Exceptional Naval and Polar Awards from the Collection of RC Witte

An inter-war C.B.E. group of six awarded to Engineer Rear-Admiral S. R. Dight, Royal Navy, who, having witnessed active service in the hunt for the German raiders Emden and Konigsberg in 1914-15, went on to attain flag rank as C.O. of the Admiralty’s Fuel Experimental Station in the 1930s

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, C.B.E. (Military) Commander’s 1st type neck badge, silver-gilt and enamel; 1914-15 Star (Eng. Lt. Cr. S. R. Dight, R.N.); British War and Victory Medals (Eng. Lt. Cr. S. R. Dight, R.N.); Defence and War Medals 1939-45, the first with slightly chipped enamel on lower arm, otherwise very fine and better (6) £400-500

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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C.B.E. London Gazette 3 June 1935.

Sydney Rupert Dight, who was born in October 1885, was appointed an Engineer Sub. Lieutenant in July 1905, shortly before taking up further studies at the R.N.C. Greenwich.

An Engineer Lieutenant serving in the Mediterranean in the light cruiser H.M.S. Weymouth by the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, he was quickly advanced to Lieutenant-Commander, and participated in the search for the enemy raider Emden in the Indian Ocean before the year’s end. Then in February 1915, Weymouth was ordered to hunt for another enemy raider, the Konigsberg, eventually trapping her in the Rufiji delta in East Africa - a story best retold in Kebel Chatterton’s Konigsberg Adventure.

Dight next saw action at the first battle of Durazzo in the Adriatic that December, prior to removing to Victory as additional for Rapid in January 1916, and to Sandhurst as additional for Rapid in September of the same year. He next served - albeit briefly - as Assistant Secretary of the Board of Invention and Research, prior to taking up an appointment in the Engineer-in-Chief’s Department at the Admiralty in December 1916, in which latter capacity he remained employed until the War’s end.

Post-war, he was advanced to Engineer Commander in June 1920 and to Engineer Captain in December 1929, the latter following a lengthy appointment in the carrier Furious. But it was as C.O. of the Admiralty’s Fuel Experimental Station that he was awarded his C.B.E., which insignia he received at Buckingham Palace on 9 July 1935. And he remained similarly employed until being placed on the Retired List as an Engineer Rear-Admiral in April 1939 - though intriguingly his service record states that he travelled to Germany in June 1939.

Quickly recalled on the renewal of hostilities, Dight initially served at the Admiralty, but by early 1940 he was appointed Director of Development in the Petroleum Warfare Department (Local Defence Division). Then in May 1943, he was embarked for the U.S.A. in the Queen Elizabeth, where he served in Washington D.C. - an accompanying extract from the Fulton Patriot refers to the Admiral singing ‘popular American airs with gust and enthusiasm for half an hour’ before a large crowd of U.S. military and naval personnel at the National Press Club, his sporting antics being rewarded with a rousing rendition of ‘He’s A Jolly Good Fellow’.

Dight reverted to the Retired List in November 1945 and died in January 1948; sold with copied research.