Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria to coincide with the OMRS Convention

Pair: Able Seaman O. Hicks, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve

British War and Victory Medals (R.1344 A.B., R.N.V.R.); together with an unusual bronze medallion, obverse with portrait of a British sailor shaking hands with a Dutch merchant seaman, reverse inscribed ‘The Netherland section of the League of Neutral Countries to O.S. Hicks Jr, in grateful commemoration of the services tendered by the English sailors who rescued with peril of life the crews of seven unarmed Dutch merchant-men surreptitiously attacked and recklessly destroyed by a German submarine, February 22nd 1917’, nearly extremely fine (3) £250-300

The circumstances of the award of the League of Neutral Countries medal are as follows:

Lieutenant Commander Hersing in U.21 was heading for home in February 1917, after a very successful tour in the Mediterranean. On the 22nd February he met a Dutch convoy of eight steamers off the Scillies and sank six of them. In response to a wireless signal from one of them, three of H.M. Tugs from the newly formed Rescue Service came out from Falmouth, and with the assistance of other vessels, saved two of the steamers. About 200 of the occupants were brought ashore at Penzance.

Apparently this convoy had a ‘safe conduct’ issued by Germany but Hersing was unaware of this. The outcome was that Germany eventually made compensation by transferring to Holland six German steamers then lying in the Dutch East Indies. (L.S.A.R.S. Journal No. 15 refers).