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Auction: 17003 - Orders, Decorations and Medals
Lot: 504

An emotive Victory Medal awarded to Gunner H. J. Jennings, Royal Navy, a 'grey and grisled' seaman who 'led the singing' - and commanded - a Carley float after the famous loss of H.M.S. Hampshire on 5 June 1916: tragically he died of hypothermia before land was reached

Victory Medal 1914-19 (Gnr. H. J. Jennings, R.N.), very fine

Herbert James Jennings, who was born on 5 January 1871, served as an Acting Gunner from 12 August 1901. Besides being a moderate Hindustani speaker, his service records note 'his knowledge of homing pigeons'.

H.M.S. Hampshire departed Scapa Flow immediately after the battle, with Lord Kitchener embarked on a diplomatic mission to Russia. She encountered heavy seas, lost her destroyer escort and, about a mile and half off the mainland of Orkney, struck one of several mines that had earlier been laid by the U-75. The detonation holed the ship between her bow and the bridge, and she sank after just 15 minutes. Of the 655 crew and 7 passengers aboard, only 12 crew on two Carley floats managed to reach the shore alive but Jennings was not among them; Kitchener and his staff were lost.

A glimpse of the gallant conduct of Jennings in one of those Carley floats is to be found in an article published in The Sunday Express of 8 July 1934, as related by a shipmate, Petty Officer Wesson. Tragically, Jennings slipped unconscious to the bottom of the float as a result of hypothermia, with the waves washing him overboard and later ashore. He is buried in a joint grave with Sub. Lieutenant T. H. W. Sharples in Lyness Cemetery, Hoy, Orkney and is commemorated on the Hampshire Memorial Wall, Orkney.

A poignant notice from his wife in the Portsmouth Evening News of 12 June 1916 stated: 'In loving memory of my dear husband, Herbert James Jennings, Gunner, lost aboard H.M.S. Hampshire, June 5th. From his loving wife and children. Safe home in port.'


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