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Joseph Watt VC Fought a Light Cruiser in a Drifter
On 15 May 1917 three Austro-Hungarian light cruisers attacked a force of drifters that were patrolling the Straits of Otranto in order to prevent Austro-Hungarian and German U-boats breaking out from...
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Lieutenant-Commander Martin Nasmith VC and HM Submarine E11
Lieutenant-Commander Martin Nasmith was captain of the submarine HMS E11 at the outbreak of WWI. In October 1914 E11 was one of three British submarines that tried to enter the Baltic Sea. The other...
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Frederick Parslow VC and the Merchantman Anglo Californian’s Battle with U39
On 4 July 1915 the 7,333 ton merchant ship Anglo-Californian was 70 miles south of the Fastnet Rock, close to the end of a journey from Montreal. She normally carried nitrate, but on this voyage her...
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The British Capture Kut-Al-Amara 28 September 1915
In June and July 1915 the British captured Amara and Nasiriyah in Mesopotamia. The force that did so was nicknamed Townshend’s Regatta because most of the troops of Major-General Charles Townshend’s...
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Richard Bell Davies VC
Richard Bell Davies, a career naval officer, learnt to fly at his own expense in 1913 at the age of 27. He then transferred to the naval wing of the Royal Flying Corps, which was taken under the...
View ArticleWilliam Sanders VC
On 22 June 1917 Lieutenant-Commander William Sanders was awarded the Victoria Cross. The citation, available on Naval-History.net, said merely that Sanders ‘had been decorated because of his...
View ArticleGordon Campbell and the Crew that Won 5 VCs
The 11 medals, including the Victoria Cross, awarded to Vice Admiral Gordon Campbell were recently sold at auction for £840,000, a record for a set of British medals. Most VCs sold in recent years have...
View ArticleThe Battle of Imbros 20 January 1918
The evacuation of Gallipoli did not end the Royal Navy’s presence in the Aegean. There was a risk that the German battlecruiser Goeben and light cruiser Breslau might break out of the Dardanelles. This...
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The Zeebrugge Raid 23 April 1918
On 23 April 1918 the British raided Zeebrugge and Ostend with the intention of blocking the entrances to the canals linking the German destroyer and U-boat base at Bruges to the sea. These bases had...
View ArticleThe Ostend Raid 9-10 May 1918
The British raid on Zeebrugge and Ostend on 23 April 1918 was intended to block the entrances to the canals linking the German destroyer and U-boat base at Bruges to the sea. The failure at Ostend led...
View ArticleThe Second Battle of Heligoland Bight 16-17 November 1917
During the First World War, the British laid large numbers of mines in the Helgoland Bight in an attempt to prevent U-boats travelling to the Atlantic via the North Sea. The Germans sent minesweepers...
View ArticleHarold Auten VC
Harold Auten was born in 1891. He joined the P&O Line as an apprentice in 1908. He became a member of the Royal Naval Reserve two years later and was promoted to Sub Lieutenant just before the...
View ArticleThe Royal Navy Attacks on Kronstadt, Russia, 1919 and 3 VCs
In 1918, the leading British secret agent in Petrograd, as St Petersburg was then known, was Paul Dukes, code number ST/25. In order to provide a courier service for Dukes two Coastal Motor Boats were...
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