Orders, Decorations and Medals

Royal Humane Society, Large Silver Medal (Successful), (Commander A. H. Gardner, H.M.S. Waterwitch, 7 Octr. 1851) nearly very fine £300-350

Royal Humane Society Case No. 15173, 28 April 1852:

‘On the 7th of October 1851, at eight p.m., as H.M.S. Waterwitch was anchoring at Monrovia, on the west coast of Africa, a boy named Clarke fell overboard out of the fore-rigging. Commander Gardner, though dressed in heavy blanket clothes and thick boots, immediately jumped overboard and saved the boy. There was a strong tide running, and it was perfectly dark. The boy’s struggles were so great, and so much time elapsed before assistance could reach them, owing to the sailors being aloft furling sails, that they were both in the act of sinking, and Commander Gardner was taken up almost lifeless.’

Alan Henry Gardner was born on 25 August 1817, and entered the Royal Navy in September 1830. He served in the operations on the coast of Syria in 1840 as Mate of the Dido. In November 1848 he assisted in retaking from Moorish pirates a merchant brig, the Three Sisters, lying in a small bay, partly surrounded by an amphitheatre of precipices, high rocks and ravines, all of which places were crowded with men, in number at least 500, armed with long muskets who opened a fire from all points on the approach of the British. For his distinguished conduct on this occasion, in volunteering to board the brig under a severe fire, he was promoted to the rank of Commander. In June 1851, Gardner was appointed to the Waterwitch on the west coast of Africa, where he took part in the gallant and successful attack made by the squadron under Commodore Bruce, in December 1851, on the town of Lagos, where 52 pieces of cannon were captured or destroyed, 27 of them by Captain Gardner with his own boats and those of the Penelope, and the slave dealing Chief Cocioco deposed. Captain Gardner served in the Baltic in 1855 and 1856 for which he received the medal, in addition to those for Syria.