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

The important Victoria Cross group of nine awarded to Petty Officer Ernest Pitcher, V.C., D.S.M., Royal Navy, who was five times decorated for gallantry whilst serving in Captain Gordon Campbell’s famous ‘Q’ Ships

Victoria Cross, the reverse suspension bar inscribed ‘P.O. E. Pitcher. O.N.227029. Royal Navy.’, the reverse centre of the cross dated ‘8 Aug. 1917’; Distinguished Service Medal, G.V.R. (227029. E. Pitcher, P.O. Atlantic Ocean. 9 Jun 1917); 1914-15 Star Trio (227029 E. Pitcher, P.O. R.N.); Coronation 1937; Royal Navy L.S. & G.C., G.V.R., Admiral’s bust (227029 Ernest Pitcher, C.P.O., H.M.S. Excellent); French Medaille Militaire; French Croix de Guerre 1914-1917, contact wear, therefore nearly very fine (9)

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

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See colour illustration on front cover.

Victoria Cross London Gazette 2 November 1917 ‘The King has been graciously pleased to approve of the following Honours, Decorations and Medals for services in action with enemy submarines’ (Action of H.M.S. “Dunraven” on 8 August 1917. The Victoria Cross awarded to Lieutenant C. G. Bonner and Petty Officer Ernest Pitcher).

Distinguished Service Medal London Gazette 20 July 1917 ‘for services in action with enemy submarines’ (Action of H.M.S. “Pargust” on 7 June 1917. The Victoria Cross awarded to Lieutenant R.N. Stuart and Seaman William Williams).

M.I.D. London Gazette 23 March 1917 (Action of H.M.S. Q.5 on 17 February 1917. The Victoria Cross awarded to Commander Gordon Campbell).

On 8 August 1917 at 10:58 a.m., the Q-ship DUNRAVEN, disguised as a British armed merchant ship, was zig-zagging about 130 miles off Ushant when a U-boat was sighted on the horizon two points before the starboard beam. DUNRAVEN maintained her course and the U-boat, UC.71, began to close. At 11:17 the enemy submarine dived and, resurfacing again 5,000 yards away on the starboard quarter at 11:43, opened fire. DUNRAVEN’s commander, the Q-ship ‘ace’ Captain Gordon Campbell, V.C., D.S.O., R.N., acting out the evolutions of a panic stricken merchantman, sent off a distress signal containing his ship’s position and ordered a token fire to be returned from the ‘merchantman’s’ two-and-a-half-pounder gun. The submarine closed to within 1,000 yards somewhat surprisingly without scoring a hit, but at about 12:40 Campbell took advantage of a near miss to make ‘a cloud of steam’ and so simulate boiler trouble. At the same time he sent away the ‘Panic party’, giving the impression that the ship was being abandoned. So far the U-boat had been made to conform to Campbell’s wishes and all might have been well except for the submarine, now closing rapidly, scored three hits on DUNRAVEN’s poop in quick succession. The first detonated a depth charge which wounded three men, including Lieutenant Bonner, who was blown out of his hiding place, and who with great presence of mind quickly scrambled through the hatch to join Petty Officer Pitcher, the captain of the 4-inch gun crew. The explosion also cut communication between Pitcher’s team and the bridge, whereupon, ‘they decided for themselves that they must stay where they were, as had they moved they would have spoilt the show, since the ship had already been abandoned and no one was supposed to be on board’. ‘This act of theirs,’ wrote Campbell, ‘was entirely their own; they had no prompting from me and no words of encouragement’.

The second and third shells started a major fire on the poop where, Pitcher and the others were uncomfortably concealed on a ‘red hot deck’ immediately above an ammunition store. As the fire spread, one of the gunners tore up his shirt ‘to stuff up their mouths to keep the fumes out’, while Pitcher and others ‘lifted the ready use boxes of cordite off the deck on to their knees to delay them exploding’. Meanwhile UC.71, obscured by black smoke billowing from the poop was somewhere crossing DUNRAVEN’s stern. Campbell was anxious to wait until the U-boat was clear of the smoke before opening fire, but he was also painfully aware that an explosion must soon take place: ‘To cold-bloodedly leave the gun’s crew to their fate seemed awful, and the names of each of them flashed through my mind, but our duty was to sink the submarine. By losing a few men we might save thousands not only of lives but of ships and tons of the nation’s requirements. I decided to wait ...’

At 12:58, just before the submarine emerged from the smoke to present three of DUNRAVEN’s 12-pounder guns with a clear target at less than 400 yards range, the expected explosion - ‘probably two depth charges and some cordite’ - took place, blowing out the stern of the ship and throwing the 4-inch gun and crew into the air. The gun crashed on to the well-deck as 4-inch projectiles were blown about the ship. One man landed in the sea, while Pitcher and Bonner, both of whom were wounded by the blast, landed in board on mock railway trucks made of wood and canvas which cushioned their fall and undoubtedly saved their lives.

UC.71 crash-dived. Two shots were fired at her, but without telling effect, and Campbell, realizing that a torpedo attack might follow, had Pitcher and the other wounded removed to the cabins where they were obliged to remain during the closing stages of the action, ‘with shells exploding all around them, and only such attention as the surgeon probationer and his comrades could give them’. Having sent two more ‘Panic parties’ away from the ship in boats in order to try and reassure the enemy, Campbell was preparing to make his own torpedo attack when at 13:20 DUNRAVEN was torpedoed abaft the engine-room. UC.71 surfaced again and shelled the Q-ship for a further twenty minutes before diving at 14:50. Campbell then fired two torpedoes at the U-boat, using the periscope as the point of aim, but both missed. The ship’s company waited for the coup de grâce, but none came. UC.71, having no more torpedoes, left the scene at the approach of the U.S.S. NOMA and the British destroyers CHRISTOPHER and ATTACK. The CHRISTOPHER took DUNRAVEN in tow for Plymouth, but during the night the weather worsened and the Q-ship was abandoned before sinking at 03:00 a.m.

To the dismay of Campbell and indeed his entire crew, DUNRAVEN was not to be replaced and the ship’s company was paid off on 24 August 1917. Awards of the D.S.M. were made en bloc to all ratings who had served under Campbell since October 1915, and in recognition of the gallantry displayed on 8 August, Bonner was awarded the Victoria Cross, and Campbell the Second Bar to his D.S.O. The outstanding gallantry of the after-gun crew was recognised by awarding the Victoria Cross to Pitcher under the ballot system covered by Rule Thirteen of the Warrant of the Victoria Cross. The remainder of the 4-inch gun crew received the C.G.M.

Ernest Herbert Pitcher was the son of a coast guard, George Pitcher, and his wife Sarah née Beverstock, and was born at Mullion, Cornwall, on 31 December 1888. The Pitcher family moved to Swanage in Dorset where Ernest attended school before joining the Navy at Portsmouth (Official No. PO/227029) at the age of fifteen on 22 July 1903. At the outbreak of war in August 1914 he was serving in the super-Dreadnought KING GEORGE V, and the next year volunteered for special service in the expanding Q-ship fleet, joining one of the most illustrious of all vessels engaged in that especially hazardous form of warfare, the ex-collier LODERER, otherwise H.M.S. FARNBOROUGH, alias Q.5.

LODERER, a tramp of 3207-gross tons built in 1904, was fitted out at Devonport with all the devices of a Q-ship and armed with five 12-pounder guns variously concealed by a ‘steering house’ aft, hinged flaps on the main deck, and dummy ‘cabins’ on the upper deck. She also mounted a 6-pounder hidden at either end of the bridge and a Maxim placed in a ‘hencoop’ amidships. She had a complement of eleven officers and fifty-six men, Pitcher being one of the few ‘regular’ R.N. ratings on board. All the officers with the notable exception of the captain, Lieutenant-Commander Gordon Campbell R.N., were R.N.R. The LODERER was commissioned under her original name on 21 October 1915, but this had to be changed on 5 November when the Admiralty received an anonymous tip-off indicating that LODERER’s new role as U-boat bait had been leaked. Thus, en route to join Admiral Sir Lewis Bayly’s command at Queenstown, LODERER was quietly renamed FARNBOROUGH.

On 22 March 1916 FARNBOROUGH accounted for the fourth Q-ship U-boat kill of the war by sinking Käpitan-Leutnant Guntzel’s U.68. The sinking of U.68 with all hands brought Gordon Campbell promotion to Commander and his first D.S.O. After a near miss on a U-boat in April, FARNBOROUGH had to wait nearly a year until her next successful engagement. This took place on 17 February 1917 west of Ireland, when at 9:45 a.m. Campbell, following proscribed Q-ship tactics, turned into the track of an enemy torpedo so as to allow it to hit Q.5 aft by the engine-room bulkhead. The ‘Panic party’ made a convincing departure in boats as the ship began to settle by the stern. Campbell and the guns’ crews, meanwhile, lay prone in their hiding places on the upper deck as the barely submerged U-boat, U.83 commanded by Hoppe, closed to within twenty yards. At 10:05 the submarine broke surface 300 yards off the port bow, but in a position where none of Q.5’s guns could bear. Gradually, however, the submarine passed down the port side with the intention of securing the ship’s papers from the ‘crew’ in the boats. As U.83 motored abeam of Q.5, Campbell could see that she was fully surfaced, with the conning tower open and Hoppe on the bridge. At 10:10 he gave the order to open fire. The guns’ crews got off forty five rounds at point blank range, nearly all of which hit. U.83 sank with the loss of all hands but one officer and a seaman. Q.5 in sinking condition was taken in tow by the destroyer NARWHAL and the sloop BUTTERCUP and eventually beached.

In March 1917 Pitcher and almost all of Q.5’s crew elected to follow Gordon Campbell to his next command, another converted collier, formerly the VITTORIA but renamed PARGUST, which was fitted out with improved equipment and armament, including a 4-inch gun. The decoy PARGUST went to sea in May and on 7 June, when well out into the Atlantic, she was torpedoed at such close range by Käpitan-Leutnant Rose’s UC.29 that Campbell could not have avoided being hit even if he had wished it. The ‘Panic party’, complete with a stuffed parrot in a cage, took to the boats in the usual way and rowed along PARGUST’s starboard side hoping the U-boat, which was only showing her periscope, would follow. She did and at 8:36 after surfacing, Campbell opened fire. Thirty-eight shells were fired and as the U-boat tried to get under way she blew up and sank. PARGUST was towed into Queenstown next day and later paid off at Plymouth. Two Victoria Crosses were awarded to the ship under Rule Thirteen, with Lieutenant Stuart being selected by ballot as the representative officer and Seaman William Williams as the representative rating. Campbell received promotion to Captain and a Bar to his D.S.O., and Pitcher was awarded one of eight D.S.Ms.

PARGUST’s crew, with very few exceptions, followed Campbell into DUNRAVEN and took part in the V.C. action with UC.71 on 8 August 1917. The engagement in many ways was to prove the crux of the Q-ship campaign in Home Waters, and three weeks after the fight it was agreed at an Admiralty conference that stalemate in the campaign had been reached. Accordingly, the Q-service was wound down. Pitcher received his Cross from the King at an Investiture at Buckingham Palace on 5 December 1917. He also received the French Medaille Militaire and the Croix de Guerre. He was rated up to Chief Petty Officer on 1 August 1920, and retired from the Navy after twenty-five years service on 30 December 1927. He returned to Swanage and taught woodwork at a boys’ preparatory school. It is also recorded that at some point during the inter-war years he was the licensee of the Royal Oak at Herston. On 5 August 1940 he rejoined the Navy and served in shore establishments at Poole, Portland and Yeovilton until the cessation of hostilities. He died the following year of tuberculosis on 10 February 1946 in the Royal Navyal Auxiliary Hospital, Sherborne. A memorial tablet to C.P.O. Pitcher V.C., D.S.M., R.N. was unveiled in Swanage Parish Church on 11 November 1963.