About
World War I (1914-1918)
Stephen John Downey was born in Utica, New York, on January 26, 1898. He came to the city of Schenectady to work before enlisting in the Navy.
Stephen enlisted in the United States Navy the day before the war was declared. He underwent his training at the Newport Training School in Rhode Island. He completed three voyages across the Atlantic as a seaman second class and escaped unharmed from a torpedoed ship. He was on the USS Actaeon when it was torpedoed off the coast of Spain on November 24, 1917, resulting in the ship being lost at sea. Since he was not officially assigned to that vessel, his name was reported later. Stephen is remembered at the Brookwood American Cemetery and Memorial in England.
Sources: The Schenectady Gazette, Find A Grave, Ancestry