REVIEW: ORDERS, DECORATIONS, MEDALS & MILITARIA: 6 DECEMBER

A Victoria Cross from the Battle of Inkermann, one of the bloodiest and most desperate battles in British history – sold to a private collector for £320,000 at Noonans on December 6.

Estimated at £200,000-260,000, it was one of the first V.C.s to be awarded and is a rare Naval award, complete with blue rather than crimson ribbon. The recipient was Australian resident and Seaman James Gorman of H.M.S. Albion, for his gallantry while defending the Right Lancaster Battery.

 

Born in London in 1834, Gorman was assigned at the age of 14 to the training ship H.M.S. Victory, Admiral Nelson’s former flagship, as a Boy Second Class, having been one of the first 200 boys to be accepted as apprentices into the Royal Navy.

When the Russians launched a sudden and massive attack on the lightly defended British lines at
Inkermann Seaman Gorman declined the order to withdraw and leave the wounded. Instead, he mounted the defence works and, using the weapons of the disabled who he was protecting, helped repel the Russian advance ‘not trusting any Ivan to get in bayonet range of the wounded’.

His award was listed in the notable 24 February 1857 issue of the London Gazette containing the first ever awards of the Victoria Cross, and his well-documented later life confirms him to have been the first Australian resident to hold the V.C. This was one of three V.C.s awarded for this action – the other two are both held in the Lord Ashcroft Collection at the Imperial War Museum in London. 

Gorman later saw service on the newly formed Australia Station, docking at Sydney on December 31, 1858, and January 1860 and also at Melbourne in March 1859. Returning to England, he was paid off at Sheerness in 1860, thus ending his 13 years of service in the Royal Navy, but chose to return to the Antipodes, boarding the 755 ton free trader Fairlie at Plymouth, bound for Sydney, Australia, in 1863.

He remained in Australia for the rest of his life and was buried with military honours in the Church of England section of Balmain Cemetery (now Pioneers memorial Park, Leichhardt) in October 1882.

“We were privileged to sell this medal group three years ago for a hammer price of £240,000,” says Noonans’ medal specialist Oliver Pepys. “The uplift in value here demonstrates not only the health of the top end of the market but the huge esteem in which such groups and the people they commemorate are still held.

“Victoria Cross groups always generate more interest than any other, but as one of the earliest V.C.s awarded – and a naval one to boot – this really is something rather special.”

Elsewhere in the sale the historically important campaign group of three awarded to Lieutenant V. Hughes of the 35th Sikhs, Indian Army, took £10,000 from a private collector from the Midlands.

Lt. Hughes was killed in action at Shahi-Tang, high in the Mamund Valley, on 16 September 1897 while leading a rear-guard action to prevent the dangerously exposed Winston Churchill from being overrun and killed by the Pathan tribesmen.

Christopher Mellor-Hill, Head of Client Liaison at Noonans noted: “This is an iconic medal group connected with Churchill in action on the NW Frontier and reflects on how close Churchill came to losing his life in this action where his fellow officer, Hughes was so savagely killed in front of him despite Churchill’s brave attempts to avenge his death.”