PREVIEW: ORDERS DECORATIONS, MEDALS MILITARIA: 13 MARCH

When Lieutenant-Commander Edgar Christopher Cookson D.S.O. RN leapt aboard a Turkish sailing vessel brandishing an axe to break up a river barrage, he did so knowing that he faced certain death. “He found that he could not send a man over the ship’s side to cut away the obstruction, because it meant certain death, so he took an axe and went himself,”
his Mention in Dispatches later explained.

It was the final selfless sacrifice of a man whose repeated acts of gallantry in harsh conditions under heavy enemy fire led to the award of a posthumous Victoria Cross. It will be offered for sale with Cookson’s D.S.O at Noonans on 13 March with an estimate of £180,000-220,000.

 

Ultimately an outstanding hero, Cookson’s earlier antics had got him into trouble.

Born at Cavendish Park, Tranmere, Cheshire, in December 1883, the younger son of Captain William Edgar de Crackenthorpe Cookson, R.N., he was educated at Hazelhurst, Frant, before entering the Royal Navy as a Cadet in Britannia in September 1897. There, according to his official service record, he quickly came to the notice of his superiors:

“Tried by the Portsmouth Magistrates for creating a disturbance at a music hall and using obscene language in the streets: he should not have been out of the college, being confined to college at the time. Deprived of three months’ time and Their Lordships severe displeasure expressed. To be reported on the end of three months.”

Cookson may have been boisterous and adventurous, but he soon came to heel and duly passed out as a Midshipman with an appointment in H.M.S. Jupiter in the Channel Squadron.

He saw active service off China during the Boxer Rebellion (Medal) and was advanced to Sub. Lieutenant in February 1903. By the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, he was serving as a recently promoted Lieutenant-Commander in the sloop Clio in the Far East.

The Royal Navy learnt quickly to adapt when it became clear that its small flotilla could not cope with the shallow waters of the Euphrates and Tigris. Instead, they co-opted a bizarre array of vessels.

“There are paddle steamers which once plied with passengers and now waddle along with a barge on either side, one perhaps containing a portable wireless station and the other bullocks for heavy guns ashore; there are once respectable tugs which stagger along under the weight of boiler plating – to protect them from the enemy’s fire – and are armed with guns of varying calibre; there is a launch which pants indignantly between batteries of 4.7s, looking like a sardine between two cigarette-boxes; there is a steamer with a Christmas-tree growing amidships, in the branches of which its officers fondly imagine they are invisible to friend or foe. There is also a ship which is said to have started life as an aeroplane in Singapore, but shed its wings, kept its propeller, took to water, and became a hospital. And this great fleet is the cavalry screen, advance guard, rear guard, flank guard, railway, general headquarters, heavy artillery, line of communication, supply depot, police force, field ambulance, aerial hangar and base of supply of the Mesopotamian Expedition.”

Among this ‘great fleet’ was the newly commissioned stern-wheel river launch Shushan and, in April, Cookson was appointed to her command.

The V.C. action, described as a ‘Cavalry Charge’ on water, took place in 1915, when Cookson was part of operations involving the Tigris Flotilla. On 28 September 1915, the river gunboat Comet had been ordered with other gunboats to examine, and if possible destroy, an obstruction placed across the river by the Turks. When the gunboats were approaching the obstruction, a very heavy rifle and machine-gun fire was opened on them from both banks.

An attempt to sink the centre vessel – a dhow – of the obstruction by gunfire having failed, Lieutenant-Commander Cookson ordered the Comet to be placed alongside, before jumping on to the dhow with an axe to try to cut the wire hawsers connecting it with the two other craft forming the obstruction. He was immediately shot in several places and died within a few minutes. A fellow officer later observed “there were more bullet holes in him than they cared to count.” 

A private collector has consigned the medal group to Noonans and as Mark Quayle, Medal Specialist and Associate Director of Noonans, commented: “Cookson’s repeated acts of gallantry, in the harshest of environments, led to him making the ultimate sacrifice for both duty and for those who meant the most to him – the men under his command. Leading a ‘cavalry charge’ on water in a desperate attempt to force his way through the enemy position ultimately proved futile, but his act was one of cold, calculated bravery in the face of certain death. Alas, he rolled the dice one too many times.”

Just two weeks before the action that won him the V.C., Cookson had been cited in the London Gazette for his immediate D.S.O. It related to a reconnaissance expedition up a creek of the Euphrates, west of Qurnah, in the armed launch Shushan on 9 May 1915.

As the citation read, Arabs concealed in the reeds launched a heavy attack.

“Although severely wounded early in the action, he resumed command after his wounds had been temporarily dressed and succeeded in most ably extricating the vessel from a most perilous position under heavy rifle fire.”