Auction Catalogue

1 December 2004

Starting at 10:00 AM

.

Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Grand Connaught Rooms  61 - 65 Great Queen St  London  WC2B 5DA

Lot

№ 182

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1 December 2004

Hammer Price:
£260

Seven: Able Seaman F. Rouse, Royal Navy

Naval General Service 1915-62
, 1 clasp, Palestine 1936-1939 (J. 103985 A.B., R.N.); 1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star; Africa Star; Defence and War Medals; Royal Navy L.S. & G.C., G.VI.R., 1st issue (J. 103985 A.B., H.M.S. Hasty), very fine and better (7) £180-220

The destroyer H.M.S. Hasty won a very impressive tally of 11 Battle Honours in her all too brief wartime career. Following service in the South Atlantic and in the Norway operations of 1940, she joined the Mediterranean fleet in June of the same year, thereafter seeing virtually constant action, not least off Calabria and Cape Matapan, in addition to the costly evacuations from Greece and Crete. Her final major engagement was the Battle of Sirte, for in June 1942 her charmed existence came to an end when she was torpedoed by an enemy S-boat, the resultant explosion blowing off all the structure forward of her ‘A’ gun - 13 men were killed, the survivors being picked up by her consort, the Hotspur.