Exceptional Naval and Polar Awards from the Collection of RC Witte

A rare Great War Auxiliary Patrol and North Russia D.S.C. and Bar group of six awarded to Lieutenant E. W. King, Royal Naval Reserve

Distinguished Service Cross, G.V.R., with Second Award Bar, hallmarks for London 1917; 1914-15 Star (Lieut. E. W. King, R.N.R.); British War and Victory Medals (Lieut. E. W. King, R.N.R.); Mercantile Marine War Medal 1914-18 (Ernest W. King); France, Croix de Guerre 1914-1917, with bronze palm, generally very fine (6) £3000-3500

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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Only 91 D.S.C. and Bars were awarded during the Great War, 28 of these to officers of the Royal Naval Reserve.

D.S.C. London Gazette 6 April 1918:

‘For services in vessels of the Auxiliary Patrol between 1 January and 31 December 1917.’

Bar to D.S.C. London Gazette 11 November 1919:

‘For distinguished services in command of H.M. Paddle Minesweeper Walton Belle at Onega on the 1 October 1919, when he handled his ship with great skill and courage under very trying circumstances.’

Ernest William King was born in Portsmouth in January 1886 and gained his Master’s Certificate in August 1912. Appointed to the temporary rank of Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Reserve in July 1915, he was borne on the books of Actaeon for additional duties, namely employment in the paddle minesweeper Walton Belle, in which capacity he was awarded the D.S.C. in April 1918 and the French Croix de Guerre that May.

In May 1919, the Walton Belle was converted for use as a hospital tender, and King was placed in command and ordered to sail her to the White Sea, a voyage undertaken in 20 days. Subsequently, while bound from Onega to Archangel, on 3 August 1919 - and not 1 October as stated in the recommendation for his second D.S.C. - King and his crew had to subdue a mutiny, as reported by Surgeon Lieutenant W. F. Castle, who was present on the same occasion.

Earlier that day, after a failed attack on Onega, the Walton Belle had to make her exit under heavy shell and machine-gun fire, bringing with her an increasingly demoralised party of 30 Russian troops and, apparently, several Bolshevik prisoners. Exactly what followed appears to be the subject of conflicting accounts, though all agree the mutiny commenced when a Mills bomb was hurled at the bridge. Quickly arming his merchant seamen and a pair of Sick Berth Attendants, and with Castle’s assistance, King and his men duly quelled the mutiny, but not before three of the Russians had been killed - two of them having their heads blown off by a shotgun ‘left and right’ in the hands of one of the S.B.As. A boarding party having then arrived from H.M.S. Fox, Archangel was reached without further incident. King was awarded a Bar to his D.S.C.

Mutiny aside, Walton Belle lent valuable service as a hospital tender over four months in the River Dwina campaign, came under fire on several occasions, and was returned to her owners with plenty of bullet holes though her funnel.

King returned to his career in the Mercantile Marine after the War and died in March 1923, after fracturing his spine; sold copied research.