William Minto was born in Fleetwood in 1853, the fifth of nine children of Irishman John Minto and his Scottish wife Isabella Calder who married at South Leith Parish Church, Midlothian on 18 July 1843.
John and Isabella lived in Scotland after their marriage and their first child, Barbara Craig was born in 1845. John was a mechanic and engine driver and perhaps it was his work that took him to England as their second child, John Calder, was born in Surrey and baptised at St. Mary Magdelene, Peckham on 7 June 1846. From Surrey, the Minto family moved to Preston where two children were born: William Michael in 1848 and Isabella in 1851.
The Minto family had moved to 11 Poulton Road by the time of the 1861 Census and to 20 Warren Street in 1871. William, aged 17, was not at home on Census night and we have been unable to find him elsewhere.
William married Mary Jane McClatchey in Fleetwood in 1879. Mary was born in County Armagh, Ireland in 1853. In the Census of 3 April 1881, Mary and William were shown at 38 Lower Dock Street with the first of their children, John William, aged 1. William was employed as a bar man. A daughter, Minnie, was born the following year.
William had become dock labourer when the next Census was taken on 5 April 1891. Living with the family at 11 Upper Dock Street were William's mother, widowed since March 1885, and his nephew and namesake, the orphaned son of his sister Wilhelmena who died in 1875.
By 31 January 1901, when the next Census was taken, Mary and William had adopted two more children; Margaret McClatchey was born in County Armagh in 1893 and Robert McClaw was born in Fleetwood in 1899. William was now a stoker on a steamship and the family home was in Warrenhurst Road, Fleetwood.
In the following Census on 2 April 1911 the family were recorded in Antrim, at 53 Britannia Street, South Belfast and William was still a marine stoker, probably aboard the Belfast to Fleetwood mail ship.
Mary died in 1915, aged 62, four years after she and William had moved home to 34 Heys Street, Thornton. She was buried in Fleetwood Cemetery on 20 January. William died on 7 August later that year. He was serving aboard HMS Duke of Albany as a stoker and died "from disease". Fireman William Minto, Mercantile Marine Reserve, was buried in Grave 948 in Fleetwood Cemetery on 11 August 1915.
The SS Duke of Albany was built by John Brown & Co. Ltd. of Clydebank in 1907 for the Lancashire and Yorkshire Steamship Company. After seven years operating mainly on the Fleetwood to Belfast route, she was requisitioned by the Admiralty for war service. She was fitted out as an armed boarding steamer and stationed around the Orkney Islands with the task of stopping supplies reaching Germany. On 24 August 1916 the Duke of Albany was patrolling to the east of the Pentland Skerries when she was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine UB-27 with the loss of 25 lives.
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