Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A good Great War minelaying operations D.S.M. group of five awarded to Able Seaman F. Foreman, Royal Navy

Distinguished Service Medal, G.V.R. (194833 A.B., Minelaying Opns. 1916-7); British War and Victory Medals (194833 A.B., R.N.); Royal Navy L.S. & G.C., G.V.R., 1st issue (194833 A.B., H.M.S. Abdiel); Imperial Service Medal, G.VI.R., 1st issue (Frederick Foreman), together with related “H.M.S. Abdiel” cap tally and gardening/R.H.S. prize awards (5), four in silver and one in bronze, all named and dated circa 1935, good very fine or better (11) £500-600

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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D.S.M. London Gazette 23 May 1917.

Frederick Foreman was born in Battersea, London in May 1882 and entered the Royal Navy as a Boy 2nd Class in July 1897. Returning to civilian life in April 1912, his 12 year engagement over, he was recalled on the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914 and posted to Pembroke I, where he served until March 1916. In the latter month, however, he received his first seagoing appointment, joining the newly commissioned H.M.S. Abdiel under Commander B. Curtis. As it transpired, he would remain aboard her until the end of hostilities, and therefore shared in her honours as one of the busiest minelayers of the War, Jellicoe, no less, writing in his memoirs, that he wished he had more ships like her:

‘Abdiel completed her first minelaying operation in the Heligoland Bight the day after she was commissioned, and from then on she dashed back and forth across the North Sea, each time depositing a fresh load of potential destruction for the German fleet at the entrance of their harbours.

When the German fleet retreated after the Battle of Jutland, Abdiel was ordered to race ahead of it and lay a minefield between the fleet and its bases - provided this could be accomplished by daylight. At a speed of 31 knots Abdiel carried out her mission unobserved, and the battleship Ostfriesland was very nearly sunk by one of the mines.

In late 1916 the 20th (Minelaying) Destroyer Flotilla was formed with Abdiel, under the now Captain Curtis, the leader. Based at Immingham on the Humber,the Flotilla continued for the rest of the War to harass the High Seas Fleet by repeated dashes into German waters. Abdiel laid 6,293 mines altogether, far more than any other destroyer-minelayers ...’

Foreman was pensioned ashore in February 1919.