Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Seven: Officer’s Cook 1st Class W. H. Barrett, Royal Navy

South Africa 1877-79, no clasp (Asst. Baker, H.M.S. Tamar); Egypt and Sudan 1882-89, dated reverse, 1 clasp, Suakin 1884 (Asst. Cook, H.M.S. Tamar); British War and Victory Medals (98894 O.C. 1, R.N.); Coronation 1902, bronze; Royal Navy L.S. & G.C., V.R., narrow suspension (Wd. Rm. Cook, H.M.S. Malabar), impressed naming; Khedive’s Star 1882, the fourth with a scratch over end of surname, otherwise generally extremely fine and a most unusual combination of awards (7) £600-700

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Medals for Services at Sea from the Collection of the Late Oliver Stirling Lee.

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William Henry Barrett was born in Poole, Dorset in October 1850 and entered the Royal Navy as an ‘Assistant Baker for Troops’ aboard the troopship Tamar in October 1876. He subsequently witnessed active service in the same vessel off South Africa during the Zulu War of 1879, and in the Egypt operations of 1882, and again aboard the Orontes during the Suakin operations of 1884. Advanced to Domestic 1st Class in September 1887, he was awarded his L.S. & G.C. Medal in another troopship, the Malabar, in March of the following year, and, as the longest served rating with an exemplary record aboard the Devastation, his Coronation Medal in 1902.

An Officer’s Cook 1st Class by the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, Barrett served aboard the cruiser Kent from October of the same year until September 1916, and consequently witnessed the action off the Falklands in December 1914 when the Kent fought a “Duel to the Death” with the Nurnberg and was hit on no less than 38 occasions. At length, however, she managed to punish her adversary even more severely, and eventually finished her off. Again, in March 1915, off the island of Juan Fernandez, the Kent pulverised the Dresden, an action that ended in the latter blowing-up; for a full and vivid account of Kent’s activities in the opening months of the War, see Keble Chatterton’s Gallant Gentlemen, pp. 85-127, and Surgeon T. B. Dixon’s edited diary, The Enemy Fought Splendidly.

Entitled, therefore, to the 1914-15 Star, in addition to his British War and Victory Medals, Barrett’s final appointment was to Vivid II in September 1916, and he was pensioned ashore, aged 66 years (!), six weeks later.