Naval Medals from the Collection of the Late Jason Pilalas (Part I)

The Punjab campaign medal to Lieutenant Wilmot Christopher, Indian Navy, mortally wounded during the siege of Mooltan

Punjab 1848-49, 1 clasp, Mooltan (Lieut. W. Christopher, Ind. Flot.) officially impressed naming, good very fine £4,000-£5,000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Naval Medals from the Collection of the Late Jason Pilalas.

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Wilmot Christopher entered the Indian Navy as a Midshipman in January 1829 and was employed in the Red Sea Survey aboard the Benares between October of that year and April 1834, being one of just three officers still fit for duty when the survey returned. Quickly re-employed aboard the same ship, he continued with survey work in the Maldive Islands, but sickness once more struck down the crew. Christopher and Lieutenant Young volunteered to stay behind and continue the Survey’s work but they too soon fell ill with fever. As a result of the dedication of the Government Missionaries who nursed them, both men recovered, and Christopher used the opportunity to compile a vocabulary of the Maldavian language which was published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.

Next employed under Lieutenant Powell, he participated in survey work in the Gulf of Manaar and along the coast of Madura, his account of Adam’s Bridge and Ramisseram, with a plan of the Temple, appearing in the Journal of the Bombay Geographical Society. Promoted to Lieutenant in 1839, he commanded the brig Tigris during her voyage from Aden to Zanzibar in early 1843, and from there was despatched by Captain Haines, the celebrated Political Agent, with the returning Envoys of Seyyid Said, the Imaum of Muscat, to make an examination of the coast to the north, the portion between Brava and Ras Hafoon being utterly unknown except for the running surveys of Captain Owen. Making a journey into the interior, he discovered a ‘noble river’ to the northward of the Juba or Govind River, which he named after Captain Haines. Extracts from Christopher’s journal, together with a map, were published by the Royal Geographical Society.

The opportunity for service of a more military nature presented itself with the appointment of Christopher as Assistant Superintendent of the Indus Flotilla during the first siege of Mooltan in 1848. He already had an intimate knowledge of the rivers of the Punjab, having in the previous year ascended the Indus, Sutlej and Chenab in the steamer Meeanee, and made good use of this experience by persuading Sir Herbert Edwardes to let him join one of his hastily raised Levies. His benefactor takes up the story:

‘Another volunteer went with me into the Field, and assisted me greatly in carrying orders - poor Christopher, of the Indian Navy, whose zeal proved fatal to him so shortly after! On this occasion he rode about with a long sea telescope under his arm, just as composedly as if he had been on the deck of his own vessel... On the night of the 9th September, it became necessary to dislodge the enemy from a position they had taken up among some houses and gardens in front of the trenches. Captain Christopher had, from his first arrival with the steamers at Mooltan, shown the usual willingness of his profession to co-operate with his brother officers on shore. On the night in question he had once already conducted some reinforcement. And then another came up, with no guide. “Will no one show us the way?” asked the officer of the party, looking round on the tired occupants of the trenches. “I will,” replied Christopher, and, putting himself at their head, steered them with the steadiness of a pilot through ditches and gardens under a roaring fire of musketry. A ball hit him in the ankle, and shivered the joint to pieces.’

Christopher’s wound necessitated the amputation of his leg, but mortification set in, and after a month’s intense suffering he succumbed to his wound on the 8th October 1848. To continue Edwards’ narrative: ‘A few weeks later he was borne by the grateful British soldiers to a rude grave beside a well, near the village of Sooraj Khoond, and I myself read the service over him. A better or braver man fell not beneath the walls of Mooltan.’

A second Punjab medal to Lieutenant Christopher was sold in the Brian Ritchie Collection, Dix Noonan Webb, September 2005.


Sold with related miniature medal, a silhouette of his brother Commander Thomas Barradaile Christopher, R.N., and privately published book ‘The Family of Christopher and some others’, printed for private circulation only, William Pollard & Co., Exeter, 1933.