Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria to coincide with the OMRS Convention

An interesting Great War D.S.C. group of six awarded to Lieutenant J. McLoughlin, Royal Naval Reserve, for the ‘netting’ of the UB-26 in April 1916

Distinguished Service Cross, G.V.R.; 1914-15 Star (S.Lt., R.N.R.); British War and Victory Medals (Lieut., R.N.R.); Mercantile Marine War Medal (Joseph McLoughlin); French Croix de Guerre 1914-1917, good very fine (6) £1000-1200

D.S.C. London Gazette 31 May 1916.

On the morning of 5 April 1916, Lieutenant McLoughlin, in command of half a dozen of our net drifters, named the Endurance, Welcome Star, Stately, Comrades, Pleiades, and Pleasance, went out to shoot their nets in the vicinity of the Whistling Buoy, off Havre, a submarine having been sighted that morning. They had not long to wait, for Comrades felt a strange shock of something bumping the bottom of the ship, then Iendurance realised unmistakably that a submarine was in her nets. As if to prove this still more forceably, the periscope struck the rudder of Endurance so heavily as to put the rudder out of action. Cleverly paying out her nets like an angler playing a fish, Endurance allowed the submarine to get thoroughly wrapped up in the tangle and then let the nets go.

The rest of the drifters in response to Endurance’s signal had already encircled the enemy, and a French torpedo-boat dropped bombs over the spot, after which UB-26 was compelled to rise to the surface and surrender. It was a neat little operation, and the usual £1,000 was awarded among the drifters, with a D.S.C. for both Lieutenant McLoughlin and Skipper T. C. Wylie of the Endurance.

This was apparently the only U-boat taken solely with nets. McLoughlin was later assistant shipping intelligence officer in H.M.S. Colleen, Queenstown, from 23 October 1917, and in H.M.S. Earl of Peterborough from 11 September 1918.