Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Three: Commander G. R. Nixon, Royal Navy, who was swept off the bridge and lost overboard from H.M.S. Albemale during a freak storm on 7 November 1915

1914-15 Star (Commr. G. R. Nixon. R.N.); British War and Victory Medals (Commr. G. R. Nixon. R.N.) extremely fine (3) £180-220

George Russell Nixon was born in Wyke Regis, Dorset, in July 1880, the son of Lieutenant-Colonel Francis W. Nixon, Royal Engineers, and Edith E. R. Nixon, and the grandson of the first Bishop of Tasmania, the Rt. Rev. F. R. Nixon. He enrolled in 1894 and was appointed a Midshipman on passing out of Britannia in April 1896 and advanced to Lieutenant in December 1901. Awarded the Africa General Service Medal for the Somaliland operations 1902-04, for services aboard H.M.S. Hermione, he qualified as a Torpedo Officer in the following year and was promoted to Lieutenant-Commander in December 1909. Despite persistent problems with his back (lumbago) and later a dislocated right shoulder and injured hand, requiring treatment in Haslar and Osborne, he was appointed to the battleship H.M.S. Albemarle in 1913 and by August of 1914 he was declared fit. He was promoted to Commander in June 1915, however, on 6 November 1915 H.M.S. Albemarle left Scapa Flow to sail to the Mediterranean with a division of the 3rd Battle Squadron. At 02.27 on the morning of the 7 November, while in the Pentland Firth, the ships encountered extremely heavy weather and Albemarle, heavily loaded with spare ammunition, was struck by two large seas in rapid succession and suffered severe damage. The seas wrecked her fore-bridge and chart house, shifted the roof of her conning tower and flooded her forward main gun turret, mess decks and flats. Commander George Russell Nixon and Able Seaman George Stroud were swept off the bridge. Chief Petty Officer Aiken was also killed and three officers and sixteen men seriously injured by wreckage. Two of the injured ratings later died. Albemarle accompanied by Zealandia and assisted by Hibernia returned to Scapa Flow for repairs and to transfer the injured men to the hospital ship Plassey for further treatment. Nixon has no known grave and is commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial and additionally on the Rogate War Memorial. His brother, Oswald Nixon, 70th Squadron, Royal Flying Corps, was killed in action on 17 September 1916.