Seven: Able Seaman F. Rouse, Royal Navy

Naval General Service 1915-62, 1 clasp, Palestine 1936-1939 (J. 103985 A.B., R.N.); 1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star; Africa Star; Defence and War Medals; Royal Navy L.S. & G.C., G.VI.R., 1st issue (J. 103985 A.B., H.M.S. Hasty), very fine and better (7) £180-220

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Medals for Services at Sea from the Collection of the Late Oliver Stirling Lee.

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The destroyer H.M.S. Hasty won a very impressive tally of 11 Battle Honours in her all too brief wartime career. Following service in the South Atlantic and in the Norway operations of 1940, she joined the Mediterranean fleet in June of the same year, thereafter seeing virtually constant action, not least off Calabria and Cape Matapan, in addition to the costly evacuations from Greece and Crete. Her final major engagement was the Battle of Sirte, for in June 1942 her charmed existence came to an end when she was torpedoed by an enemy S-boat, the resultant explosion blowing off all the structure forward of her ‘A’ gun - 13 men were killed, the survivors being picked up by her consort, the Hotspur.