Orders, Decorations and Medals

Five: 1st Class Engineer P. Playfair, Merchant Navy, among those to have suffered from exposure after his ship was torpedoed off Durban in April 1943 by U-Boat ace Asmus Clausen

British War and Mercantile Marine War Medals (Patrick Playfair); Atlantic Star; Pacific Star; War Medal 1939-45, these last three officially inscribed, ‘M.N. P. Plafair’, very fine and better (5) £150-200

Patrick Playfair, who was born in Scotland in January 1887, served as a 3rd Class Engineer in the Mercantile Marine in the Great War (Board of Trade records refer). Sometime thereafter moving to South Africa, where he became a Union National,
he served aboard the S.S. Aloe and S.S. Agulhas on voyages to Cape Town, Australia and Port Said, November 1940 until April 1943, in which latter month the Aloe was torpedoed by the U-182, Kapitain-Leutnant Asmus Clausen, a Knight’s Cross holder, while 420 miles south-east of Durban - the crew were rescued in the end, suffering from exposure, but their Captain, who had been ordered aboard the U-Boat, was not so fortunate: six weeks later the U-182 was lost with all hands following a depth-charge attack delivered by the U.S.S. MacKenzie.

Sold with related research, including copy A.S. Merchant Navy records confirming that his 1939-45 War campaign awards - including the 1939-45 Star - were forwarded to him in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia in 1953.