Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Four: Leading Seaman W. H. Toulmin, Royal Navy, who served on early attachment to the Royal Canadian Navy, and later survived the sinking of H.M.S. Calgarian, when she was torpedoed off Malin Head on 1 March 1918

1914-15 Star (212856 W. H. Toulmin L.S., R.N.); British War and Victory Medals (212856 W. H. Toulmin L.S. R.N.); Royal Navy L.S. & G.C., G.V.R., 1st issue (212856 W. H. Toulmin Ldg. Sean. H.M.S. Danae) edge bruise to last, nearly very fine and better (4) £100-£140

William Henry Toulmin, a Boy Fisherman from West Derby, Liverpool, was born on 2 October 1885. Enlisting into the Royal Navy, he was promoted Leading Seaman on 16 August 1914, and served during the early part of the Great War attached to the Royal Canadian Navy in H.M.S. Algerine and H.M.S. Niobe, monitoring and protecting British interests during the Mexican Civil War and in the West Indies. Moving to H.M.S. Calgarian, an Armed Merchant Cruiser, he assisted during the aftermath of the Halifax explosion on 12 December 1917, after a collision off the coast of Halifax, Nova Scotia involving a ship carrying TNT. The explosion, equivalent to 2.9kt, killed 1,950 people, wounding another 9,000.

After return to the U.K., H.M.S. Calgarian was torpedoed and sunk off Malin Head on 16 December 1917. Toulmin afterwards served in H.M.S. Danae in support of the White Russian Army, in the Baltic, during the Russian Civil War, and was awarded his Long Service and Good Conduct Medal on 1 October 1918. Shore demobilised on 14 February 1919, he joined the Royal Fleet Reserve on 25 February 1919, and died in Lewisham, London, in 1970.