Orders, Decorations and Medals

A Great War anti-U-boat operations D.S.M. pair awarded to Seaman W. H. Wallis, Royal Naval Reserve

Distinguished Service Medal, G.V.R. (C. 1848 B. H. Wallis, Sea., R.N.R., “Ben Lawers”, Aux. Patrol 1917); British War Medal 1914-20 (1848 C. B. H. Wallis, Smn., R.N.R.), the first with officially corrected surname, edge bruising, otherwise generally very fine (2) £500-600

D.S.M. London Gazette 6 April 1918:

‘For services in the Auxiliary Patrol between 1 January and 31 December 1917.’

Benjamin Harvey Wallis was born in Mousehole, Cornwall in October 1877 and entered the Royal Naval Reserve in February 1911.Appointed to the battleship H.M.S. Goliath shortly after the outbreak of hostilities, he served on the East Indies and East Africa Stations, latterly in the Konisberg operations, but he was invalided ashore at Mombasa in late November 1914. Back home, he reported to Lowestoft in March 1915, when he joined the hired transport Querica, and he remained similarly employed until removing to the Falmouth base Dreel Castle in March 1917. And it was at this point that he most probably joined the trawler Ben Lawers, aboard which vessel he was present when she rammed and sunk the UB-18 in the English Channel on 9 December 1917. Awarded the D.S.M., he was demobilised in March 1919.