Pair: Petty Officer 1st Class F. P. Edge, Royal Navy

Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 1 clasp, Cape Colony (153932 P.O. 2nd Cl., H.M.S. Powerful); China 1900, 1 clasp, Taku Forts (P.O. 2 Cl., H.M.S. Fame), refixed suspension claws, contact marks and edge bruising, otherwise generally good fine and rare (2) £500-600

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Barrett J. Carr Collection of Boer War Medals.

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Collection

Just 5 “Cape Colony” clasps were awarded to the ship’s company of H.M.S. Powerful.

Just 65 China 1900 Medals were awarded to the ship’s company of H.M.S. Fame, 58 of them with single “Taku Forts” clasp.

Frederick Peter Edge was born at Berkeley, Gloucestershire in December 1874 and entered the Royal Navy as a Boy 2nd Class in February 1890. Advanced to Petty Officer 2nd Class in January 1899, he arrived on the South Africa station aboard H.M.S. Terrible in October 1899, at which stage he presumably exchanged to the Powerful, although his service record makes no mention of any time aboard the latter ship, but does reveal short stints aboard the Doris and Tartar - accordingly, he may well have been one of those men landed from Powerful with two 12-pounder guns at Durban in late October 1899, both of which were intended for use by Tartar’s detachment at Maritzburg. Whatever the exact nature of his time ashore in Cape Colony, his Queen’s South Africa Medal and clasp are verified on the official roll (see ADM 171/53).

Returning to the Terrible in January 1900, Edge next sailed for China, where his service record reveals that he removed to the Barfleur that May, but not the fact he was detached to the destroyer Fame in time for the Taku Fort operations of 17 June (ADM 171/55 confirms). To the latter ship - and the Whiting - fell the unenviable task of capturing four Chinese destroyers, lying between Taku and Tongku, which were threatening the Allied attack on the forts. Commanded respectively by Lieutenants R. Keyes, R.N. (afterwards Admiral of the Fleet) and C. MacKenzie, R.N., each ship also towed into action a whaler manned by a dozen “Bluejackets”, all of them volunteers - it was one of the last occasions boarding parties went into action with the cutlass. In his subsequent report to the Rear-Admiral, China Station, dated 27 June 1900, Keyes stated:

‘After a slight resistance and the exchange of a few shots, the crews were driven overboard or below hatches; there were a few killed and wounded; our casualties were nil. No damage was done to the prizes, but the Fame’s bow was slightly bent when we closed to board, and the Whiting was struck by a projectile about 4 or 5 inches abreast a coal bunker. This was evidently fired from a mud battery on the bend between Taku and Tongku, which fired in all about 30 shots at us, none of the others striking, though several coming very close ... There was a good deal of sniping from the dockyard so I directed all cables of the prizes to be slipped and proceeded to tow them up to Tongku.’

Advanced to Petty Officer 1st Class in September 1901, Edge purchased his discharge ashore in December 1903, when he enrolled in the Royal Fleet Reserve, but in May 1919 he was discharged as a result of ‘misconduct’.