The David Laban Collection of Great War Awards

A Great War ‘Minesweeping’ D.S.C. group of five awarded to Lieutenant F. Ellis, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and Mercantile Marine, who subsequently received a scarce Portuguese Institute for Lifesaving’s Silver Medal

Distinguished Service Cross, G.V.R., hallmarks for London 1917, unnamed as issued; British War Medal 1914-20 (Lieut. F. Ellis. R.N.R.); Mercantile Marine War Medal 1914-18 (Francis Ellis); Victory Medal 1914-19 (Lieut. F. Ellis. R.N.R.); mounted as worn together with a Portuguese Institute For Lifesaving Medal for Humanity, Courage and Selflessness for saving life at sea, silver and enamel, unnamed, with silver slide bar on riband, suspension broken and re-affixed; together with the related miniature awards for the four British medals, these similarly mounted as worn and housed in an Ince, Newport, jeweller’s case; and riband bars, oxidisation to the obverse of the third and fourth medals, otherwise very fine (5) £1,800-£2,200

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The David Laban Collection of Great War Awards.

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D.S.C. London Gazette 5 October 1918:
‘For very good service as officer in command of a group of minesweepers.’

Francis Ellis was born in 1872. A Merchant Seaman, he obtained his Board of Trade Certificate of Competency as Second Mate in October 1893, and as First Mate, in July 1895, and as Master Mariner in March 1897. He was commissioned Temporary Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Reserve on 1 March 1917, and was promptly sent on a course to learn minefield sweeping. He subsequently served in H.M.S. Halcyon, for service in the Armed Trawler Kinoki, and for his services in command of a group of minesweepers was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. He was demobilised from H.M.S. Victory on 24 April 1919. Remaining in the Mercantile Marine, he subsequently received the Portuguese Institute for Lifesaving’s Silver Medal in the 1920s, and died in Bristol in January 1948.

Sold together with the following family medals:

Pair: H. F. Ellis, Mercantile Marine
British War and Mercantile Marine War Medals (Harold F. Ellis) very fine

Harold Francis Ellis was born in Dinas Powys, Glamorganshire in 1898, the son of the above, and passed his Board of Trade Certificate of Competency as Second Mate on 18 January 1919. He died at Bath, Somerset, in 1971.