Auction Catalogue

25 & 26 March 2014

Starting at 10:00 AM

.

Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Washington Mayfair Hotel  London  W1J 5HE

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Lot

№ 632

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25 March 2014

Hammer Price:
£80

Lest we Forget League’ Badge, commemorating Captain Charles Fryatt, Merchant Navy, obverse, picture of Captain Fryatt, 28mm., bronze-gilt and enamel, uniface; together with a Commemorative Matchbox Holder, bearing a portrait photograph of Fryatt, a list of incidents in his life and the statement by Asquith, ‘When the time arrives we are determined to bring to justice the criminals whoever they may be and whatever position they may occupy’; with two postcards of Fryatt and the S.S. Brussels, medal very fine (4) £40-60

The S.S. Brussels was a Great Eastern Railway steamer running between Rotterdam and the East Coast of England. The vessel was of much annoyance to the Germans and they made several determined efforts to sink her.

On 3 March 1915 Captain Fryatt of the
Wrexham, successfully evaded an attack on his ship by a German U-Boat. The Wrexham ignored the signal to stop and used her superior speed to escape. For his actions, the ship’s grateful owners presented Fryatt with a gold watch.
On 28 March 1915, Captain Fryatt, then in command of the
Brussels, encountered the U-33. Again ignoring signals to stop, Fryatt ordered full-speed and fatefully attempted to ram the submarine which hastily submerged. For this exploit Fryatt was awarded another gold watch, this time from the Admiralty. On 11 and 15 June she was again menaced by German submarines and on each occasion used her speed to escape.

The
Brussel’s luck finally ran out on 23 June 1916 when she was captured by German destroyers off the Dutch coast and taken to Zeebrugge in occupied Belgium. Captain Fryatt and the crew of the Brussels were sent to a prison camp in Germany. There, Fryatt might have spent the rest of the war in captivity, however notification of his capture and his past exploits appearing in the British press alerted the Germans, and Admiral Ludwig von Schroder, wishing to make an example of Captain Fryatt and to deter other Merchant Navy captains from attempting to sink German submarines, placed Fryatt on trial as a franc-tireur - a civilian ‘illegally’ fighting against German military forces. On 27 July 1916 Fryatt was tried by a naval court martial, found guilty and executed by firing squad later the same day. A German official statement concluded, ‘One of the many nefarious “franc-tireurs” proceedings of the British Merchant Marine against our war vessels has thus found a belated but merited expiation.’ The action caused outrage in Britain and the civilised world. In 1919 his body was exhumed from its simple grave in Belgium and after a funeral in St. Paul’s Cathedral, attended by the King and Queen of Belgium, members of the British Cabinet, Admiralty, Board of Trade and hundreds of merchant seamen and widows of merchant seamen, his body was laid to rest in Dovercourt near Harwich. A memorial to Captain Fryatt may be found at Liverpool Street Station, London.

With copied research.