Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Four: Major F. V. Longstaff, East Surrey Regiment, late Canadian Active Militia, a keen member of the Alpine Club of Canada and F.R.G.S., and founder of the Victoria Lifeboat Association and Maritime Museum of British Columbia

British War Medal 1914-20 (Major F. V. Longstaff); Territorial Force War Medal 1914-19 (Capt. F. V. Longstaff, E. Surr. R.); Coronation 1937; Coronation 1953, mounted as worn, generally very fine or better (4) £250-300

Frederick Victor Longstaff was born in Ilkeley, Yorkshire, in June 1879, the son of a wealthy industrialist, Lieutenant-Colonel Llewellyn W. Longstaff, O.B.E., who contributed significant funding to Scott’s first Antarctic Expedition - hence the Longstaff Peaks named in his honour.

Frederick was educated at Eton and Clare College, Cambridge, at which latter establishment he served in the ranks of the Volunteer Rifles 1899-1903 and, having been commissioned in the 2nd (Volunteer) Battalion, East Surrey Regiment, in 1904, he was seconded as a Captain and machine-gun instructor to the Canadian Active Militia in 1909.

Subsequently settling in Victoria, B.C., he otherwise worked as an architectural draughtsman and was involved in the design of St. John’s Church in Quadra Street, among other notable buildings. A keen hiker and mountaineer - in common with his brother Tom, who would serve as Medical Officer on the 1922 Everest Expedition - Longstaff mounted annual expeditions into the back country of British Columbia and joined A. O. Wheeler’s expedition to the Spillamacheen Mountains, and was duly elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (F.R.G.S.).

On the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, he was attached to the Royal Canadian Naval Volunteers for special duty, but, a few weeks later, returned to England, where he was appointed a Major in the 5th Battalion, East Surrey Regiment, and served as an instructor at Wimbledon and Windsor. Compelled to resign his commission on account of ill-health in the following year, he was invited by Lieutenant-Colonel W. H. Balfour, D.S.O., to serve as an honorary advisor in military and machine-gun literature at the Canadian Machine Gun Depot and, in 1917, with Captain A. H. Atteridge, published The Book of the Machine Gun.

In later life, Longstaff, a member of the Navy League, was largely responsible for the formation of the Victoria Lifeboat Association and the creation of the Maritime Museum of British Columbia, and, until his death in October 1961, devoted himself to historical and geographical studies, publishing works on naval, local and ecclesiastical history. And he was awarded both of his Coronation Medals on the recommendation of Dame Marian Acton, Comptroller of the Forces Help Society and Lord Roberts Workshops of Great Britain, of which body he was Secretary for Canada from 1932. His papers are preserved in the British Columbia Archives; sold with copied research and copies of his publications, Esquimalt Naval Base (1941), and Christ Church Cathedral, Victoria, B.C. - A Short History (1951).