The mounted group of seven miniature dress medals named to Commodore Sir Bertram Hayes, K.C.M.G., D.S.O., Merchant Navy and Royal Naval Reserve

Order of St. Michael and St. George, gold and enamel; Distinguished Service Order, G.V.R., gold and enamel, complete with gold top bar; Transport 1899-1902, 1 clasp, S. Africa 1899-1902; British War and Mercantile Marine Medals, M.I.D. oak leaf (loose); Royal Naval Reserve Decoration, E.VII.R.; France, Medal of Honour, Ministry of Marine, gold, reverse inscribed, ‘Bertram F. Hayes, 1915’, with embroidered anchor on ribbon, mounted as worn, good very fine (7) £500-600

D.S.O. London Gazette 21 June 1918. ‘Hayes, Bertram Fox, C.M.G., R.D., Capt., Royal Naval Reserve’. ‘Honours for services in action with enemy submarines’

Bertram Fox Hayes was born in Birkenhead, Cheshire on 25 April 1864. When he was four years of age his family moved to Goole in Yorkshire, and at the age of 14 he began his service in the Merchant Navy as a Junior Clerk in the Goole Steamship Company. In 1889 he gained his Ordinary Master’s Certificate and was employed by the firm of Ismay, Imrie & Company, sailing as a Mate aboard the Coptic. Being promoted during the intervening years, he was the Master of the Britannic taking troops to South Africa at the time of the Boer War, for which services he was awarded the Transport Medal. During the Great War he was appointed Captain of the White Star Line ship R.M.S. Olympic - the sister ship of the Titanic. The ship was employed as a troop carrier on journey’s across the Atlantic and into the Mediterranean and in 1917 Hayes was awarded the C.M.G. for his services. On 12 May 1918, en route from New York to Southampton, in the English Channel, the Olympic, commanded by Captain Hayes, fired at, rammed and sank the German submarine U.103. For this action Hayes was awarded the D.S.O. In 1920 he was Knighted, receiving the K.C.M.G. He retired as Commodore of the White Star Line Fleet in December 1924 and retired also as a Commodore in the R.N.R. He was D.L. of the County Palatinate of Lancaster, 1931, a Director of Marconi International Marine Communications Company and Master of the Honorable Company of Master Mariners, 1940. Latterly living at Formby Lodge, Blundellsands, Liverpool; he died on 15 May 1941.

Sold with the book, Hull Down, Reminiscences of Wind-jammers, Troops and Travellers, by Sir Bertram Hayes, K.C.M.G., D.S.O., Cassel & Co, 1925 reprint, ix, 310pp.; 4 postcards and nine modern and two older photographs, mostly of ships relating to the recipient’s service, copied photographs of the recipient and with a quantity of other copied research.