Orders, Decorations and Medals

Midshipman’s Journal, an important wartime journal kept by Lieutenant Cameron St Clair Ingham, Royal Navy, for the period August to December 1914, whilst aboard H.M.S. Invincible at the battles of Helgoland and the Falkland Islands; together with a good quantity of original documentation, including portrait photograph, Certificates of Appointment to various ships, Captain’s ‘flimsies’, and three volumes entitled ‘Ashore and Afloat 1900 to 1950’ being his unpublished autobiography, a rare lot of historic importance

Ingham’s original Log begins on 2nd August 1914, just two days before the commencement of hostilities against the German Empire. He records the daily routine aboard H.M.S. Invincible and gives his eye witness account of the Battle of Helgoland on 28th August 1914, and the Battle of the Falkland Islands on 8th December 1914. In the latter engagement Invincible, in company with Inflexible and Carnarvon, engaged the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau, sinking them both. He later recorded in his autobiography: ‘The only spectators of the fighting, other than the combatants, were the crew of a French full rigged sailing ship, which passed between us and the Germans at the height of the action. The crew must have been somewhat astonished, as she had no wireless, had been at sea some months, and did not know that war had been declared.’

After arriving back in Home waters after his experiences off South America, Ingham was appointed to the battleship H.M.S. Canada, and goes on to describe his part in the Battle of Jutland, from his viewpoint in the Foremost 14-inch Turret of the ship. He subsequently describes his time as 1st Lieutenant and Gunnery Officer of H.M.S. Hyacinth, Flagship of the South African Squadron, 1918-21, and, later, aboard H.M.S. Ramilles as part of the International Fleet sent to the Bosphorous in 1921 with General Harrington’s Mission. In 1924 he was posted abroad as Intelligence Officer South China, and witnessed the troubles there for the next two and a half years, before taking command of H.M.S. Moorhen, a gunboat on the Si Kiang River during the disturbances in China during 1926-27. During the Second World War, Ingham was for a period in command of H.M.S. Turtle, a Combined Operational Base.