British and World Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

The superb Great War Q-ship operations D.S.M. and Bar group of five awarded to Leading Seaman P. Ross, Royal Navy, who won both awards for his gallantry as Gunlayer in the special service smack I’ll Try (a.k.a. Nelson), the second of them on the same occasion that his skipper, Tom Crisp, won a famous posthumous V.C.

Distinguished Service Cross, G.V.R., with Second Award Bar, the reverse of which officially dated ‘15 August 1917’ (184463 P. Ross, Lg. Sea., North Sea, 1 Feb. 1917); 1914-15 Star (184463 P. Ross, A.B., R.N.); British War and Victory Medals (184463 P. Ross, L.S., R.N.); Royal Navy L.S. & G.C., G.V.R., 2nd issue (184463 Percival Ross, A.B., H.M.S. Excellent), good very fine (5) £8000-10000

One of only 67 Second Award Bars awarded to the D.S.M. in the Great War.

Ex Captain K. J. Douglas-Morris collection (Part I), Dix Noonan Webb, 1 October 1996 (Lot 667).

D.S.M. London Gazette 23 March 1917: ‘The following awards have been approved.’

Bar to D.S.M. London Gazette 2 November 1917: ‘The following awards have been approved.’

Percival Ross was born at Epworth, Lincolnshire and joined the training establishment Impregnable as a Boy 2nd Class in July 1895. He subsequently served aboard a variety of ships and, nearly a year before the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, was awarded his L.S. & G.C. Medal.

Having served in Dryad, an old torpedo boat based at Lowestoft for minesweeping duties, from October 1913, and been advanced to Leading Seaman in August 1916, Ross transferred to the shore base Halcyon II for special duties aboard Q-ships in December of the same year, thereby gaining appointment as Gunlayer in the nine-man crew of ‘H.M. Special Service Smack’ I’ll Try.

On 1 February 1917, the day the German Imperial Navy declared virtually unrestricted submarine warfare, I’ll Try was at sea off Lowestoft. To outward appearances the 70ft. smack was engaged in fishing in company with another armed smack, Boy Alfred, when two U-Boats appeared. One of the German commanders hailed the Boy Alfred from his conning tower and ordered Skipper Wharton and his crew to abandon ship as he intended to torpedo her. Wharton went up into the bows, feigning deafness, and asked the U-Boat commander to repeat his instructions. All the while Boy Alfred was gently swinging by means of her specially fitted motor into a position abeam of the U-Boat from which she could get off a shot from her concealed 12-pounder gun. As Wharton was going through the motions of abandoning ship, he glanced at two fishermen standing in front of the gun and then at the U-Boat, and judging his moment, roared “Let go, Buffer!” The two men stood aside from the muzzle and a shell tore away towards the U-Boat. Before the Germans could recover, a second shot followed and struck the conning tower. The U-Boat heeled over, swung back and went down by the head. The U-Boat’s consort, east of the I’ll Try, crash dived.

For the next two hours the second U-Boat, with only her periscope showing at intervals, and I’ll Try played a deadly game of hide and seek. Ultimately, Skipper Thomas Crisp of the I’ll Try decided to sail east hoping the U-Boat would think they were retiring. As hoped the U-Boat continued to stalk the smack and when about 200 yards off I’ll Try’s starboard bow, it fired a torpedo and broke surface, showing her conning tower and the whole of her upper casing. Crisp, using his secret motor, put the helm hard over so as to dodge the torpedo by two or three feet and also bring the smack broadside on to the U-Boat. Ross at the smack’s 13-pounder got on target and fired, the shell crashing into the base of the conning tower and blowing pieces off the U-Boat in all directions. Heeling over under the shock, the U-Boat swung back again and dipped by the bow. Then the stern came up, the propeller spinning high out of the water, and she plunged into the deep. I’ll Try closed over the spot, but all that could be seen were large pockets of air coming up from the bottom and an increasing spread of oil. Crisp was awarded the D.S.C. and Ross his first D.S.M.

Following the encounter of 1 February 1917 the I’ll Try resumed her vigil under the new name Nelson. And whilst off Jim Howe Bank in the North Sea at about 2.45 p.m. on 15 August 1917, with her fishing trawl shot, about a mile apart from the armed smack Ethel and Millie, Crisp sighted a U-Boat coming out of the mist three or four miles away to the north-west. As Crisp roared “Sub Oh! Clear for action!”, the U-Boat’s first shell fell about 100 yards off the port bow, and as Ross manned the gun, a second German shell fell close by. Crisp put the Nelson on another tack to see if it would disturb the enemy’s aim but the German gunner was on target and the third shell penetrated the bow just below the waterline and Nelson began to sink. Crisp ordered a seaman to break out the White Ensign, and Ross to open fire. The gun was raised to the extreme of its elevation, but still the 13-pounder was hopelessly outranged. The seventh German shell hit Crisp himself, shattering both his legs at the hips and partially disembowelling him, before smashing through the deck and passing out through the ship’s side. Ross, and the Skipper’s son, Tom Crisp, rushed over to him and found that in spite of his frightful wounds he was still conscious. He knew he was dying and told his son to send off a message which Ross took down: ‘Nelson being attacked by submarine. Skipper killed. Send assistance at once.’ The message was attached to the smack’s carrier pigeon and sent on its way.




“After that”, Tom Crisp later told the Court of Inquiry, which Ross also attended, “we were making water fast and had used nearly all our ammunition, only having five rounds left, and we had to leave the ship because she was sinking. I asked the skipper if we should take him in the boat with us, but he said: “No, throw me overboard.” This I would not do, and so we had to leave him on board the smack as he was in too bad condition to be moved. We got into the small boat, the smack sinking by the head about quarter of an hour afterwards. All the shots were directed on the Nelson until she sank. After our ship sank the submarine directed the fire on the Ethel & Millie. When we were in the small boat, the skipper of the Ethel & Millie beckoned us to go on board, but we would not go. We kept rowing in to the south-east and we saw one direct hit on the Ethel & Millie and the crew abandon her. Then the submarine worked round to the south and came to the southward of us. When the submarine was working round to the south we were working round in the opposite direction. The submarine left off firing at the Ethel & Millie and picked up her crew. We saw the submarine’s crew line the Ethel & Millie’s crew up on the submarine’s fore deck. They tied the smack’s boat up astern of the submarine and steamed to the smack. The wind being from the south south east was blowing the Ethel & Millie into the north north-west until she was nearly out of sight. Just before the Ethel & Millie got out of sight a haze fell over her and we rowed into the south-east as hard as we could, the opposite direction in which the smack and the submarine were going. It was drawing in dusk then. After dark came on we kept pulling in to the south-west. Next morning at day break we saw a buoy ahead of us and the wind freshened and blew us out to the eastward again. We still kept pulling to the westward. On Thursday we saw the Dryad. It was about three o’clock in the afternoon. He came in sight of us and then directed his course to the north-west and went out of sight. After the Dryad came a group of minesweepers. They got ahead of us and turned and went away in a south-westerly direction. All the time we had a large piece of oilskin and a pair of trousers tied on two oars to attract attention, but they did not see us. As night came the weather became finer, and we kept pulling into westward all night as hard as we could. At daybreak we saw some smacks straight ahead of us, but there was too much wind from westward, and we could not get to them, and they went away from us in a south-westerly direction. One of the chaps sighted a buoy which turned out to be the Jim Howe Bank buoy. We pulled up to it and made fast to it just as the tide turned about 10.30 a.m. on the Friday. The wind was blowing hard. About 1.45 p.m. the Dryad found us.”

The fate of the crew of the Ethel & Millie, last seen standing on the U-Boat’s casing, has been the subject of numerous conspiracy theories, a chapter best summarised by Stephen Snelling in his definitive history The Naval V.Cs:

‘Nowhere, however, in any of the accounts was mention made of the involvement of the Ethel & Millie. Her crew’s fate remains uncertain. The seven men were last seen as prisoners on the submarine’s forward casing. Originally reported ‘missing’, they were officially given up for dead on 10 March 1918. In the circumspect words of the Admiralty, they were ‘presumed to have lost their lives on 16 August 1917’ (sic). The suspicion persists that they were murdered, though no evidence exists to support the theory. Perhaps they were cast off in their small boat after being questioned and were subsequently lost. More than sixty years ago the writer David Masters suggested that they were taken on board the submarine which was itself sunk before reaching port. To add weight to his theory, he speculated that the submarine, which was never identified, might have been the UC-41 which was sunk by trawlers off the Scottish coast six days later. But there was another, more bizarre, theory put forward by the son of Arthur Soanes, a deckhand aboard the Ethel & Millie. He claimed to have used his powers as a medium to make contact with his father, who told him ‘that they had been very well looked after by the U-Boat crew who had wrapped them in blankets and given them hot drinks. So, when the U-Boat sank ... they all died together as friends rather than enemies.’

Following the Court of Inquiry at Lowestoft, Skipper Crisp was awarded a posthumous V.C., Tom Crisp the D.S.M., and Ross a Bar to his D.S.M.

Ross joined Victory in September 1917 and was pensioned ashore from Courageous in July 1920. From March 1921 he served in the Royal Fleet Reserve until discharged on reaching the age limit of 50 years in July 1930, his total service at that time amounting to 35 years; sold with his original parchment Certificate of Service and a related newspaper feature.