Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Three: Able Seaman W. Bennett, Merchant Navy, late Royal Naval Reserve

British War Medal 1914-20 (2295S. W. Bennett, Boy, R.N.R.); Defence Medal 1939-45; Liverpool Shipwreck and Humane Society, Marine Medal, 3rd type, silver (To William Bennett, For Gallant Service, 2/3/1939), the last officially renamed, good very fine or better (3) £250-300

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Awards to Merchant Seamen and D.E.M.S. Gunners.

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William Bennett, who was born in Liverpool in September 1901, enrolled in the Royal Naval Reserve in August 1918 and saw brief wartime service as a boy rating in the Pekin before being demobilised in January 1919. Returning to sea with the Merchant Navy, Bennett was serving as an Able Seaman aboard the S.S. Newfoundland at the time of being awarded the Liverpool Shipwreck and Humane Society’s Medal, in silver, in March 1939, following the rescue of men from the stricken sealer Ranger off Newfoundland on the 2nd - Bennett was one of six men who volunteered to man the boat that reached the Ranger, taking off 18 men under very difficult circumstances.

He, and his fellow volunteers, were each awarded the Society’s Silver Medal, which distinction they received from the hands of Liverpool’s Mayor, Sir Sydney Jones; sold with further research.