Three: Lieutenant T. J. Walker, Royal Indian Marine, who was present at the wreck of the Warren Hastings in January 1897

India General Service 1854-95, 2 clasps, Burma 1885-7, Burma 1887-89 (2d Gde. Officer, H.M.I.M.S. Sir W. Peel); Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, no clasp (Lieut., R.I.M.S. Clive); China 1900, no clasp (Lieut., R.I.M.S. Clive), generally good very fine and rare (3) £1000-1200

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

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Collection

Ex Captain K. J. Douglas-Morris, R.N. collection, 12 February 1997 (Lot 234).

Just 42 Queen’s South Africa Medals were awarded to the Royal Indian Marine, 34 of them without clasp.

Thomas Johnstone, who was born in Melbourne, Australia in April 1863, was educated at King’s School, Peterborough before joining the training ship Worcester, following which he was apprenticed to the New Zealand Shipping Company.

Appointed a 3rd Grade Officer in the Royal Indian Marine in April 1884, he was advanced to the 2nd Grade during the course of his active service in the Burma operations of 1885-87, aboard the Sir William Peel, Clive and Jaboona, but had risen to the rank of Lieutenant by the time he joined the troopship Warren Hastings nearly a decade later. He was subsequently present on the occasion of her loss off St. Phillipe in January 1897.

The wreck of the Warren Hastings

The R.I.M. troopship Warren Hastings, sailing from India to Mauritius via Cape Town, started out on the second leg of her last voyage on 6 January 1897. The troops on board comprised four companies of the 1st K.R.R.C., four companies of the 2nd York and Lancaster Regiment and 25 men from the Middlesex Regiment - a total of 22 officers, four Warrant Officers and 940 N.C.Os and men. The only passengers were ‘four ladies, 13 women and 10 children’. For a week good progress was made, but on the morning of the 13th the glass fell and the wind shifted to the south. In spite of reduced visibility the ship’s officers felt no cause for concern. That night, however, a freak current carried the ship off course and, at about 2.20 a.m. on the 14th, a violent shudder accompanied by a ‘grating sound’ woke the O.C. Troops. Fearing the worst, he dressed hurriedly and reported to Commander Holland on the bridge. The ship was eight miles out of position and had struck the coast of the French island of Reunion. The night was stormy and intensely dark, indeed so dark that little could be seen beyond a few feet. Drenching rain fell in torrents, ‘making a great noise on the awnings and decks’, and a volcano in full eruption a few miles away could neither be seen or heard.

Keeping the engines at full speed (until finally stopped by the inrush of water), Commander Holland ordered the troops to be fallen in below, and having received a report that the rock on which the ship’s bows were lodged afforded a landing space, sent two of his officers over the side with ‘blue lights’ to investigate the possibility of disembarking the soldiers by rope ladders either side of the bows. This having been deemed practicable at about 3.40 a.m., the troops between the decks were organised by regiments, with the K.R.R.C. lining the port side and the York and Lancasters the starboard, so that the two forward companions could be used simultaneously. The disembarkation had scarcely commenced at 4 a.m. when a heavy bump caused by the running swell sent the vessel lurching to starboard. Everyone was ordered on deck, and at 4.20 a.m. priority was given to ‘women and children and such sick as required assistance’. By the time they had been landed safely the starboard upper deck was awash and where possible men were ordered over to the port side. Commander Holland now considered his ship was in imminent danger of capsizing and probably sinking in shark infested deep water. Orders were shouted to discard rifles and boots in order to expedite the disembarkation, for such was the angle of the deck that it was impossible to move along it without the use of both hands. The torrential tropical rain persisted and at 4.35 a.m. the electric light, which fortunately had lasted so long, gave out.

As dawn broke and the list to starboard increased, Commander Holland gave permission for strong swimmers to drop off the port side to reach another landing space some 30 yards distant, despite the risk of being ‘dashed, bruised and bleeding, upon sharp pitiless lava-cliffs’. The first man to swim ashore carried a light line by which four ropes were eventually secured as aids to the considerable number of men that followed. Two extra ropes were thrown over the bows as an additional means of escape, and finally by 5.30 a.m. the evacuation was considered complete, though a certain Private Roe, up to his waist in water, was yet to be found at a final check of the lower decks and relieved from his zealously performed sentry duty in an obscure corner of the ship. There were many acts of devotion performed by the officers and men in assisting one another to reach the shore, and at least one near fatal attempt to save the lives of two native crew members who panicked and jumped overboard to their deaths.




Officers and men, women and children, in various states of undress, were at length assisted by the local French authorities to the town of Reunion and subsequently conveyed by the specially chartered British India S.S. Hastings to Port Louis, Mauritius, where Commander Holland and all from the Warren Hastings - save two officers and ten lascars left behind for salvage purposes - were received by the Governor, Sir Charles King Harman. That night Sir Charles entertained all the shipwrecked officers to dinner, which, owing to the loss of virtually all personal baggage, presented, by all accounts, ‘a most curious sight’.

In his subsequent report, Commander Holland acknowledged two crucial instances when the perfect discipline of the troops prevented the perilous adventure escalating into a major disaster. The first severe test took place immediately after the ship struck and when the men, unlike those on the Birkenhead, were confined to the main troop decks and quite unable to see what was going on; and secondly, when the embarkation was suspended, to enable the women and children to be landed. Any attempt to crush forward at these times would have resulted, according to the C.-in-C., Lord Wolseley, ‘in great loss of life’.

Walker went on to witness further active service in the Clive during the Boer War and Boxer Rebellion, and was placed on the Retired List as a Lieutenant in May 1904, after 20 years in the Royal Indian Marine.