The Douglas-Morris Collection of Naval Medals (Part 2)

India General Service 1854-95, 1 clasp, Burma 1885-7 (Comr. J. Fundrup, I.F.Co’s Str. “Kah Byoo”) good very fine

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Douglas-Morris Collection of Naval Medals.

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The KAH BYOO was a stern and quarter wheel steamer built and engined by Messrs William Denny of Glasgow in 1882. Her measurements were length 170 feet, width 30 feet, draught 7.1 feet, with a gross tonnage of 279 tons. She was later converted to a Rock Puncher and in 1912 became a station flat and was sunk at Kabanee in 1925. A photograph of KAH BYOO (Fig 32) appears in the book ‘The Irrawaddy Flotilla Company’, Maritime Monographs & Reports No. 7, published by the National Martime Museum, London 1973.

All available records give the name Terndrup, not Fundrup as shown on his medal. Captain Chubb, of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, sailed under Captain Jan Terndrup in the Paddle Steamer NEPAUL in 1919. He had no accurate information regarding when or how Terndrup joined the Flotilla, but from conversations they had it would appear that Terndrup came out East in a sailing ship. As a boy of 15 he remembered the Prussians invading Schleswig Holstein where he was working on his uncle's farm. Soon afterwards he joined a Danish ship which he deserted at Rangoon, where he joined the Flotilla. He brought the European civilians out of Bhamo when the Chinese invaded Burma from Yunnan. In the war of 1885 he Commanded the KAH BYOO. By 1919 he had been Commodore of the Flotilla for some time and when he finally retired he was well over 70 years old.