Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A ‘Royal Yacht’ C.V.O. and C.B.E. group of nine awarded to Captain J. S. ‘Fish’ Dalglish, Royal Navy, who served aboard H.M.S. London during the Yangtze incident and was the first Commanding Officer of Her Majesty’s Yacht Britannia

The Royal Victorian Order, C.V.O., Commander’s neck badge, silver-gilt and enamels, the reverse officially numbered ‘C553’; The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, C.B.E. (Military) Commander’s 2nd type neck badge, silver-gilt and enamels; 1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star; Africa Star; Pacific Star; War Medal 1939-45, with M.I.D. oak leaf; Naval General Service 1915-62, 1 clasp, Yangtze 1949 (Cdr. J. S. Dalglish. R.N.); Coronation 1953, together with companion set of nine miniature medals, both sets mounted for display, good very fine (9) £1,800-£2,200

C.V.O. London Gazette 1 January 1955: ‘For services in H.M. Yacht Britannia.’

C.B.E. London Gazette 8 June 1963.

M.I.D. London Gazette 11 June 1946: ‘For winding-up operations in the Far East.’

James Stephen Dalglish, widely known as ‘Fish’, was born in Kensington, London, on 1 October 1913, eldest son of Robin Campsie Dalglish, later Rear-Admiral. He was educated at Ampleforth and Dartmouth, and in January 1931 joined the battleship Rodney as a Naval Cadet. He was promoted to Acting Sub-Lieutenant on 1 January 1934; Sub-Lieutenant, 1 May 1934; Lieutenant, 1 June 1935; Lieutenant-Commander, 1 June 1943; Commander, 30 June 1948; Captain, 30 June 1954; retired, 31 August 1963.

In August 1939 Dalglish was appointed to Kempenfelt as Gunnery Officer of the 18th Destroyer Flotilla, but after less than a month he was posted back to Excellent, where his duties included gunnery training of the armed merchant cruisers. In February 1940 he began a two-year posting in Faulknor, leader of the 8th Destroyer Flotilla, engaged on patrols in the North Sea, off the coast of Norway, and then to Gibraltar as part of Force H, escorting warships and convoys to Malta. In February 1942, following a refit at Southampton, Faulknor escorted convoy PQ9 to Murmansk. In April 1942, Dalglish commenced an 18-month appointment on the staff of the gunnery school at Chatham. Having been promoted to Lieutenant-Commander, Dalglish was appointed to the cruiser Swiftsure in September 1943. He served in this ship for the rest of the war, at home and in the Mediterranean, before sailing for the Far East in October 1944, where Swiftsure took part in Operation Iceberg which lasted until the end of May 1945, when the last Japanese resistance on Okinawa was crushed.

Following an appointment in April 1947 as Staff Officer Force T, the naval component of the British occupation force in Japan, Dalglish was appointed Staff Gunnery Officer of the 5th Cruiser Squadron at Hong Kong and serving in Sussex. After his promotion to Commander in June 1948, he successfully applied to remain in Hong Kong as Fleet Gunnery Officer on the staff of Admiral Alec Madden.

In April 1949, Admiral Madden decided to visit Shanghai for St George’s Day, and he and his staff embarked in the cruiser London. At this time civil war was raging between the Communists and the Nationalists. The capital of Nationalist China was Chungking, which lay on the upper Yangtze. On 20 April the frigate Amethyst was proceeding upstream to relieve another ship as guard-ship there. As she approached Chungking, about 140 miles upstream from Shanghai, she suddenly came under heavy fire from communist batteries on the north bank. One of the first shots struck the bridge, badly injuring the captain and helmsman. Amethyst then went aground and while thus immobilised was hit several more times, suffering 17 killed and 10 wounded. Some of the ship’s company, including the wounded, were evacuated to the south and an uneasy truce developed.

Admiral Madden decided that London should go to the assistance of Amethyst and, on the 21st, advanced upstream with her battle ensigns flying. As a staff officer, Dalglish had no particular duties but was assigned to “A” turret where, in his own words, ‘I had precisely nothing to do but to sit at the back of the gunhouse talking with the Ordnance Artificer’. Long before reaching Amethyst, London came under heavy fire, ‘the Communists opened fire at a range of less than a mile with solid armour-piercing (anti-tank) bullets and larger high explosive shells from field guns. London was a very big ship and difficult to miss at that close range, the former penetrated the ship like butter and the latter wreaked terrible damage... London opened fire with everything and I have little doubt that our 8-inch, 4-inch and pom-pom gunfire caused havoc ashore... Poor London was hit over 250 times! The turret I was in was put out of action by armour-piercing bullets severing the electric cables and then an H.E. hit on the turret roof flipped off one of the three armour plates and we were open to the sky! We were achieving nothing for Amethyst so we eventually turned in the river and retreated, with nineteen dead and many more wounded.’

London returned to the U.K. and was eventually scrapped. Admiral Madden and his staff, meanwhile, transferred to the cruiser Belfast, and returned to Hong Kong. Soon after, Dalglish returned to the U.K. and was cheered to receive news during the voyage of Amethyst’s successful escape from the Yangtze. On his return from the Far East Dalglish had a period ashore, first attending the Joint Services Staff Course, then instructing the Sub-Lieutenant courses at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich.

Towards the end of 1952, he was selected to be Executive Officer of the Royal Yacht which was still under construction on the Clyde. First, however, he had to have experience in command and, for the first three months of 1953, he commanded the destroyer Aisne. He took up his appointment to the Royal Yacht (subsequently named Britannia) on 8 April 1953. He and the other officers supervised the final stages of construction, fitting out and selection of the ratings - it was a sought after posting, with over 1,000 applicants for just 200 vacancies. The new company then had to be trained in the peculiarities of service in a Royal Yacht - for example, orders had to be given and executed silently. Dalglish was gratified to learn that the Queen would tour the Commonwealth in early 1954 in the liner Gothic and that the Flag Officer Royal Yachts would accompany her which meant that Dalglish would be the first (acting) Captain of the Britannia.

On 14 April 1954, Prince Charles and Princess Anne embarked, escorted by various members of the royal household, and Britannia sailed for Malta, where she arrived on 22 April. The Flag Officer and other officers from Gothic took up their appointments, and Dalglish reverted to his role as Executive Officer. Britannia then sailed for Tobruk where, on 1 May, the Queen and Prince Philip embarked for the final stage of their journey. The following day, the Mediterranean Fleet, commanded by Lord Mountbatten, executed an impressive manoeuvre, steaming past Britannia at 25 knots at a distance of only 300 to 400 yards. On 15 May Britannia conveyed the Queen up the Thames to the Pool of London, right by the Tower. It was a grand occasion, with hundreds of thousands of spectators, hundreds of boats crammed with people, everyone cheering and waving and sirens hooting.

Dalglish was still aboard Britannia for the July/August trip to Canada but, having been promoted to Captain in June 1954, left the Yacht in October. He received further recognition for his services to the royal family when he was appointed a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in the New Year’s Honours of 1955.

For the next two years, Dalglish represented the R.N. on the Ordnance Board and in 1957 he attended a year-long Higher Command Course at the Imperial Defence College. In April 1958, he was appointed Captain of the Inshore Flotilla, based at Malta, and in September 1959, he was appointed to command H.M.S. Excellent. Having been a gunnery specialist throughout his service, he was delighted with this posting which put him at the centre of Portsmouth naval life.

In August 1961, Dalglish flew to Singapore to take command of Bulwark, an aircraft carrier first commissioned in 1954, but converted in 1959 to become a commando carrier, carrying 16 Wessex helicopters, 200 Naval Air Squadron personnel and 800 Royal Marines in addition to her complement of 850. She was the Royal Navy’s most important ship at a time when the U.K. maintained permanent garrisons and naval forces ‘east of Suez.’ Bulwark made two lengthy visits to Hong Kong and also to Australia, Aden, Bahrain, Kuwait, the Seychelles and Kenya. She was also deployed operationally off the coast of northern Borneo to suppress pirates. In 1963 Dalglish was short-listed for promotion to Rear-Admiral, but was not selected and, at the age of fifty, was obliged to retire. He was appointed a Commander of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday Honours of 1963.

For the next ten years Dalglish held the post of Welfare Officer of the Metropolitan Police in London, supervising the provision of welfare services to the force which, at that time, numbered 22,000 officers, with 11,000 civilian staff, special constables, and about 13,000 pensioners. He retired in October 1973 with his wife to their house in Aislabie, Yorkshire. Captain ‘Fish’ Dalglish died at Scarborough, Yorkshire, on 6 October 1995. He published his autobiography, The Life Story of a Fish, in 1992.

Sold with copied research, cap tallies for ‘H.M.S. London’ and ‘Royal Yacht’, and a ‘Royal Yacht’ bullion badge.