Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria, to include the Brian Ritchie Collection (Part II)

Royal Navy L.S. & G.C., Anchor obverse (Wm. Leonard, Captain of Forecastle, H.M. Sloop Orestes, 24 Years), with old ring and loop/bar wire suspension, contact marks and edge bruising, otherwise very fine £700-900

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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Collection

Ex Cleghorn collection 1875; Sotheby’s 25 May 1895 (Lot 158); Glendining’s 19 December 1910 (Lot 428); and Sotheby’s 22 July 1979 (Lot 204).

William Leonard (a.k.a. Lennard) entered the Royal Navy as a Boy 2nd Class in May 1809 via the Marine Society. In his subsequent career of 35 years, he won entitlement to the Naval General Service 1793-1840 with clasps for “Java” and “Navarino”, the former for services as a Boy 2nd Class in H.M.S. Bucephalus and the latter as a Captain’s Coxswain in the Cambrian.

However, as verified by extensive accompanying research, one of the most dramatic moments of his career occurred on 23 June 1822, when his ship, the Drake, was shipwrecked off Newfoundland with the loss of one third of her crew. In a letter to the Admiralty, a senior surviving crew member, Gunner Thomas Elgar, wrote:

‘At half past seven o’clock the land was observed with heavy breakers ahead - immediately we hauled our wind, but not being enabled to clear the danger on that tack, attempted to stay the vessel, but from the heavy sea her stern took the breakers, and immediately fell broadside on the rocks, where the sea beat completely over her.

The masts were cut away with a view to lightening the vessel, as well as affording a bridge to save the crew, but without success in either point. In a few moments she bilged and there did not appear the slightest prospect of saving a man.

The cutter was launched over the lee gangway but sunk, immediately a man attempted with the deep sea leadline to swim on shore but the current setting so strong to the N.E. he was almost drowned in the attempt.

The only hope remained in the gig (the jolly boat having been washed away) and she was launched from the forecastle [Leonard’s domain] with the Boatswain when fortunately a heavy surf washed her upon a rock not communicating with the Main, and she was dashed to pieces but the Boatswain succeeded in scrambling to the top of the rock with about seven fathoms of line, the rest having been carried away with the wreck of the fore and main masts.

The forecastle, hitherto the only sheltered part of the vessel, was now abandoned for the poop, and all hope of saving the vessel being gone it was deemed advisable to quit her.

The people severally stepped from the poop upon the rock except for a few who endeavoured to swim on shore - most of whom perished.

Captain Baker after seeing the whole crew safe on the rock followed himself, but it was now found that the rock was insulated, and the tide making would cover it. The Boatswain observing this swam with a small line and fortunately reached the Main and coming opposite the rock on which we landed, threw the line across, by which the greater part of the people succeeded in crossing, which would otherwise have been impossible. Captain Baker, not withstanding that he was repeatedly solicited to cross, resolutely refused alledging till every soul was safe he could not think of it.

Shortly after, the line, from a heavy sea was washed away, and in consequence of the surf and darkness of the night it was quite impossible to obtain another.

Every instant the water continued to rise, when the officers and ship’s company used every endeavour, by tying their handkerchiefs together, to make another holdfast but that proving too weak it was found impracticable, and we were reluctantly compelled to abandon them to their fate. At daylight when we visited the beach there was not the slightest trace of these unfortunate sufferers ...’

Over the coming weeks a good deal of official correspondence regarding the loss of the Drake was exchanged between the survivors and Their Lordships - much of which survives in ADM 1/2789 - and, at length, in November 1822, when everyone had been safely re-assembled back in the U.K., a Court Martial was held at Portsmouth. All the survivors were duly acquitted, and Leonard received from the examining officers ‘great approbation for his zeal and gallantry in saving the lives of his shipmates.’ A few days later, on behalf of the Petty Officers and ratings of the Drake, Leonard wrote a letter to an old Lieutenant of the same ship - ‘in a truly seamanlike style’ - requesting that a memorial be erected to mark the bravery of their late skipper, Captain Charles Baker, R.N., a request that the Lieutenant forwarded for the attention of Their Lordships at the Admiralty, among others. And by the end of the same month, Leonard’s suggestion had found favour, so much so that today the resultant memorial tablet may be seen at St. Anne’s Church in H.M. Dockyard, Portsmouth. Not so graciously received by Their Lordships was a request by some of Drake’s survivors for remuneration for the loss of their clothes, an Admiralty minute of 21 November 1822 bluntly stating, “Refused”.

As it transpired, this was not to be the sole occasion on which Leonard experienced the loss of his ship, for, in January 1828, as related in Marshall’s Naval Biography (see entry for Captain Hamilton, pp. 450-2), he was aboard the Cambrian when she collided with the Isis after an action against several privateers ‘within pistol-shot of the fort of Carabusa’. As a result, she ‘fell broadside to on a reef of rocks’ and became a total wreck.

Leonard was awarded his L.S. & G.C. Medal in April 1836, his then Captain recommending him as ‘a man the most exemplary in every respect’, and, although “paid-off” in April 1838, he chose - in common with other old seadogs of Petty Officer status - to rejoin several years later, although on this occasion in the rate of Able Seaman. He was finally discharged in January 1855, by which stage he was in his 60s.