Orders, Decorations and Medals

A Liverpool Shipwreck and Humane Society Marine Medal awarded to Coxswain Charles Edward Fish of the Ramsgate Lifeboat, for the gallant rescue of survivors of the Indian Chief, Thames Estuary, 1881

Liverpool Shipwreck and Humane Society, Marine Medal, 3rd type, silver (Charles E. Fish, Coxswain of Lifeboat “Bradford” for rescuing crew of ship “Indian Chief”, Jany. 5. 1881) with silver brooch bar, very fine £300-350

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Collection of Life Saving Awards formed by The Late W.H. Fevyer.

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Ex Edrington Collection 1980.

In the early morning of 5 January 1881 the 1,238 ton barque, Indian Chief, four days out from Middlesborough, bound for Yokohama, was wrecked on the Long Sands in the outer reaches of the Thames Estuary. During the day she began to break up and the survivors took to the rigging. Following unsuccessful searches for the casualty by the Harwich and Clacton lifeboats, the Ramsgate lifeboat, Bradford, was brought on to the scene, towed by the tug Vulcan. Coxswain Charles Edward Fish then cast off and positioning the lifeboat, veered a piece of wood attached to lengths of rope, towards the wreck. This enabled a hawser to be dragged aboard the wreck by the survivors by which the lifeboat crew hauled their vessel close under the Indian Chief’s quarter. The lifeboat then took off the 12 survivors, transferred them to the tug which then towed them back to Ramsgate. The lifeboat had been at sea for some 26 hours in heavy broken water.

Fish’s account of the rescue was reported in The Daily Telegraph. As his craft neared the wreck and the muddle of spars about it, he said of the scene that met his eyes, ‘.... There looked to be a whole score of dead bodies knocking about among the spars. It stunned me for a moment, for I had thought all hands were in the foretop, and never dreamt of so many lives having been lost. Seventeen were drowned, and there they were, most of them, and the body of the captain lashed to the head of the mizenmast, so as to look as if he were leaning over it, his head stiff upright and his eyes watching us, and the stir of the seas made him appear to be struggling to get to us. I thought he was alive, and cried to the men to hand him in, but someone said he was killed when the mizenmast fell, and had been dead four or five hours. This was a dreadful shock. I never remember the like of it. I can’t hardly get those fixed eyes out of my sight ....’

For this gallant rescue, Coxswain Fish was awarded the Board of Trade Sea Gallantry Medal in Silver, the R.N.L.I. Medal in Gold, and the Liverpool Shipwreck & Humane Society Marine Medal in Silver. Board of Trade and R.N.L.I. medals were also awarded to the crew of the lifeboat and tug.

‘A Silver Medal and £1 to Charles E. Fish, coxswain of the Ramsgate lifeboat Bradford, and £1 to each of the lifeboat’s crew, for having on the 5th January 1881, at great risk, and after having been all night at sea, gallantly rescued eleven of the survivors of the Liverpool ship Indian Chief, which vessel was wrecked near the Kentish Knock, and many of her crew perished’ (Ref. Extract from the 42nd Annual Report, year ended 1st July 1881).

Sold with copied research, including extracts from Heroes of the Goodwin Sands; Lifeboat Gallantry; The Wreck of the Indian Chief, by R. J. Scarlett, L.S.A.R.S. J. Vol.10, p.3-29 which recalls the account rescue as reported in The Daily Telegraph.