Orders, Decorations and Medals

A Boxer Rebellion and Great War service pair awarded to Commander E. T. Inman, Royal Navy, a distinguished destroyer captain who was killed in action in January 1917

China 1900, no clasp (Lieut., R.N., H.M.S. Dido); British War Medal 1914-18 (Commr., R.N.), rank and first initial officially corrected on the first, one or two edge bruises but generally very fine and better (2) £400-500

Edward Tyrell Inman, who was appointed a Naval Cadet in July 1892, served aboard the cruiser H.M.S. Dido from May 1899 to November 1902, a period that witnessed his advancement to Lieutenant and active service off China during the Boxer Rebellion - He added the Royal Humane Society’s Certificate on Vellum to his accolades in September 1905, for rescuing a boy from the military moat at Cosham.

A Commander by the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, Inman initially served in the battleship Dreadnought, aboard which ship he was present at the ramming of the U-29 on 18 March 1915. But shortly afterwards, as recounted by his friend. Lieutenant Lionel Dawson, R.N., he was appointed to the command of the torpedo boat destroyer Mentor at Harwich:

‘Poor “Ted” Inman! It was his great desire to serve in destroyers, and he often discussed it with me. A very shy and reserved man, he unbent with difficulty, was not universally popular, and knew it. I saw a lot of him at Harwich during the ensuing eighteen months, and he was killed on his bridge during a night action soon after I left there. We had always got on together in the Dreadnought, and became intimate friends when he came to destroyers. He loved the life, and brought to his new experience all the throughness and conscientiousness towards his duty that had marked him as a gunnery and executive officer. I know that in him I lost a good friend and the Service an able officer. Like many who fell, I do not think that he had any great confidence in his survival of the War.’

One of Inman’s more notable destroyer actions - a contretemps in the Heligoland Bight on the night of 17-18 August 1915 - is described in Endless Story:

‘The senior officer of the escorting destroyers was Commander E. T. Inman, in the Mentor, and when darkness came the divisions had been disposed on each quarter of the Princess Margaret, a minelayer.

It was a very dark night, calm but heavily overcast. Shortly before reaching the area to be mined, the force sighted a division of hostile destroyers, which at once fired torpedoes and then made off at full speed in the darkness. They had fired at the Princess Margaret, which, with her huge hull and three funnels, was a conspicuous and tempting target. The torpedoes luckily missed her; but one unfortunately hit the Mentor, the resulting explosion completely blowing away her bows under water ... The Mentor, meanwhile, seemed to be completely disabled, and found herself quite alone within a few miles of the enemy coast, and in water which generally teemed with German patrol vessels. The lower portion of her bows had been completely blown away, until the deck of the forecastle, from about the foremost gun, hung vertically down towards the water with the stem-head submerged.

Realising the danger of capture, Inman destoyed his confidential books. Then, with his guns and torpedoes ready for instant action, he set the rest of his men to work to shore up bulkheads, place collision mats, and do all in their power to make the ship tolerably seaworthy for the 360-mile passage home. Luckily the weather was fine, and showed every prospect of remaining so.

While this work was still in progress, Inman sighted some ships in the darkness and wished to ask them to stand by him. To his great annoyance, the smashing of lights and lamps made communications impossible, and the vessels steamed on and vanished in the darkness. It was not until some days later that he blessed the failure of his lights. Those ships were German cruisers. They passed him within a few hundred yards. Had he shown a solitary gleam he would have been sunk outright.

Her temporary repairs finished, the Mentor made her tracks for home, gradually working up to 10 knots. At this speed, in the words of her captain, “she pushed the whole ocean in front of her.” The fine weather held, and she duly arrived at Harwich, where we watched her coming up the harbour, an extraordinary sight.’

So, too, Inman’s final action, in the Flanders Bight on the night of 22 January 1917, by which stage he was in command of the Simoom:

‘A torpedo exploded under the bow of his ship with such a terrific force that the forepart of the destoyer was blown clean over the foremost funnel. The Captain of the Simoom, Commander Inman, and his First Lieutenant were both killed, but notwithstanding that fact, and indifferent to the damage done to their boat, the after-gun crew fought their gun until the ice-cold sea water reached their knees, and the guns blazed forth in defiance for the last time only when the men were swept off their feet as their ship sank from under them. The miracle is that even 57 of her crew were saved that dark, bitterly cold night.’

Inman is commemorated on the Chatham Naval Memorial.