Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Pair: Petty Officer H. W. Curtis, Royal Navy

Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, no clasp (H. W. Curtis, A.B., H.M.S. Sybille); British War Medal 1914-20 (165479 H. W. Curtis, P.O., R.N.), edge nicks, generally very fine (2) £140-180

Henry William Curtis was born in Winchester in October 1875 and entered the Royal Navy as a Boy 2nd Class in January 1892. He subsequently served off South Africa aboard H.M.S. Sybille, which ship was wrecked in Lambert’s Bay on 16 January 1901, thereby becoming the Royal Navy’s only ship to be lost during the Boer War. By the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, he was serving in the light cruiser Southampton and he was consequently present in the battle of Heligoland Bight on the 28th. He subsequently transferred to another light cruiser, the Birmingham, that December, and remained similarly employed - as a Petty Officer - until coming ashore to Vernon in November 1916. He was consequently present at Dogger Bank in January 1915 and at the battle of Jutland, on which latter occasion Birmingham sustained splinter damage. Curtis was demobbed ashore in February 1919. Entitled to the 1914-15 Star and Victory Medal, he was not entitled to the L.S. & G.C. Medal on account of offences committed in 1901 and 1914; sold with copied service record.