Exceptional Naval and Polar Awards from the Collection of RC Witte

The Second World War D.S.O. and Bar group of three awarded to Captain M. B. Sherwood, Royal Navy, who, having served as a submariner between the Wars, was decorated for his gallantry as C.O. of an anti-submarine trawler flotilla off Norway in 1940, and again for hazardous operations off Greece in the following year: such was the quality of his courage and leadership in the former theatre of war that a fellow officer was moved to observe, ‘all of us in trawlers would have gladly followed Martyn Sherwood to hell and back’ - here, then, just one chapter from a remarkable wartime career that is recounted in his action-packed memoir, Coston Gun

Distinguished Service Order, G.VI.R. 1st issue, with Second Award Bar, the reverse of the suspension bar officially dated ‘1940’ and the reverse of the Bar ‘1941’, silver-gilt and enamel, in its Garrard & Co. case of issue; Lloyd’s Medal for Saving Life at Sea, silver (Lt. Commr. Martyn Butt Sherwood, R.N., S.S. Ryujin Maru, 4th November 1931), in its fitted case of issue; Greek War Cross 1940, together with a related set of miniature dress medals, including campaign awards from both World Wars (7), good very fine and better (10) £4000-5000

Just 115 “double D.S.O.s” were awarded to the Allied Navies and Royal Marines in the 1939-45 War, while Sherwood’s earlier Lloyd’s distinction was one of only seven awarded to serving Naval officers since 1901.

D.S.O. London Gazette 16 August 1940:
‘For bravery and devotion to duty in certain of H.M. Trawlers employed on the coast of Norway.’

Bar to D.S.O. London Gazette 3 June 1941:
‘For the withdrawal from the beaches of Greece under fire and in the face of many and great difficulties of many thousands of troops of the Allied Armies.’

Greek War Cross London Gazette 11 August 1942.

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

View
Collection

Martyn Butt Sherwood was appointed a Midshipman in the battleship Benbow in 1917 and removed to the destroyer Wolsey towards the end of hostilities, in which latter ship he served in the Baltic in support of the Estonians against the Bolsheviks in 1919.

Re-assigned to Benbow, he returned to the same theatre of war in support of the White Russians, and was advanced to Sub. Lieutenant in the Cornflower in 1921, then employed in the Red Sea patrol for the prevention of slave-trading.

Returning home in 1923, and having attended Cambridge University, he was assigned to submarines, in which capacity he was present at the loss of the L-24 in an exercise in the Channel in January 1924, when she was struck by the battleship Resolution - Sherwood, in his own H-class command, was asked to attempt underwater contact with the missing submarine. As it transpired, his experience as a submariner was called upon by the C.O. of the aircraft carrier Hermes in June 1931, aboard which ship Sherwood was then serving on the China Station, as a result of the ramming and loss of submarine Poseidon - the carrier’s boats picked up several “D.S.E.A.” survivors.

But it was for another rescue operation mounted from Hermes that Sherwood was awarded his Lloyd’s Medal for Saving Life at Sea, when, in November 1931, he was among those crew members who undertook a hazardous boat trip to collect survivors from the Japanese steamer Ryujin Maru which was wrecked on the Tan Rocks near Foochow - nine men were plucked to safety; three officers received the Silver Medal, and six ratings the Bronze Medal.

Another “event” that occurred during his time in Hermes was a visit from Charles Linbergh and his wife, who landed their seaplane alongside the carrier and came aboard for the night, but their subsequent visit was less happy, the intrepid duo’s aircraft capsizing as they were about to take-off from the Yangtze - Sherwood captured the incident on his camera, and of their rescue by a sampan sent from the Bee.

In May 1933, in the company of four other Naval officers whose tours of duty in the Far East were completing, including R. E. D. Ryder, the future St. Nazaire V.C., Sherwood obtained permission from the C.-in-C., Admiral Sir Howard Kelly, to return home in a small sailing ship, the Tai-Mo-Shan. Their journey took them across the Pacific and the Atlantic, via the Panama Canal, and took exactly a year to complete, Sherwood publishing an account of their adventures in 1935, The Voyage of the Tai-Mo-Shan. He had, meanwhile, been placed on the Retired List as a Lieutenant-Commander at his own request.

Recalled on the renewal of hostilities, he was appointed to the command of the large White Sea trawler Cape Passaro, and of the 15th Anti-Submarine Striking Force, in which capacity he patrolled off the North and North-West coasts of Scotland, and hosted a visit by H.M. the Queen - and, as per his official report dated 21 March 1940, delivered a promising attack against a U-Boat off Rona (‘The resultant oil track was visible a long way off, being a couple of miles long and averaging about 50 yards in width’).

In April 1940, his flotilla, in company with the 16th Anti-Submarine Striking Force, was ordered to Norway, their task to prevent U-Boats from penetrating the fjord with Namsos at its head, and to transport troops and ammunition. Regularly attacked by enemy aircraft in the process, Sherwood’s trawlers were eventually called upon to assist in the evacuation of our troops from Namsos, an operation that lasted from 29 April to 2 May 1940, and which attracted the fiercest and most prolonged Luftwaffe onslaught of the entire Norwegian campaign - one of his trawlers, the St. Goran, was sunk. The Cape Passaro next lent valuable assistance to the destroyer Eskimo, damaged in the Second Battle of Narvik, but on 21 May, after being bombed and strafed for an hour, she, too, became a victim of the Norwegian campaign, Sherwood’s gunners having run out of ammunition - she went down with one man, the remainder being picked up by the cruiser Cairo (and quite possibly his missing British War and Victory Medals). He was awarded the D.S.O., a fellow officer concluding that ‘all of us in trawlers would have gladly followed Martyn Sherwood to hell and back’: the same London Gazette also announced the award of the V.C. to Lieutenant-Commander R. B. Stannard, R.N.R., of the trawler Arab.

In July, Sherwood was appointed to the command of the flower-class corvette Peony, and in overall command of her consorts the Gloxinia, Salvia and Hyacinth. A busy Mediterranean tour ensued, “ABC” Cunningham ordering them to sweep magnetic mines in Benghazi harbour and off Tobruk soon after their arrival in October - his ships brought down a German torpedo bomber at the former location and attempted to save the S.S. Warzawa at the latter, but she was torpedoed for a second time while under tow. Sherwood next took the Salvia and Hyacinth to Piraeus, where the harbour was in a shambles after an ammunition ship was bombed and exploded, and cleared the harbour in 48 hours. He then went ashore to assist Field Marshal Sir Maitland Wilson and General Freyberg, V.C., in planning the evacuation of our troops, and was, by his own account, lucky to escape capture:

‘I was in Piraeus blowing up magnetic mines as the Germans came closer and closer. We got 24 ships with supplies for the Allies, but, alas, too late. I then helped with plans for the evacuation of Commonwealth troops, and, finally, with my young Army driver, was the last to leave Athens with the Germans close on my tail and certainly above it. We did just get off in a British destroyer [the Griffin] arriving at Monemvasia.’

He was awarded a Bar to his D.S.O. and the Greek War Cross, and was quickly back in action with his corvettes off the coast of North Africa, in addition to patrolling in the waters off Lebanon, Palestine and Turkey. But it was back off Tobruk that the Salvia fell victim to the U-568 in December 1941, Sherwood in the Peony having the sad duty of locating an oil patch and a body the following day. Having then offered to be trained as a “Charioteer” following the daring Italian attacks on the Queen Elizabeth and Valiant - and been refused permission by “ABC” Cunningham on account of his 42 years - Sherwood was ordered to return to the U.K. and report to Lord Mountbatten, but not before winning a “mention” for his latest escapades in the Peony (London Gazette 1 January 1943 refers).

Back home, he discovered that he was to be sent to the U.S.A. to oversee the cross-Atlantic transportation of 150 landing craft, the whole intended for the forthcoming Sicily landings, a project that encompassed three separate voyages, the first of them taking place in November 1942. At the end of the following year, he received his D.S.O. and Bar at a Buckingham Palace investiture, and assumed command of the sloop Hart, in which ship he was present off Normandy in June 1944 before removing to the destroyer Highlander and participating in some anti-U-boat attacks.

But he ended his war out in the Far East, where, in October 1945, as S.N.O. in Penang, he took the surrender of 4,000 members of the Imperial Japanese Navy - he sent the senior enemy officer’s sword back to the R.N.C. Dartmouth, attaching a note to say he had also been present at the surrender of the German High Seas Fleet in 1918, thereby bringing full circle a remarkable career.

Sold with the recipient’s original D.S.O. statutes and warrant, dated 16 August 1940, the latter water-damaged and partly detached at lower right corner, together with his Greek War Cross certificate of award, dated 1947, the reverse bearing his handwritten account of his escape from Piraeus (as quoted above), this, too, worn and torn; a silver and gold cigarette case, the interior engraved, ‘M. B. S., April 13th 1946’; and copies of his books, The Voyage of the Tai-Mo-Shan (Glasgow, 1935), and Coston Gun (London, 1946).