Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Three: Rear-Admiral P. W. Dumas, Royal Navy

British War and Victory Medals (R. Adml.); Union of South Africa Medal 1910, unnamed as issued, good very fine or better (3) £400-500

Philip Wylie Dumas was born in March 1868 and was educated at St. Leonard’s School and at Britannia. Steady promotion followed in the period leading up to the Great War and he was appointed Captain, R.N., in December 1906.

Over the next two or three years, Dumas was employed as a Naval Attache in Germany, Denmark and Holland, services that resulted in him being awarded the M.V.O. (4th class) for the King’s visit to Copenhagen in 1908, in addition to the 2nd class insignia of the Danish Order of Dannebrog and the Prussian Order of the Red Eagle. Then in 1910 he was elevated to C.V.O. on the occasion of the opening of the first parliament of the Union of South Africa, when he was serving as Flag Captain, Cape of Good Hope.

Dumas added a C.B. to his honours in June 1914, shortly after taking up appointment as Assistant Director of Torpedoes at the Admiralty, and, by the War’s end, had also been awarded the 4th class insignia of the Russian Order of St. Vladimir and the 3rd class of the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun.

Advanced to Rear-Admiral in September 1918, the same year in which he became an A.D.C. to the King, and to Vice-Admiral in June 1924, Dumas retired to Surrey and died in December 1948.