With full-back George Molyneux away on England duty in February 1903, Ernest Pike deputised in a make-shift side. They beat Reading 4-1, but it was back to normal for the next game. And even though Ernest had recently signed pro, he would never register another first-team outing. He moved to Hampshire League Ryde in 1904, soon reverting to amateur status, while he continued his trade as a house-painter. After which, he joined the Merchant Navy as a steward. David Bull has researched in detail Pike’s seafaring career for his forthcoming “Saints at War” (see www.hagiologists.com) book and the following is an extract –

Ship manifests reveal that Ernest visited the USA in 1913 – to what end is not known – and that he would serve on American ships during and after the War. Thus we know that he worked on the passenger liner, USS Saint Paul, This Philadelphia-built-and-owned ship of the American Line had long been crossing from Southampton or Liverpool to New York, functioning also as a mail ship. Ernest would make repeated departures from Liverpool from July 1917, serving variously as a shoe steward or smoke room steward.

In late October, however, six months after the USA had entered the War, its War Department took over the ship as a transport, USS Knoxville, carrying a naval armed guard. As the ship now conveyed troops to Europe, the merchant crew was retained – though presumably in no need of Ernest’s particular attributes of stewardship, below deck. In April 1918, any issues as to his merchant role became redundant when his ship capsized in New York. Whatever he did in the next two years, while she was being repaired, we know that he was on board when the ship arrived in New York, in March 1920, from Halifax, Nova Scotia, where it had been, presumably, among the very many vessels repaired there during this war.

The recommissioned Saint Paul would be scrapped in 1923, but in 1927-28, the American Line launched a subsidiary, the Panama Pacific Line, consisting of three newly-built ships. Ernest would serve on the SS Virginia as an assistant storekeeper. He would still sail out of New York but this ship would turn right, heading for Havana, then through the Panama Canal and up the Pacific to San Francisco.

 We don’t know when this adopted US seaman quit his ocean-going life, but when he died in 1960 in his 80th year, he was living in Newcombe Rd, just around the corner from The Dell.