Exceptional Naval and Polar Awards from the Collection of RC Witte

The Boer War and Great War pair awarded to Acting Lieutenant-Commander J. R. Cleave, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, late Durham Light Infantry, who served in the gunboat Cicala on anti-Zeppelin and U-Boat operations 1916-18

Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 3 clasps, Cape Colony, Orange Free State, South Africa 1902 (Lieut. J. R. Cleave, Durham. L.I.); British War Medal 1914-20 (Lieut. R. Cleave, R.N.V.R.), note single initial, together with related dress miniature of the first, the clasps on the first old tailor’s copies, good very fine or better (3) £300-350

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Exceptional Naval and Polar Awards from the Collection of RC Witte.

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John Raymond Cleave was born in Ilfacombe in April 1881 and was educated at Marlborough and Brasenose College, Oxford, where in 1901 he became the university’s half-mile and A.A. champion. Commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the 4th (Militia) Battalion, Durham Light Infantry in January 1902, he served in Cape Colony and the Orange Free State from February to May of the same year, and was awarded the above described Queen’s South Africa Medal. Cleve resigned his commission in May 1904, but returned to uniform soon after the outbreak of hostilties in August 1914, when he was appointed a Temporary Sub. Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.

The Navy List for February 1915 shows him as ‘Pembroke for Air Service’, while one year later he was serving in the Stonefly, a Tigris gunboat commissioning in Mesopotamia, but in June of the same year he returned to home to take up an appointment in the Cicala. And he remained employed in the latter capacity until the end of hostilities, a period that witnessed his ship cruising between Immingham and Middleborough, ‘towing a balloon overhead, from a basket attached to which an Observer belonging to the R.F.C. spent many uncomfortable hours each day trying to spot U-Boats’. With her 6-inch low-angle gun replaced by a high-angle gun of lower calibre, Cicala was also intended to engage Zeppelins.

Cleave, who was advanced to Acting Lieutenant-Commander in June 1919, died suddenly in February 1920.