Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Royal Humane Society, small bronze medal (successful) (Patrick J. Doyle, 1st July 1911), lacking riband buckle for wear, very fine £120-150

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Awards to Merchant Seamen and D.E.M.S. Gunners.

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Patrick Joseph Doyle was born at Castle Bar in Co. Mayo in December 1873 and first went to sea as an Ordinary Seaman in the early 1890s.

Taking his 2nd Mate’s ticket in November 1896, his 1st Mate’s ticket in April 1899, and his Master’s certificate in September 1900, he was employed by the White Star Line, in which capacity, as First Officer of the S.S. Teutonic, he was awarded the R.H.S. Medal in bronze for saving the life of a Stevedore at Montreal Dock on 1 July 1911 - the Stevedore having fallen from the ship into the dock, Doyle jumped overboard from a height of 25 feet and managed to secure him with a rope. It was a dark night and the water ‘very foul with sewage’ (R.H.S. records refer).

Following the loss of the Titanic less than a year later, Doyle was instrumental in testing out White Star Line’s new lifeboats and lifeboat drills aboard the S.S. Zealandic, the first of the company’s vessels to be fitted out with lifesaving capacity for each and every passenger, and, as reported in the press at the time, ‘eight boats were swung over the side of the ship, ready to be lowered in seconds’. Moreover, ‘the emergency boats were manned by life-belted crew and lowered to the water in 45 seconds and, under the tutelage of Chief Officer Lieutenant P. J. Doyle, R.N.R., the boat drills assumed a man-of-war pitch of efficiency.’

Doyle, who had been commissioned as a Sub. Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Reserve back in June 1903, died of ‘brain compression’ at the Royal Infirmary, Liverpool, in November 1915; sold with an old newspaper cutting, reporting on the recipient’s part in White Star Line’s new lifeboat drills, and a file of research.