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

Indian Mutiny 1857-59, no clasp (Boatsn. Richd. Cooley, Pearl) nearly extremely fine and rare £800-1000

Richard Cooley was four times mentioned in despatches by Captain E. S. Sotheby, C.B., R.N., namely on 21 February, 1 March, 9 March and 22 April 1858, the third of these despatches actually referring to his gallant deeds on two separate occasions.

Having been appointed Quarter-Master to Pearl’s Naval Brigade on 9 November, Cooley’s first “mention” was for his ‘good service’ during the storming of a rebel fort at Phoolpore, on the Gogra, on 17 February 1858, a fort that was ‘surrounded, except on the river side, by a thick jungle of prickly bamboo, nearly impassable, with a small entrance and gateway’; the estimated loss of the enemy was ‘about 300’.

Again, on 19 February, in an attack on a rebel force near the town and fort of Ichoura, Cooley was sufficiently prominent by his deeds to win another “mention” from Sotheby for his ‘good service’, a distinction that was repeated for his performance in the engagement against the rebel fort at Belwar on 2 March 1858, when, according to Sotheby, ‘Everybody behaved with the most perfect coolness under very trying circumstances and heavy firing.’ It was in this same despatch that Cooley was also cited for being ‘very active with the skirmishers’ in a major action against a rebel force of 14,000 men on 5 March 1858, an engagement that resulted in a loss of 1000 men to the enemy.

Finally, in the action at Thamowlee on 17 April 1858, when the heat was so intense that ‘a furious hot wind in our faces rendered it almost impossible to discern the two [opposing] parties’, the gallant Cooley once again came to the notice of Captain Sotheby. But further reward was to follow, for on 21 May 1858, he was advanced to Boatswain 1st Class; see Commander W. B. Rowbotham’s definitive history The Naval Brigades in the Indian Mutiny 1857-58, for further details.