Marajah of Burdwan’s Medal for Gallant Conduct at the the Burning of H.M.S. Goliath 1875 , silver (W. Murphy) cleaned, slight edge bruising and contact marks, very fine £500-600

Ex Spencer Collection, D.N.W. 16 December 2003, lot 1002.

H.M.S. Goliath was a training ship lent by the Royal Navy to Forest Gate School Board in 1870 . Moored off Grays, Essex, it held some 450 orphan boys, mostly from the East End of London and was used for training in Naval Service. On 22 December 1875 a fire accidently broke out in the lamp-room and the ship was completely destroyed. One officer and 19 boys are believed to have died in the disaster. As reported in The Times of 1 January 1876, the Coroner said, ‘Every boy behaved himself like a man. Had they not been well disciplined, calamity would have been widespread, but they were free from all panic and tumult. The 14-year-old boy who dropped the lighted lamp in the lamp-room gave his evidence in an honest and manly way, as did all concerned.’

Such was the conduct of the boys that the Maharajah of Burdwan wrote to The Times expressing his desire to award a medal, through the Lord Mayor of London, to those boys who had particularly distinguished themselves: ‘Sir, Having read with the greatest admiration the account of the heroic conduct displayed by some of the boys of the training ship Goliath on occasion of the recent destruction by fire of that ill-fated vessel, I have felt a strong wish to present a silver medal to each of those who signally distinguished themselves on that occasion. I may have been forestalled in this wish, but I trust that I may be allowed to do something of the kind, as, coming from India, it will prove to the boys that deeds like theirs have not merely a local fame, but are marked and appreciated by their fellow subjects in the most distant parts of Her Majesty’s Empire ...’ (Extract from The Times, 22 February 1876).