Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

An early Second World War submariner’s D.S.M., post-war B.E.M. group of eight awarded to Engine Room Artificer 1st Class R. J. Marriott, Royal Navy

Distinguished Service Medal, G.VI.R. (M. 24898 R. J. Marriott, E.R.A. 1, R.N.), officially re-impressed naming; British Empire Medal (Military) G.VI.R. (E.R.A. Cl. 1 Richard J. Marriott, D.S.M., D./M. 24898); British War Medal 1914-18 (M. 24898 B. Art., R.N.); 1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star; Defence and War Medals; Royal Navy L.S. & G.C., G.V.R., coinage bust (M. 24898 E.R.A. 2, H.M.S. Medway), the third and last with contact wear, about very fine, the remainder good very fine and better (8) £1200-1500

D.S.M. London Gazette 1 January 1941.

B.E.M. London Gazette 14 June 1945.

Richard John “Skips” Marriott, who was born in June 1901 and who came from St. Ives, was decorated for services in H.M. submarine Sea Lion in 1940. He had entered the submarine branch in February 1928, was advanced to C.E.R.A. 1 in July 1934 and joined the Sea Lion in September 1938.

According to one of his contemporaries, he was ‘one of the most remarkable characters in Sea Lion ... a tall, saturnine submarine E.R.A. of the old school, with a highly developed sardonic humour. At sea he wore a peculiar headgear of his own invention, a long oblong of cardboard twisted into strange shapes and stuffed into a dirty old navy-blue balaclava, and when he walked through the control-room on his way to the engine-room, with his loping gait and eyes twinkling in a dead-pan face, he might have been a crafty old monk straight out of the pages of Boccaccio. Sometimes in harbour when it was my turn to be duty officer in the boat, I would join the E.R.As in their mess so that I could listen to some of old “Skip’s” yarns ...’

Marriott was also something of a poet, several verses - recounting the tragic loss of nine out of 12 swordfish class submarines in the early months of the war - being discovered inked on the inside of his Engine Room Register. According to the same contemporary, his work was ‘fatalistic but far from defeatist.’

Soon after the advent of hostilities, Sea Lion commenced war patrols off the Scandinavian coast. One of her early victories was the S.S. August Leonhardt, torpedoed in the Kattegat on 11 April 1940, but, as captain and crew quickly discovered, the enemy’s retaliation was often swift and accurate. Evidence of this can be found in the following account of Sea Lion ‘s eighth war patrol in July 1940 (Lieutenant-Commander P. K. Kemp’s H.M. Submarines refers):

‘Much the same sort of experience came the way of the Sea Lion, under the command of Lieutenant-Commander B. Bryant, who was later to make a great name for himself when in command of the Safari in the Mediterranean. Like the Tetrarch, he had been hunted all day after a successful attack on a large supply ship. Like her, too, he was put down that night as soon as he came to the surface to charge his batteries and ventilate the boat. The similarity did not end there, for the Sea Lion also found a heavy layer of water on which she could lie without movement.

It was after this that the similarity ended. For when the Sea Lion surfaced, she was not alone. The hunting craft sighted her and once again she was heavily attacked. The depth charges damaged her hydrophone and it was nearly 11 p.m. before it could be repaired and the men below could listen once again to the movements of the vessels above her. Just as it was repaired, they could hear the hunting craft moving off. At midnight, with all quiet above, the Sea Lion was able to come up in safety to ventilate and to charge her batteries. By that time she had been submerged for 45 hours.

All that night, in pitch darkness, the crew worked to repair the damage caused in the attacks on her. By daylight they had succeeded in making the boat fully seaworthy again. She closed the Norwegian coast and there sighted a large ship that had run shore. To make sure, Bryant hit her with a torpedo as she lay on the rocks.

Six days later, the Sea Lion was again in action. She sighted a convoy of enemy ships and shadowed them as they put into one of the Norwegian fjords. But in doing so her periscope was sighted by an escorting trawler, which turned at full speed to ram. She hit the Sea Lion between her two periscopes, carrying away the after standard and making the foremost one useless. Bryant, as soon as he righted the boat which had been rolled nearly over by the impact, decided to follow in the course of the convoy, although he had to proceed completely blind. By doing so, he avoided the counter-attack, for the depth charges went down on the scene of the ramming and the Sea Lion was already clear.

An hour later, the submarine stopped and listened. All was quiet above and Bryant decided to surface and find out the extent of the damage. Just as she started to blow her tanks, the sound of propellers was heard. The hunting craft were there and for five hours they harried the Sea Lion, shaking her time and again with depth charges.

It was midnight before it was safe to surface again. It was more dangerous than had been thought, for the periscope standard was hanging loosely over the side and swinging heavily as the boat rolled in the seaway. It would have to be secured before starting for home, and the work would have to be done in the darkness, for any light shown would be certain to bring down another attack.

All through the hours of darkness the men worked, trying to get a wire round the swaying mass of steel and securing it to the foremost periscope standard. It was desperate work, and one false step on the slippery casing would mean almost certain death. Just before dawn, the job was completed, but as the tired men climbed back on to the bridge, they saw the securing wire part under the strain. All their work had been in vain. There was no time before the dawn to make a second attempt and the Sea Lion had to dive with the mass of loose steel swinging freely across the hull.

All that day she crept slowly along on the course for home. She surfaced again as darkness fell and the work was begun again. Again, it seemed a hopeless task and in the end Bryant decided to cut the wreckage away. This was successful and the Sea Lion, relieved of her dangerous burden, was easier to handle. At the same time Chief Petty Officer Clarke, the wireless telegraphist on board, managed to rig a jury aerial to replace that carried away in the collision. She was able to send a signal to England reporting her condition.

Three days later, proceeding submerged by day and on surface at night, the Sea Lion reached her base. It was a triumph of determination and courage on the part of both captain and crew, for when the boat had been so severely damaged she had been within sight of the enemy coast.’

Happily, too, the patrol had had its lighter moments, not least when Bryant had surfaced close inshore and spotted a ‘young blonde Norwegian girl doing her morning exercises by an open window’, oblivious, of course, to ‘the watching eyes of a British submarine commander through a periscope at six times magnification!’ (Submarine Victory by David A. Thomas refers); a very full account of Sea Lion’s 1940 activities maybe also be found in Up Periscope by David Masters.

Other than a D.S.C. for Sea Lion’s skipper, Lieutenant-Commander B. Bryant, R.N., which was gazetted in September 1940, no other awards were announced for his gallant crew until the New Year’s Honours List of 1941. This comprised two further D.S.Cs, two D.S.Ms (including Marriott) and a brace of ‘mentions’.

Marriott would appear to have remained in the Sea Lion until July 1944 and was discharged ashore in August 1945, soon after being gazetted for his B.E.M.