Exceptional Naval and Polar Awards from the Collection of RC Witte

A rare Great War East Africa operations D.S.C. group of three awarded to Surgeon Lieutenant A. F. R. Wollaston, Royal Navy, a noted explorer, mountaineer and naturalist who was also awarded the Patron’s Gold Medal of Royal Geographical Society: latterly employed as a Tutor at his alma mater, Kings College, Cambridge, he was shot dead in his rooms by a demented undergraduate in June 1930 - Stanley Baldwin, the University’s Chancellor, subsequently describing how Cambridge ‘mourned a prince among men’

Distinguished Service Cross, G.V.R., hallmarks for London 1918, in its Garrard & Co. fitted case of issue; British War and Victory Medals (Surg. Lt. A. F. R. Wollaston, R.N.), together with his Gold Patron’s Medal of the Royal Geographical Society (Mr. A. F. R. Wollaston), glazed, in its fitted case of issue, and his Silver Medal of British Ornithologist’s Union, the reverse engraved, ‘A. F. F. Wollaston, B.A., New Guinea Expedition 1910-1911’, in its its (damaged) J. A. Restall, Birmingham fitted case, generally extremely fine (5) £6000-8000

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

View
Collection

D.S.C. London Gazette 22 February 1918. The original recommendation states:

‘For conspicuous devotion to duty and for his unfailing care of the sick and wounded. During the operations on the Rufigi, he not only attended to the casualties of the unit to which he was attached but he also voluntarily assisted those of the Rufigi River Transport. The Naval Officer-in-Charge of the latter men speaks highly of the assistance rendered by Surgeon Wollaston. Later, he was attached to Mafia for a period of two months during the time she was engaged in evacuating casualties from the Rufigi Delta, when he did all in his power to ensure their having proper attention.’

Alexander Frederick Richmond Wollaston was born in May 1875 at Clifton, the son of George Hyde Wollaston, ‘a man of wide culture and one of the most outstanding figures at Clifton College during the headmastership of John Percival’, and scion of a family whose name ‘occurs more often in the annals of the Royal Society than any other’; his talented mother, Sarah Constance, was a niece of the portrait painter, George Richmond.

Young Alexander also attended Clifton College, where he cared little for school life and games, but quickly gained a reputation as a first class naturalist. Going up to King’s College, Cambridge in 1893, where he was one of the select few to attend the zoology lectures of Alfred Newton, he also took a long vacation, the commencement of much foreign travel, when he walked from Hammerfest through Lappland to the Baltic.

Explorer

Indeed on graduation he decided to pursue a career as an explorer, as a result of which he felt bound to qualify in medicine in order to facilitate such travel - an objective eventually achieved in London and back at Cambridge, though he found life as a medical student dull and irksome. Accordingly he took every opportunity to escape the country, participating in climbing expeditions to the Alps and, in 1903, gaining membership of the Alpine Club.

And by way of satisfying his naturalist instincts, he twice visited the Sudan with N. C. Rothschild, collecting bird and animal specimens; so, too, by journeying as far afield as New Zealand and Japan. Then in 1906, he joined his first official expedition, namely the British Museum’s expedition to the Ruwenzori mountains in Central Africa, under R. B. Woosnam. Here he climbed what was then supposed the highest peak (15,286 ft.), afterwards named Wollaston Peak by the Duke of Abruzzi, and the returned home down the Congo with Douglas Carruthers, publishing a charming account of his travels and observations in From Ruwenzori to the Congo in 1908.

In the following year he joined the British Ornithologists’ Union’s expedition to Dutch New Guinea, under Walter Goodfellow, but it failed to reach the Nassau range on account of sickness, though Wollaston made a valuable study of the primitive pygmy Tapiro tribe and gathered an equally valuable collection of natural history specimens. And at the request of the expedition’s committee, he subsequently wrote an account of it in Pygmies and Papuans.

But Wollaston was sufficiently disappointed by the failure to reach the Nassau range that he returned to New Guinea under his own steam in 1913-14, taking C. B. Kloss as his only white companion. Their journey was very arduous, being beset by ‘dense vegetation, bad climate, noxious insects and the complete absence of any local food supplies’. Notwithstanding such challenges, Wollaston and Kloss secured a valuable collection of ethnological and natural history specimens, and the former delivered a ‘delightful lecture’ at the Royal Geographical Society in early 1914. For this, and his earlier exploration, he was awarded the Society’s Gill Memorial.

Sailor Surgeon - from East Africa to North Russia

The outbreak of hostilities witnessed Wollaston entering the Royal Navy as a Surgeon Lieutenant, and he quickly went to sea with the Northern Patrol in the armed merchant cruiser H.M.S. Mantua - the whereabouts of his 1914-15 Star remains unknown. Having then enjoyed further seagoing experience in the battleship Agincourt, he was embarked for East Africa in the Hyacinth in March 1916. And it was here, as cited above, and while on attachment to R.M.A. units, that he won his D.S.C.

He was, moreover, the recipient of a brace of “mentions”, the first of them for operations in East Africa in the period December 1916-July 1917, the original recommendation stating:

‘When the unit was encamped at Hibxibaur, he volunteered to give medical attendance, the unit to which he was attached (Heavy Artillery) being at this time camped some way from there. He took great personal interest in the men and went to considerable trouble to teach them to take proper precautions. Afterwards, he was attached to the Mafia whilst she was evacuating sick from Utete and he did all in his power to make the sick comfortable and to ensure they had proper attendance.’

And the second as a result of Captain Altham’s despatch (London Gazette 12 December 1919 refers):

‘I would like to bring to notice the exceptionally good work of the following officers of the Naval Medical Service with the advanced flotilla. Both these officers have to my personal knowledge performed valuable services under fire on a number of occasions.’

Wollaston returned to the U.K. in 1918, served in the Naval Intelligence Department, and was then present in further operations off Murmansk and Archangel in the monitor Humber in May-September 1919.

The Mount Everest Expedition 1921 and further exploration

Having been demobilised on his return from North Russia, Wollaston was elected to a six-years’ fellowship at his alma mater, King’s College, Cambridge. And his next major enterprise was the Mount Everest expedition of 1921, led by Lieutenant-Colonel C. K. Howard-Bury. His medical services to members of the expedition and to native Tibetans were highly appreciated, added to which he collected some unique plant specimens and took some of the finest photographs of the entire expedition. In July 1922, he contributed a paper to the Geographical Journal, in addition to contributing a couple of chapters to Mount Everest, The Reconnaissance.

On his return home, Wollaston married Mary, the daughter of Daniel Meinertzhagen, head of the banking house of Frederick Huth, and together they visited the unexplored Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta, in Columbia, in 1923, a paper subsequently being published in the Geographical Journal of August 1925. He was awarded the Patron’s Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society and, in 1928, was appointed Honorary Secretary.

Murder

In the same year he was re-elected a fellow at King’s, where he proved to be a highly successful and popular tutor, gifted as he was with a wonderful sense of humour, astonishing insight and broad outlook - ‘he could unlock hearts with a word or a look, and break down everyone’s reserves, except his own’. Thus his tragic death at the hands of a demented undergraduate in June 1930 caused utter horror and indignation, Stanley Baldwin, the University’s Chancellor, speaking of Cambridge ‘mourning a prince among men’. His murderer afterwards turned his gun on himself; sold with copied research, including a poignant article which appeared in the Telegraph Sunday Magazine in October 1977 - ‘Nicholas Wollaston pieces together the jigsaw of his father’s murder one sunny day in the summer of 1930’.