Exceptional Naval and Polar Awards from the Collection of RC Witte

A good Great War D.S.C. group of four awarded to Captain W. P. Stocker, Royal Navy, who witnessed extensive action in cruisers, including Jutland, Heligoland Bight and in the Baltic

Distinguished Service Cross, G.V.R., hallmarks for London 1919; 1914-15 Star (Lieut. W. P. Stoker, R.N.); British War and Victory Medals (Lieut. W. P. Stocker, R.N.), together with the Ogilvy Medal, in gold, 39mm., as awarded to the top candidate in the R.N’s torpedo course (Lieutenant William Pennell Stocker, R.N.), in its fitted case of issue, and his Royal Life Saving Society Medal, in bronze, the reverse inscribed, ‘W. P. Stocker, Mar. 1903’, mounted as worn, generally very fine (6) £2000-2500

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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D.S.C. London Gazette 27 June 1919:

‘For distinguished services in H.M.S. Galatea, 1st Light Cruiser Squadron, and H.M.S. Cardiff, 6th Light Cruiser Squadron.’

William Pennell Stocker, who was born in August 1892, the son of an architect and surveyor, entered the Royal Navy as a cadet at a training establishment in May 1905. Advanced to Sub. Lieutenant in January 1913 and to Lieutenant in April 1914, he was serving in the cruiser H.M.S. Royal Arthur on the outbreak of hostilities. And other than his attendance at Vernon to qualify as a Torpedo Officer in February-August 1917, when he won the Olgilvy Medal, he remained actively employed in cruisers for the entire war.

Thus his services in Galatea in the 1st Light Cruiser Squadron from March 1915 until January 1917, in which period she was credited with bringing down the zeppelin L-7 on 4 May 1916; so, too, with lending valuable service at Jutland, when she was flying the broad pennant of Commodore Alexander-Sinclair, of the First Cruiser Squadron - indeed it was Galatea who first spotted the enemy, the Commodore signalling ‘Enemy in sight, consisting one destroyer’, which message prompted Beatty to send up a reconnaissance seaplane from Engadine. Shortly afterwards, however, or certainly from Galatea’s perspective, no further confirmation of the enemy’s whereabouts or early intention was required, the S.M.S. Ebling hitting Galatea just below her bridge with a 5.9-inch shell - mercifully, it failed to explode. Later in the day she received some splinter damage, too.

Removing to the recently launched Cardiff in the summer of 1917, and now as a qualified Torpedo Officer, Stocker was next engaged at Heligoland Bight on 17 November, when his ship took hits on her forecastle, the superstructure and in the torpedo department. Cardiff afterwards had the honour of escorting the German High Seas Fleet between two immense columns of British ships in the Firth of Forth on 21 November 1918, following which she was employed in anti-Bolshevik operations in the Baltic in 1919. Stocker was awarded the D.S.C.

Advanced to Lieutenant-Commander in April 1922 and to Commander in June 1927, he was placed on the Retired List as a Captain in January 1939. Quickly recalled on the renewal of hostilities, his expertise in torpedoes found him serving in assorted shore establishments, a report in early 1944 describing how he had ‘worked hard and loyally for many years on the technical aspects of torpedoes’, in which respect he had been ‘of immense value to the Service’. Stocker reverted to the Retired List in December 1945; sold with copied research.