Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A Somaliland and Persian Gulf campaign service pair awarded to Vice-Admiral Sir Benjamin Martin, K.B.E., D.S.O., Royal Navy, who was decorated for his gallant command of H.M.S. Dorsetshire in the Bismarck action in May 1941 - no less notable was the fact he was ‘the first officer who started his career on the lower deck to reach Flag Rank on the Active List in 87 years’

Africa General Service 1902-56, 1 clasp, Somaliland 1908-10 (238008 B. C. Martin, Boy 1 Cl., H.M.S. Proserpine); Naval General Service 1915-62, 1 clasp, Persian Gulf 1909-1914 (238008 B. C. S. Martin, H.M.S. Proserpine), contact marks and polished, thus fine or better (2) £1200-1500

Benjamin Charles Stanley Martin was born in Ryde on the Isle of Wight in July 1891 and was educated at the Royal Naval Hospital School, Greenwich, from which he entered the Royal Navy as a Boy 2nd Class in January 1907.

A Leading Seaman in the survey vessel H.M.S. Sealark on the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, and fresh back from that ship’s tour of the Pacific, he removed to Vernon that December and was appointed to the warrant rank of Gunner in May 1915. And it was in this same capacity that he was present at the battle of Jutland in the battleship Malaya in the following year - as part of the 5th Battle Squadron, she was heavily engaged in the ‘run to the north’ and received seven direct hits from large calibre shells, sustaining casualties of 67 killed and 33 wounded.

Commissioned as a Mate (Torpedo) in October 1916, he returned to sea in the Malaya and was for a time a mess-mate of the future King George VI and, by the War’s end, had been confirmed in the rank of Lieutenant.

Between the Wars he served as Torpedo Officer in the cruisers Leviathan and Kent, at the experimental station at Shandon, and on the Staff of the Senior Officer of the Reserve Fleet at the Nore until 1924, when he was given his first command, the destroyer Sable. Later he also commanded the destroyers Salmon, Venetia and Vortigern in the Mediterranean and Atlantic and, following promotion to Commander in June 1931, the flotilla leader Voyager. Advanced to Captain in June 1935, he commanded the sloop Folkestone on the China Station in the same year, while in 1937 he was given command of the Broke and Destroyer Flotillas of the Reserve Fleet at the Coronation Naval Review. Martin next went to the Admiralty as Director of Physical Training and Sports - a fitting appointment for a former boxer and rugby player - and, by the outbreak of hostilities in September 1939, he was in command of the cruiser Dorsetshire on the China Station.

Bismarck incident

At the time of the Home Fleet’s pursuit of the Bismarck in May 1941, the Dorsetshire was serving as a convoy escort off West Africa, but on receiving Admiralty reports regarding the possibility of the enemy’s escape, Martin handed over his duties to the armed-merchant cruiser Bulolo - without formal permission - and steered at 26 knots to get between the Bismarck and Brest. As Ludovic Kennedy observed in his history of the Bismarck episode, Pursuit, perhaps he had remembered Nelson’s dictum: No Captain can do wrong if he lays his ship alongside that of the enemy. Certainly the ploy worked, for by the time Dorsetshire arrived on the scene of battle, virtually all of Admiral Tovey’s force’s torpedoes had been expended, thereby leaving the coup de grace to Martin’s command - taking the Dorsetshire to a mile and a half on Bismarck’s starboard beam, two torpedoes were fired, both of which found their mark; thence he took the Dorsetshire round the other side and, at just over a mile, fired another, which also hit the doomed enemy ship. And to Martin and his men fell the duty of attempting to rescue the survivors, an exercise which had to be broken off in the face of impending attack by U-boats. Ludovic Kennedy takes up the story:

‘After more than an hour’s swimming the first of them reached the Dorsetshire’s side, where rafts, ropes, scrambling nets, fenders, lifelines of all kinds had been let down. Müllenheim-Rechberg noticed that many men, not seamen, didn’t know how to grip a straight rope, urged them to get into ropes with bowlines. Staat’s fingers were so frozen that he couldn’t grip the rope at all, seized it with his teeth, was hauled on board that way. Müllenheim-Reachberg put his foot in a bowline rope, was pulled up by two sailors: when he reached deck level he tried to grab the guard rail, was too exhausted and fell back into the sea: He got into the same rope again, was hauled up by the same two sailors, this time took no risks, said in immaculate English, “Please help me on board” which they did. Midshipman Joe Brooks of the Dorsetshire went down one of the lifelines, tried to get a bowline round a German who had lost both arms and was gripping the lifeline with his teeth: the ship rolled heavily, they both went under, Brooks never saw him again. Blum reached the Dorsetshire’s bow, was sucked under by a sea, felt himself under the keel, then came up the other side. The waves carried him away from Dorsetshire, but Maori was lying stopped a little way off, he managed to reach her and was hauled safely up.







The Dorsetshire had picked up some eighty men and the Maori some twenty, many more were in the process of being hauled up and hundreds more were waiting in the water when an unexpected thing happened. Dorsetshire’s navigating officer, Lieutenant-Commander Durant, sighted on the starboard bow two miles away a smoky discharge in the water. He pointed it out to Captain Martin and others on the bridge. No one knew what it was but the most likely explanation was a U-boat: the Admiralty had sent a warning that U-boats were on the way, and they were lucky not to have encountered any already. And if it was a U-boat, Dorsetshire, laying stopped in the water, was a sitting target. In the circumstances Captain Martin had no choice but to ring down for full speed, and in Maori Commander Armstrong did the same.

The water round Dorsetshire’s stern foamed and bubbled with the sudden exertion of the screws. Slowly, then faster, the ship moved ahead. Bismarck survivors who were almost on board were bundled over the guard rails on to the deck: those half-way up the ropes found themselves trailing astern, hung on as long as they could against the forward movement of the ship, dropped off one by one, others in the water clawed frantically at the paint work as the side slipped by. In Dorsetshire they heard the thin cries of hundreds of Germans who had come within an inch of rescue, had believed that their long ordeal was at last over, cries that the British sailors, no less than survivors already on board, would always remember. From the water Bismarck’s men watched appalled as the cruiser’s grey side swept past them, believed then that tales they’d heard about the British not caring too much about survivors were true after all, presently found themselves alone in the sunshine on the empty, tossing sea. And during the day, as they floated about the Atlantic with only life-belts between them and eternity, the cold came to their testicles and hands and feet and heads, and one by one they lost consciousness, and one by one they died.’

Martin was awarded the D.S.O. in respect of his ‘masterly determination and skill in action’.

In 1942 he was appointed Commodore in Charge at Durban, in which role he excelled and, after being awarded the C.B.E. in the New Year Honours of 1944, he was advanced to Rear-Admiral, a remarkable achievement which was summarised by The Times in the following terms:

‘He was the first boy from the Royal Naval School, Greenwich, to reach Flag Rank in the Navy, and the first officer from the lower deck to become a Rear-Admiral on the active list in modern times.’

Shortly afterwards Martin was given command of the landing force of the Far Eastern Fleet, which was preparing for the assault on Rangoon, and for this and other wartime services in the same theatre of war, he was elevated to K.B.E. in June 1946. Further advanced to Vice-Admiral in the same year, he was finally placed on the Retired List in September 1948.