Orders, Decorations and Medals

Four: Captain Sir Benjamin Chave, K.B.E., Royal Naval Reserve
1914-15 Star Trio, M.I.D. (Commr. B. Chave, R.N.R.); Mercantile Marine War Medal (Benjamin Chave) the group mounted as worn, together with bullion Torpedo badge, nearly extremely fine (4)

K.B.E. London Gazette 1 January 1920.

Benjamin Chave was born in 1870 and educated at King Edward VI Grammar School, Southampton, subsequently becoming a Master Mariner with the Union Castle Steam Ship Company. During the Great War he served as Commander, R.N.R., aboard H.M.S. Armadale Castle, and subsequently, as Naval Transport Officer at Ludentzbucht, during General Botha’s successful campaign in German South West Africa. He was later Commanding the Transport Alnwick Castle when torpedoed in March 1917.

The liner Alnwick Castle was taken over in 1914 as a troopship and in 1915 was in the Dardanelles. On 19 march 1917, when 310 miles west of the Bishop Rock, Scilly Isles, the ship was torpedoed without warning and sank within half an hour. The lifeboats, of which there were six, got away without mishap, but the weather worsened and the boats were separated. Two of them were never heard of again but the Chief officer’s boat, containing 31 persons, drifted about for 9 days before being rescued by Spanish fishing boats and taken into Carino, near Cape Ortega. Ten persons had died, some had lost their reason and all were suffering from intense thirst, the water having given out some days before. Commander Chave’s boat had fared little better. She was five days adrift and was picked up by the French Fabre liner Venezia. Four persons had died from exposure. When a final muster of the survivors was made some weeks later, it was found that out of 139 persons on board the Alnwick Castlewhen she was torpedoed, 40 had been drowned or had died, including three of the crew of the Trevose, 25 crew of which ship had been rescued by Commander Chave the day before his own vessel was sunk. The full story of this episode is recounted by John Masters in his book I.D., chapter VI, ‘The Ordeal of Captain Chave’. He concludes: ‘No finer feat of seamanship has been performed in living memory: it ranks with the great voyages of the Elizabethans.’ Sold with further research.