Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A rare Tayleur Fund Medal group of three awarded to Chief Boatman in Charge R. Twohig, Coast Guard, late Royal Navy

Baltic 1854-55, unnamed; Royal Navy L.S. & G.C., V.R., narrow suspension (Richd. Twohig, Cd. Boatn., H.M. Coast Gd.); Tayleur Fund Medal, silver, the reverse officially engraved, ‘Presented to Richard Twohig, Coast Guard, for prompt courage in saving life from the wreck of the Ada at Portrane, 2nd Febry. 1873’, the last with re-pinned suspension claw, occasional edge bruising, otherwise good very fine (3) £800-1000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Medals The Property of a Gentleman.

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Just 37 Tayleur Fund Medals were awarded in silver, prior to the Fund’s transfer to the care of the R.N.L.I.

Richard Twohig was born in Middleton, Cork in 1835, and entered the Coast Guard after service in the Royal Navy in January 1873, when he was appointed a Commissioned Boatman at Portrane. Barely a month later, on 2 February, he won his Tayleur Fund Medal for gallantry in manning a boat sent to the rescue of the Ada of Liverpool, which vessel had been swept on to the rocks off the beach at Portrane.

The Ada had departed Liverpool for Dublin on 1 February 1873, with a cargo of superphosphate manure. The following day, after being caught in a savage storm, she was sighted by the Portrane Coast Guard drifting out of control towards the rocky shore. The ship struck and the Coast Guard immediately gathered rocket apparatus equipment to rescue the crew. The rockets failed to reach the stricken vessel and she began to break up, forcing the crew into the rigging. With further efforts to reach the ship by rocket failing, it was decided by the Coast Guard to wait until the tide went out to enable the apparatus to be brought closer to the wreck. This having been done, the rockets still fell short and with the gale still blowing, the Coast Guard adjudged it unsafe to launch a rescue by boat. Joseph Davis, a resident of Portrane, had witnessed the continued failures of the rescue attempts by rocket and had decided he would make a rescue attempt by boat. With his brothers, John and William, together with Charles Smart and Coast Guard volunteer, Richard Twohig, they went out into the still stormy sea. Reaching the remains of the Ada, they cut down the men that had tied themselves to the rigging and taking them into the boat brought them to shore. The men, who had been clinging to the rigging for some seven hours, were all suffering from exposure; sadly, one of them, the Captain’s 14 year-old son had died.

To reward the gallantry of Twohig and his companions, the Committee of the Tayleur Fund bestowed their Silver Medal on each of them. This was the fourth rescue for which medals of the Fund were issued.

Twohig was advanced to Chief Boatman in April 1879 and to Chief Boatman in Charge in May 1882, and was finally pensioned ashore from H.M. Coast Guard Station at Arthurstown in September 1886; sold with a file of research, including assorted eye-witness accounts of the Ada incident.