked as a delivery boy for the Brooke Bond tea company before getting another job pulling carts for the Manor Park-based Whit-bread's Brewery Depot.

When the First World War broke out in 1914, Jack's father, a former soldier, re-enlisted in the Army.

But his son was more attracted to the Royal Navy. Armed with references from his employer and his headmaster he enlisted at the tender age of 15.

After completing his basic training, he joined the fleet at Rosyth, Scotland, and was stationed on the newly commissioned HMS Chester in early May 1916.

The Battle of Jutland began on May 31 as the German Navy tried to break the British blockade of the North Sea.

The Chester was set to fight, and Jack's job was setting the sights of one of the ship's guns.

But with four ships firing at it, the Chester was outgunned, and Jack's unit was hit before it could be brought into firing position.

He received a serious chest wound, but an eyewitness described him standing in an exposed position, alone at his post, awaiting orders from the bridge.

The gun is now in the Imperial War Museum.

The battle lasted two days and was the only full-scale battle between the two fleets during the war.

As both sides claimed victory, the Chester limped back to Britain and Jack was taken to hospital in Grimsby, Lincolnshire, where he died of his wounds on June 2.

What happened next has been misunderstood for decades.

According to one popular version still in circulation, Jack was buried quietly at Grimsby, but the Admiralty insisted that he be exhumed and buried with full naval honours.

Thanks to research recently carried out by Newham Heritage Service, we now know this is untrue, and suspect it may have been spread about by the Admiralty, which was anxious to rewrite history and capture the public mood.

We now know that Jack was never buried at Grimsby. Initally, he was interred in a communal grave in Manor Park.

But after his courage and modest funeral became widely known, the press and the public demanded that his body be re-buried with a full ceremony.

Under pressure the Admiralty agreed.

Jack's second funeral was held on July 29, and thousands lined the streets of East Ham as his body was paraded past on a gun carriage.

The following September, his mother Lily received a letter from King George V, saying her son would be awarded a VC for his bravery.

She picked the award up in person from the King that November.

A memorial fund was set up in Jack's name to provide a wing at a naval hospital in Richmond for disabled soldiers.

Every schoolchild in the Empire was asked to give a penny toward the fund, as on September 21, 1916, the country celebrated Jack Cornwell Day.

The same month, the Jack Cornwell Award was introduced to be awarded to particularly courageous Boy Scouts.

Newham Council's Jack Cornwell Award, again for bravery, was introduced in 2001.

The Walton Road School was renamed the Jack Cornwell School in 1929. It has since been demolished, but even today we have the Jack Cornwell Centre in Jack Cornwell Street, and the Cornwell VC Cadet Centre, base to the Newham Sea Cadets.

Jack's father died on active service in October 1916.

Despite her double loss, Jack's mother received only a very small pension and had to work in a sailors' hostel to supplement her income.

She was found dead in her home in Stepney in 1919, aged 48.

She never lived to see the memorial erected on her son's grave the next year.

Lily Cornwell was buried alongside Jack and Eli in Manor Park Cemetery.

Jack Cornwell was featured in a series of stamps issued by the Post Office last month, which commemorated the 150th anniversary of the Victoria Cross.

lDescendants of Jack Cornwell are asked to contact Pat Stannard on 8498 3431 or by email at pstannard@london.newsquest.co.uk