Orders, Decorations and Medals

A Great War D.S.O. group of five awarded to Commander A. S. Gibb, Royal Naval Reserve

Distinguished Service Order, G.V.R.; British War and Victory Medals (Commr., R.N.R.); Royal Naval Reserve Decoration, E.VII.R., the reverse hallmarked 1909; Prussia, Order of the Crown, 4th class breast badge, silver-gilt and enamels, obverse centre of the D.S.O. a little depressed, otherwise extremely fine (5) £800-1000

D.S.O. London Gazette 14 July 1916: ‘For services in the Armed Yachts, Trawlers and Drifters of the Auxiliary Patrol during the period 1st January 1915 to 31st January 1916.’

Alfred Spencer Gibb was born on 15 May 1867, and educated at Rhodes House School, Manchester, and the training ship Conway. He held the rank of Midshipman in the Royal Naval Reserve in 1884 and retired as a Commander, R.N.R., in 1912. He was commissioned into the Armed Yacht Catania on 16 September 1914, and was transferred to command H.M.S. Nairn, North Sea Patrol, on 12 January 1917. Gibb was presented with the 4th Class of the Prussian Order of the Crown during a state visit by the Kaisar prior to the Great War. At that time he was the King’s Harbour Master, Port Victoria, Grain Island, River Medway, which was then the continental port and railway terminus for London.