Naval Medals from the Collection of the Late Jason Pilalas

The superb Great War C.B.E., Gallipoli ‘Y’ Beach D.S.O. group of six awarded to Commander A. St. V. Keyes, Royal Navy: the brother of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Roger Keyes, his other claims to fame included service as a pioneer submariner in the Edwardian era, command of the Royal Canadian Navy’s first ever submarine flotilla in 1914, and the successful beaching of the ‘Q’ ship Mavis after she had been torpedoed in June 1917

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, C.B.E. (Military) Commander’s 1st type neck badge, silver-gilt and enamels; Distinguished Service Order, G.V.R., silver-gilt and enamels, with integral top riband bar; 1914-15 Star (Lt. Commr. A. St. V. Keyes, D.S.O. R.N.); British War and Victory Medals (Capt. A. St. V. Keyes. R.N.); Coronation 1911, good very fine and better (6) £9,000-£12,000

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

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Dix Noonan Webb, September 2004.

C.B.E. London Gazette 11 June 1919.

D.S.O. London Gazette 16 August 1915: ‘In recognition of services as mentioned in the foregoing despatch.’

The despatch referred to was that of Vice-Admiral Sir John de Robeck, describing the landings on the Gallipoli Peninsula on 25-26 April 1915, and included General Sir Ian Hamilton’s report, which stated that ‘Lieutenant-Commander Keyes showed great coolness, gallantry and ability. The success of the landing on ‘Y’ Beach was largely due to his good service. When circumstances compelled the force landed there to re-embark, this officer showed exceptional resource and leadership in successfully conducting that difficult operation.’

Adrian St. Vincent Keyes was born in Secunderabad, India in December 1882, the son of General Sir Charles Keyes, G.C.B., and was appointed a Midshipman in May 1898 on passing out of the R.N. College Britannia.

Advanced to Sub. Lieutenant in December 1901, and to Lieutenant in the following year, he joined the Royal Navy’s fledgling submarine branch in May 1903, in which trade he served more or less continuously until 1909, latterly with his own command - although his service record does note that he incurred their Lordships displeasure at the end of 1905 for some damage caused to the engine of H.M. submarine B3. Having survived this undoubtedly hazardous stint of “underwater service”, young Keyes returned to more regular seagoing duties, and in 1910, the year in which he was advanced to Lieutenant-Commander, he was appointed captain of the destroyer H.M.S. Fawn. According to a contemporary, although blessed with a ‘quick and brilliant brain’, Keyes was fortunate to squeeze through his destroyer C.O’s course - worse for wear as the result of a bad hangover, he bought a copy of The Daily Mail on his way to his final examination, and quickly memorised ‘the time of moon-rise, sunrise, high-water at Tower Bridge, and any other meteorological data the paper propounded’, thereby impressing their Lordships with his remarkably up-to-date knowledge.



Interestingly, it was about this time that his brother, Roger, then a Captain, R.N., became senior officer of the submarine branch, an appointment that would act as the springboard to his rapid advancement in the Great War. For his own part, after another seagoing command, the Basilisk, Adrian Keyes was placed on the Retired List in June 1912.

The outbreak of hostilities in 1914 found him out in Canada, where he was quickly appointed to the command of the Royal Canadian Navy’s first submarine flotilla, at Shearwater Island, in the rank of Lieutenant-Commander, the force comprising a brace of Holland-type submarines that had just been purchased by the somewhat eccentric Sir Richard McBride, K.C.M.G., the conservative premier of British Columbia - they had originally been built for the Chilean Navy in 1913. Duly christened the CC1 and CC2, Keyes took command of the former, while the latter went to another retired R.N. Officer, Lieutenant Bertram Jones. They were interesting days, not least since all of the labels and instructions in the two submarines were in Spanish. But Keyes and Jones showed great ingenuity in the face of adversity, even making some wooden torpedoes for battle practice until some real ones could be delivered from Toronto. Their respective crews, meanwhile, were packed off to Victoria public baths to practice underwater escape methods. In fact such rapid progress was made with the flotilla’s training programme that Keyes was in a position to sanction its first patrol, a 24-hour run down the Strait of Juan de Fuca, by the end of September 1914. Realistically, however, he realised that his chances of seeing combat in the immediate future were slim, so in January 1915, he successfully applied for an appointment in the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force. Before his departure, however, he was presented with a splendid gold pocket watch by the CC1’s crew. Happily, as luck would have it, he joined his brother Roger - by now Chief of Staff to Vice-Admiral Sir John de Robeck - in H.M.S. Queen Elizabeth, the Admiral’s flagship, as ‘additional for disembarkation duties’, Roger noting in his memoirs how delighted he was to hear of the appointment. Indeed he would also describe in his memoir the events that took place at ‘Y’ Beach on 25-26 April 1915, and the subsequent deeds of his brother, Adrian:

‘There was to be another subsidiary landing on the western flank of the Peninsula at ‘Y’ beach by the Scottish Borderers, the Plymouth Division of the Royal Marines - borrowed from the Naval Division - and a company of the South Wales Borderers ... This landing was to be conducted by my brother Adrian, who had trained the troops to a high state of efficiency in boat work and speedy silent landing ...’

Although the ‘landing proceeded exactly as planned’, subsequent Turkish assaults penetrated the British line, and, at length, the military commanders offshore ordered that the beach be evacuated. Roger Keyes continues:

‘The captain of the destroyer Wolverine was killed on the morning of the 28th; she was a sister ship to the Basilisk, which my brother Adrian had commanded just before he retired, so the Admiral gave him the vacancy. Adrian could not be found until the following day, as after his ‘Y’ Beach had been given up, he attached himself to the troops which were to assault Achi Baba, where he was to establish a naval observation station directly it was captured. He came aboard to report himself on the 29th. I think his feelings were mixed; he said he could hardly bear to tear himself away from the Army. We could get very little out of him, except his intense admiration for the 29th Division and his sorrow at seeing most of the officers of the Scottish Borderers, with whom he had made great friends, killed alongside him. We gathered from him that Brigadier-General Marshall, who was wounded on the 25th but remained in action, like the two Brigadiers of the Division, was always in the thick of every action. I think my brother’s condition was typical of that of the 29th Division - dead dog-tired. He had been fighting incessantly since the 25th, and had hardly slept since the night of the 23rd. His new ship was undergoing repairs, half of her bridge having been shot away, when her captain was killed, so I made him lie on my bed, where he lay like a log for several hours ...’

Adrian Keyes was duly decorated for his work with the Army, three senior military commanders remarking how glad they were to hear of his D.S.O. And he went on to perform sterling work in the Wolverine, receiving a “mention” for his able handling of his ship’s guns during the evacuation of the Peninsula, the guns ‘undoubtedly inflicting heavy loss on the enemy’ (London Gazette 14 March 1916). In fact, as evidenced by his brother’s memoir, the Wolverine’s guns had also been used to good effect in the action against Gully Ravine on 28 June 1915, thanks largely to Adrian Keyes’ earlier reconnaissance work by land and air:

‘The Wolverine and Scorpion had been on the left flank since April, and my brother had spent a good deal of time in our flank trenches, and had flown over that sector in order to see how he could best help. The General told me that his suggestions were invaluable, and the Wolverine’s performance immediately impressed the Gurkhas.

The action opened at 9 a.m. on 18 June, with a bombardment by howitzers, including French heavy howitzers, heavy artillery, and the Talbot, flying the flag of Admiral Nicholson, spotted for by the Manica’s balloon and screened by four destroyers. The British artillery support though superior to anything that had been given in previous attacks, was still deplorably inadequate. The Reynard, Scorpion and Wolverine were stationed on the left flank, literally alongside and enfilading the Turkish trenches, which came down nearly to the sea. According to the Turkish official accounts, the fire of these vessels entirely destroyed the front line trenches on their sea flank ... During the night the Turks counter-attacked heavily, and attempted to turn our left flank along the shore, but were detected by the searchlights of the Wolverine and Scorpion, whose fire destroyed them.’

As stated above, the Wolverine was present to the end, lying close in shore on the enemy’s left flank during the evacuation, when ‘she fired every projectile, rifle and machine-gun cartridge in her magazine.’ Keyes remained in her until April 1916, when he was appointed to the command of H.M.S. Ness, but he would not witness any further action until June 1917, shortly after having transferred to the clandestine world of ‘Q’ ships. Carson Ritchie’s Q-Ships takes up the story:

‘Only a cargo of “firewood” and heroic efforts by her officers and crew prevented Q26, alias Mavis and Nyroca, from joining at the bottom of the sea other Q-ships torpedoed without warning. Commander Adrian Keyes, R.N., described how on 3 June, after picking up survivors from a Greek steamer and sailing on through considerable wreckage, Mavis was torpedoed at 21.45 hours twenty miles due south from the Wolf Rock light. Though the torpedo had been seen breaking the surface about forty yards from the ship, there was no time to take evasive action. It struck the ship abreast the engine room and penetrated inside before exploding. In the words of Keyes:

“Nothing was seen of the submarine, which must have been directly in the path of the moon, and submerged. The explosion was very violent; the ship stopped at once, and the engine room and boiler room were flooded in a few seconds The ship’s company went at once to their stations, and everything was carried out as at drill. The firemen and non-combatants went away in the boats as if abandoning ship, and the armed boats prepared for attack ... The emergency wireless was wrecked, and failed to give a spark. So after waiting half an hour with no sign of the submarine returning, I fired three rockets and surveyed the ship. The main engines were thrown right across the ship, and were lying against the port side; there was a very large hole on the starboard side, with plates blown outwards; the ship was listing about 10 degrees to port, and no water was making forward or aft of the engine and boiler room bulkheads.”

As usual the engine room staff had borne the brunt of the torpedo attack. One Temporary Sub. Lieutenant, R.N.R., one leading Fireman and two Firemen, who had been on watch in the engine room and stokehold at the time of the occurrence, had been killed. Most ships would have gone to the bottom at this point, but a lot of work had been done to make Mavis unsinkable. Her bulkheads at 26 and 90 stations had been made watertight and carried to the main deck, so even if one section was flooded the rest would provide buoyancy. All her derricks, except on the forecastle, had been landed and stored, and they had been replaced by dummy ones, thus making her topworks very much lighter.

The cargo hatches had been plated over, access to the holds being provided by manholes. Two nine-inch sea cocks, worked from the upper deck to No. 1 hold, and a steam ejector with a capacity of 200 tons an hour had been asked for as part of her fittings. In addition she had been ballasted with all the firewood available at Devonport, and as this had been done quite recently, in March, her cargo was still in good condition.

Nonetheless, but for the good weather conditions prevailing, a southwesterly swell and a bright moon, Keyes would probably never have got her back to port. When the destroyer Christopher approached, Keyes sent most of his men aboard her, only keeping four officers and five men to secure hawsers and throw the confidential books overboard. Under tow from two successive tugs, Mavis shaped a course for Plymouth. Towing gave the vessel such a further list that she took up an angle of 22 degrees. As this list got worse, Keyes lashed the wheel and sent the officers and men into a lifeboat, which was towing astern. Gradually the list increased and the Mavis began to sink, but escorted by the Christopher and trawlers, she arrived off Rame Head with a list of 45 degrees. When the King’s Harbour Master arrived in a tug, Keyes asked him to beach the Mavis in Cawsand Bay, on the port hand in the approaches to Plymouth, before she capsized, and this was done.’

Keyes was next appointed to the Devonport “Hunting Flotilla”, and was latterly employed as an Acting Captain on the Staff of the C.-in-C. Plymouth, a posting that resulted in him being awarded the C.B.E. - he received the honour at an investiture held at Glasgow in February 1920. Extraordinarily, after such a brilliant wartime career, their Lordships felt unable to grant him the substantive rank of Captain, R.N. on his being placed on the Retired List in June 1919. Sadly, too, the gallant Keyes did not live long to enjoy his retirement, dying at a nursing home in Edinburgh in October 1926.

Sold with an interesting series of related artefacts, comprising a silver-plated cigarette box, the lid with two inset coins and inscribed, ‘Gallipoli, April 1915, A.K. from K.A.O’; a wide-base silver ink-well, hallmarks for Birmingham 1915, inscribed with numerous signatures; a silver ashtray, hallmarks for Chester 1915, inscribed ‘H.M.S. Wolverine, Gallipoli, Egypt, Asia Minor’; together with silver-plated teapot, water jug and sugar bowl, all inscribed with the Cork Steamship Co. crest, and ‘Torpedoed in “Q”: 26 (S.S. Mavis) June 1917, Commander A. St. V. Keyes, D.S.O.’; a small Red Ensign and another flag of the East Asiatic Shipping Co. of Copenhagen (Den Ostasiatiske Kompagni), this latter very probably used in the ‘Q’ ship Mavis to confuse the enemy; and ship’s cap tallies for “H.M.S. Wolverine” and “H.M.S. Curlew”.