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Auction: 7012 - Orders, Decorations, Medals & Militaria
Lot: 808

A North Sea Casualty Group of Three to Lieutenant H.C. Woollcombe-Boyce, Royal Navy, Who Was Lost When H.M.S. Gurkha Struck a Mine Off Dungeness; Only Five of The 80-Strong Crew Survived; He Had Previously Taken Part in the Landing of a Punitive Party in the South Sea Islands 1914-15 Star (Lieut. H.C. Woollcombe-Boyce, R.N.); British War and Victory Medals (Lieut. H.C. Woollcombe-Boyce. R.N.), extremely fine, with photographic image of recipient (3) Estimate £ 220-240 Lieutenant Harold Courtenay Woollcombe-Boyce, born Cheltenham, 1887; educated at Brandon House, Painswick Road, ´from where he entered H.M.S. Britannia Dartmouth, as a Naval Cadet in September 1903. Appointed Midshipman in October 1903, he was made Sub Lieutenant in 1906 and Lieutenant in 1909. He was then serving in H.M.S. Cambrian on the Australian station and took part in the landings of a punitive party in the South Sea Islands. In July 1914 he was given command of H.M.S. Gurkha, an 880 ton destroyer, built in 1907. On the 8th February 1917, the vessel was on patrol four miles south of the Dungeness buoy when she struck a mine and sank within a few minutes. Of her complement of 80, only five were saved. All the officers on board were lost. Harold Woollcombe-Boyce has no known grave but the sea. He is commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial´ (Leaving All That Was Dear, refers).

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£280