The Brian Ritchie Collection of H.E.I.C. and British India Medals

The rare Scinde campaign medal for the battle of Meeanee to Acting Master W. T. Cole, Indian Marine, commanding the Honourable Company’s Vessel Planet

Meeanee 1843 (W: T: Cole Act. Mr. Com. H:C:V: Planet) officially impressed naming, fitted with original German silver bar suspension, small edge bruise and minor contact marks, otherwise good very fine and rare £3000-3500

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Brian Ritchie Collection of H.E.I.C. and British India Medals.

View
Collection

Only 32 medals with the Meeanee reverse issued to European recipients aboard the Planet (16), with Cole in command, and the Satellite (16). Of these, four recipients from the Planet and five from the Satellite failed to claim their medals. These were returned to the India Office and probably melted down, leaving as few as twenty-three medals actually issued. Cole’s medal was despatched to India in 1850.

W. T. Cole was appointed Acting Master in the Indian Marine on 31 January 1841 and placed in command of the Honourable Company’s Vessel Planet on 31 March 1842. The Planet, a 397-ton iron river gunboat built at Bombay in 1840, was employed with the Indus Flotilla of six vessels, under Captain A. H. Nott, Indian Navy. The flotilla was used to convey Sir Charles Napier’s army from Sukkur to the left bank of the Indus. Thereafter, the 60 horse-power Planet, together with the H.C.V. Satellite, was detached to accompany the army on its march to Hyderabad and prevent hostile bands from cutting communications.

On 15 February 1843, the Planet was moored on the river about five hundred yards from the British Residency at Hyderabad, when the building was attacked at about nine o’clock in the morning by 8,000 Baluchis with six guns under Meer Shahdad Khan, one of the principal Amirs of Scinde. The Residency was defended on three sides by the Light Company of the 22nd Regiment, under Captain Thomas Conway (Ritchie 1/64), while on the fourth or river side its approaches were covered by Planet’s two 6-pounder pivot guns. Although heavily outnumbered and limited, according to the Resident, Major James Outram, to fifty rounds per man, the defenders in the Residency compound held off repeated attacks assisted by Cole, who directed a flanking fire from the Planet, for three hours. It was hoped that the Satellite would come up with reinforcements and ammunition, but when the vessel appeared, it was ascertained that she carried neither. At about 11 a.m., Outram told Conway that he required one hour in which to destroy important papers, and once this was completed the order was given to retire to the steamers.

Covered by a small rear guard, Outram’s Escort carrying their dead and wounded with them fell back across the marshes to the vessels. On reaching the river bank, Outram ordered the Satellite to proceed up stream to the ‘wood station’ to procure a sufficiency of fuel lest the enemy should arrive their first and set fire to it. Cole’s Planet meanwhile took in tow a barge moored to the shore. ‘This’, wrote Outram later that day in his report to Napier, ‘being a work of some time, during which a hot fire was opened on the vessel from three guns which the enemy brought to bear on her, besides small arms, and requiring much personal exposure of the crew (especially of Mr Cole, the commander of the vessel). I deem it my duty to bring to your favourable notice their zealous exertions on the occasion, and also to express my obligation to Messrs. Miller [commander of the Satellite] and Cole for the flanking fire they maintained on the enemy during their attacks on the Agency, and for their support during the retirement and embarkation of the troops’ (London Gazette 7 April 1843).

Both vessels were harried by the enemy, who pursued for about three miles and occasionally opened up their guns, but at length, the steamers got clear and reached Napier’s camp at Hala. Next day, Napier, having decided to attack the enemy at Meeanee on the 17th, detached a force of 200 Sepoys under Outram in the Planet and theSatellite to set fire to a wood in which the enemy’s left flank was thought to be posted. The operation was carried out at about 9 o’clock without difficulty, although it was later learnt that the enemy had moved some eight miles to the right during the night. Nevertheless, Napier considered the incendiarism had ‘some effect on the enemy’. Between January 1844 and April 1846, Cole was employed at Bombay.

Refs: IOL L/MAR/C/707; IOL L/MIL/5/66; History of the Indian Navy (Low); Sind Historical Society Journal, Vol V; Medals awarded to the Indian Navy for the Sind Campaign 1843 (Bullock).