Orders, Decorations and Medals

A particularly fine Great War D.S.M. group of eight awarded to Chief Petty Officer M. E. Casey, Royal Navy, a veteran of the Benin 1897 operations who went on to witness further action at Heligoland Bight in 1914, Dogger Bank in 1915 and Jutland in 1916, the whole aboard H.M.S. Southampton: on the latter occasion his ship was caught in the enemy’s searchlights and fought a desperate point-blank engagement, some 75% of her upper-deck personnel becoming casualties - Casey among them

Distinguished Service Medal, G.V.R. (157286 M. Casey, C.P.O. 1 Cl., “Southampton”, Services During War); East and West Africa 1887-1900, 1 clasp, Benin 1897 (A.B., H.M.S. Phoebe), also single initial ‘M.’; 1914-15 Star (157286 C.P.O., R.N.); British War and Victory Medals (157286 C.P.O., R.N.); Coronation 1911; Royal Navy L.S. & G.C., G.V.R., 1st issue (157286 Ch. P.O., H.M.S. Southampton); Italian Messina Earthquake Medal 1908, very fine and better (8) £1600-1800

D.S.M. London Gazette 27 June 1919: ‘The following awards have been approved’.

Michael Ernest Casey was born in Co. Cork in April 1875 and entered the Royal Navy as a Boy 2nd Class in September 1890. Advanced to Able Seaman in April 1894, he was landed from H.M.S. Phoebe for service in the Benin Expedition in 1897, and was again landed as a “Bluejacket” in late 1908, when as a crew member of the battleship Duncan, he lent assistance to the victims of the Messina earthquake (published roll confirms). Then in 1911 he added the Coronation Medal to his accolades - for by then he was serving in the cruiser Cochrane, which ship acted as one of the escorts to the P. & O. liner Medina, recently commissioned as a royal yacht to take King George V and Queen Mary to India - and in April 1912 he was awarded his L.S. & G.C. Medal.

By the outbreak of hostilities, Casey was serving as a Chief Petty Officer in the cruiser Southampton, and he remained similarly employed until December 1916. He was consequently present in the actions of Heligoland Bight on 28 August 1914, Dogger Bank on 24 January 1915 and Jutland on 31 May-1 June 1916, in which latter battle, as part of the 2nd Light Cruiser Squadron, the Southampton was heavily engaged. In fact, in company with the Dublin, she was taken by surprise by elements of the German 4th Scouting Group at about 10.30 p.m. on 31 May, the enemy illuminating the two ships at point-blank range, and in the desperate action that ensued Southampton took no less than 18 hits, her upper decks being deluged in shrapnel:

‘The range was amazingly close - no two groups of such ships have ever fought so close in the history of this war. There could be no missing. A gun was fired and a hit obtained; the gun was loaded, it flamed, it roared, it lept to the rear, it slid to the front; there was another hit. But to load guns there must be men, flesh and blood must lift the shells and cordite, and open and close the hungry breeches. But flesh and blood cannot stand high explosives, and there was a great deal of high explosive bursting all along H.M.S. Southampton’s upper deck from her after screen to the fore-bridge. The range was so close that the German shots went high, just high enough to burst on the upper deck and around the after superstructure and bridge. And in a light cruiser that’s where all the flesh and blood has to stand ... The funnels were riddled through with hundreds of small holes and the decks were slashed and ripped with splinters. There were several holes along the side, but the general effect was as if handfuls of splinters had been thrown against the upper works of the ship. The protective mattresses round the bridge and control position were slashed with splinters. The fore-mast, the rigging, the boats, the signal lockers, the funnel casing, the main-mast - everything was a mass of splinter holes. Our sailors firmly believed, and continued to do so up to the day on which I left the ship, that we had been deluged with shrapnel. It was certainly surprising that anyone on the upper deck remained unhit ... ’ (taken from the account of one of Southampton’s Lieutenants - see The Fighting at Jutland).

In fact around 75% of Southampton’s upper deck personnel were killed or wounded, Casey among them, receiving a wound in his right calf (his service papers refer), so it seems likely that he must have witnessed some terrible sights in and around the ship’s dressing station:

‘The dressing station was an ill-ventilated bathroom situated just over the boiler-rooms, measuring perhaps 8 feet square and hardly 6 feet high. An operating table was in the middle, and the deck as well as the passage outside was a litter of mangled men laid out in rows by the first-aid parties. Add to this a foul atmosphere thick with chloroform, and the painfully depressing sight of numbers of badly wounded men waiting their turn for attention, and the rest may be left to the imagination. As each case was passed through the doctor’s hands and his wounds were dressed he was removed to the ward-room, though this soon became over-crowded, and all officers’ cabins were requisitioned. Several cabins were wrecked, and there was a good deal of water about dripping through from the deck above, where fire mains were burst and water was lying or flowing about. This did not add to the comfort of the wounded, but the holes were soon effectively stopped, and by morning everyone had been made as comfortable as possible ... ’ (taken from the account of Southampton’s Torpedo Officer, whose quick reactions resulted in the sinking of the enemy light cruiser Frauenlob - see The Fighting at Jutland).

The gallant Casey was transferred to the battleship Orion in December 1916 and remained employed in her until April 1919. He was finally demobilised in March 1920.