Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Royal Navy L.S. & G.C., G.V.R., 2nd issue, fixed suspension (239043 A. E. C. Puckett, A.B., H.M.S. Victory) edge nicks, contact wear and polished, good fine £40-60

Albert Edward Cracknell Puckett was born in East Cowes on the Ilse of Wight in August 1890 and entered the Royal Navy as a Boy 2nd Class in July 1907. An Able Seaman by the outbreak of hostilities, he quickly saw service of the active kind, when his ship, the battleship H.M.S. Audacious, was sunk by a mine, off Northern Ireland, on 27 October 1914, thereby winnning the unfortunate accolade of being the first capital ship of any nation to be lost in the Great War. The mines had been laid by the Norddeutscher Lloyd liner Berlin, which had been fitted out as an auxiliary cruiser and minelayer early in August. The Audacious blew up and sank after 12 hours of buffeting by the seas and two failed attempts to take her in tow, but luckily her complement was safely taken off by the White Star liner Olympic.

Joining another battleship, the Queen Elizabeth, in December of the same year, Puckett served in her for the remainder of the War, and was consequently present in the Dardanelles naval operations of 1915 when she flew the flag of Vice-Admiral J. M. de Robeck. Of all the capital ships employed in that theatre, the Queen Elizabeth was one of the most actively engaged. Carrying out a successful bombardment with her 15-inch guns of the Turkish Narrows forts from a position off Gabe Tepe in early March 1915, she went on to witness the famous landings in the following month, when Sir Ian Hamilton used her as his ‘mobile H.Q.’ off the beacheads. Off Helles, as evidenced by Hamilton’s own account, one of her shells saved an advancing British unit:

‘At a trot they came on ... their bayonets glittering and their officer yards in front waving his sword, Crash! and the Queen Elizabeth let fly a shrapnel [shell], range 1200 yards, a lovely shot; we followed it through the air with our eyes. Range and fuse - perfect! The huge projectile exploded fifty yards from the Turkish right and vomited its contents of 10,000 bullets clean across the stretch whereon the Turkish company was making its last effort. When the dust and smoke cleared away nothing stirred on the whole of that piece of ground.’

A superb painting depicting the Queen Elizabeth bombarding the Turkish Narrows forts in March 1915, by Norman Wilkinson, forms part of the Imperial War Museum’s collection.

Puckett was awarded his L.S. & G.C. Medal in September 1924.