Civil Gallantry Awards
(See below specifically for Lloyd’s
medals)
There
have been a number of different types of honours and awards given by the state
and others in recognition of merchant mariners’ bravery at sea since the mid 19th
century. Unfortunately, finding information on the circumstances of such events
can prove to be far from simple.
Of
course, the first problem is in knowing whether particular merchant mariners
have received awards. In regards to state honours, for certificated
foreign-going seamen officers these were normally recorded in their entries in
the Lloyd’s
Captains Register. One not untypical example for a Captain James Gillies read: ‘Appointed Commander of the Civil Division of
the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, for services in connection with
the war’. Whilst this information would also appear in the London Gazette, within official records there seems to be no
listing as such giving specific details of reasons why mercantile officers
received these decorations. Instead, one has to delve deeply into naval
operational and Secretariat records (at the Public Records Office, Kew), in the
hope that information can be unearthed. For Second World War
awards, Admiralty ‘cases’ at the P.R.O. should be searched.
Similarly,
recorded on some officers’ certificates of service and competency were small
Board of Trade stamps with details of lesser awards by grateful foreign
governments, civil authorities etc. One example read: ‘Certified that a diploma
was presented by the Royal Humane Society to David Francis James ... in
recognition of his gallantry in rescuing a soldier who had fallen overboard
from the SS "Rewa" at Karachi’. The Marine
Department of the Board of Trade had administered the system of civil awards to
merchant mariners since the mid 19th century and theoretically these
lesser awards should have been recorded in one of their ledgers entitled
‘Gallantry at Sea Awards’. Unfortunately, this does not seem to have been kept
efficiently. Covering the period from the 1860s to the early 1900s, with some
later entries, I have tried to match six such entries on officers’ certificates
(spread over a period of thirty years) with entries in this ledger and have not
managed to find even one in the ledger. There were also sections in this same
ledger for state issued gallantry medals (see below) and also certificates from
the St. John’s Ambulance Association.
There
were also Board of Trade medals and Albert medals issued and as far as I can make
out searches for these awards too can be difficult. There are some files within
the Marine Department of the Board of Trade’s correspondence, all of which is
at the P.R.O. and there are also two separate B. of T. documents, one a
register and the other a photograph album, dealing with the Albert Medal.
However, the latter records are not exhaustive and require ‘special
production’.
Lloyd’s Medals
Unsurprisingly,
Lloyd’s Captains
Register also
contained notations of men receiving the corporation’s own medals. One example
stated that John Evans had received the Lloyd’s Medal for Meritorious Service
‘for gallant conduct on the occasion of the torpedoing of the s.s. Mitra by an enemy submarine
on 6th March 1918’. (See excerpt linked below.)
In
complete contrast to state awards, searches for recipients of Lloyd’s medals
could not be simpler. At the Guildhall Library, in the manuscripts department,
the correspondence is filed excellently by year and month of incidents and all
paperwork is pinned together. There are also copies held of a detailed guide to
these medals: Jim Gawler’s: Lloyd’s Medals 1836-1989 - a history of medals awarded
by The Corporation of London (London: Corporation of
Lloyd’s, 1989), which gives a great deal of interesting background information.
Go to First World War medal rolls for the Merchant Service and Naval Reserves
Go to the main Mercantile Page