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Auction: 22002 - Orders, Decorations and Medals
Lot: 84

(x) Three: Able Seaman J. Rowe, Royal Navy

British War and Victory Medals (SS.5517 J. Rowe. A.B. R.N.); Royal Fleet Reserve L.S. & G.C., G.V.R. (SS.5517 (PO. B. 11237) J. Rowe. A.B. R.F.R.), good very fine (3)

James Rowe was born at Preston, Lancashire on 30 April 1895, the son of Joseph and Ellen Rowe. His father was a timekeeper at an engineer and loom maker's workshop. In the 1911 census James, aged fourteen, was listed as office boy at a film hiring business.

Rowe enlisted in the Royal Navy and on 1 April 1915 Rowe was drafted to the Spanker. She had been built in the Devonport Dockyard as a Sharpshooter class torpedo gunboat. Launched in 1889, she had a displacement of 735 tons, a speed of nineteen knots and a complement of 91 officers and ratings. In 1909 she was converted to a minesweeper; she was equipped with a kite winch and gallows on her quarterdeck and her torpedo tubes were removed, but she retained her guns - two 4.7-inch quickfirers and four three-pounders. Spanker was first deployed in the North Sea then, from 1917, as part of the 13th Fast Minesweeping Flotilla based at Oban on the west coast of Scotland. In 1917 Rowe was listed on the strength of Lord Lansdowne, a trawler requisitioned to be the parent ship at Oban, then of Nesmar, the Auxiliary Patrol base at Oban, but continued to serve in Spanker.

On 10 June 1918 Rowe was drafted to the Kent, an armoured cruiser launched in 1901. After spending three years in the dangerous and monotonous duty of minesweeping off the British coast, Rowe was about to experience a great deal of travel in different parts of the world. On 14 July the Kent sailed from Devonport, bound for China. The following day, Banunga, a merchant ship sailing in company, was torpedoed and sunk by a U-boat. Kent sailed via Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cape Town, Durban, Mauritius, Diego Garcia and Singapore, arriving in Hong Kong on 10 October, and went into drydock. On 21 December she sailed for Shanghai, then proceeded to Nagasaki.

On New Year's Day 1919 Kent sailed from Nagasaki for Vladivostok, where she was to spend the next six months. The Russian Civil War was in progress and the city was occupied by considerable numbers of Canadians and Japanese supporting the anti-Bolshevik forces. Marine detachments from the Kent and Suffolk took part in an extraordinary campaign ashore; guns from the two cruisers were removed and transported 5,000 miles by train to the Kama River in western Siberia, where they were mounted on small river gunboats to provide artillery support for Admiral Kolchak's White Russians. Kent herself made a few brief passages from Vladivostok to places along the Siberian coastline: Gornostai Bay, America Bay and St Olga Bay. At the second of these places she fired a number of rounds at land targets as requested by Russian military officers.

Kent returned to Hong Kong on 2 July and 17 days later, her company took part in a ceremonial parade for the celebration of peace. On 28 July, fifty-five ratings (including Rowe) were discharged from the ship and took passage in the Nagoya to various ships on station. Rowe joined his next ship, the Bee, at Kiukiang on the Yangtse River (today Jiujiang) on 11 August 1919. The Bee was one of twelve Insect-class river gunboats built in 1915-16 and originally intended for a campaign on the Danube. These ships had a displacement of 625 tons, a speed of fourteen knots and a complement of fifty-two. Their two funnels mounted abreast gave them a distinctive appearance. They had an exceptionally powerful armament for such small vessels - two 6-inch guns, two twelve-pounders and six machineguns. In 1920 Bee was selected to be flagship of the Yangtse Flotilla and her aft 6-inch gun was removed to make room for extra accommodation for the Senior Officer Yangtse and his staff.

Rowe was approaching the end of his five years' engagement and spent barely six weeks in the gunboat before taking passage back to England. During that period Bee made a passage up river to Bouncer Island (Tian Xing Xiang) and Hankow, which had the most important western concessions in central China, and to Wong-Shi-Kong (Huangshigang). The log records the ship's routine including medical inspections and taking aboard fuel and stores, and also encounters with other warships: the British gunboats Gnat and Woodcock, the American ships General Alava, Samar and Elcano and the Japanese Toba and Sumida. On the evening of 17 September thirteen ratings (including Rowe) transferred from Bee to Scarab. A couple of days later they embarked in the new light cruiser Colombo for passage back to the United Kingdom.

Rowe was drafted to the Royal Navy Barracks at Portsmouth and attended a gunnery training course at Excellent. On 7 April 1920 he was demobilised. He transferred to the Royal Fleet Reserve the following day and was discharged in June 1921 with his L.S. & G.C. Medal.


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Sold for
£150

Starting price
£60