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Auction: 7012 - Orders, Decorations, Medals & Militaria
Lot: 140

South Africa 1877-79, one clasp, 1879 (Capt: H. Nesbitt, Cape Yeory.), extremely fine Estimate £ 700-900 Captain Henry Nesbitt (1835-1890), born Cookstown, County Tyrone, Ireland; Henry´s father (Alexander Nesbitt) was a Quarter Master serving with the 12th Foot in South Africa in the early 1850´s; Alexander was posted on the frontier, with two of his sons living with him (Henry and Charles), the four remaining siblings (Richard, Mary, Elizabeth and Frederick) embarked on H.M.S. Birkenhead with their mother, Anne, at Simon´s Bay (24.2.1852), two days before the wreck. Drums of the Birkenhead erroneously gives Mrs. Nesbitt and her two sons, Richard and Henry taking passage on the Birkenhead. Richard Athol Nesbitt (later Colonel and C.B.) was indeed a survivor of the wreck, however as he states in a letter to Mr. J.R. Cocker (the lighthouse-keeper at Danger Point, off which the Birkenhead was lost), ´Captain Nesbitt [Henry], of Barkly West my elder brother. He got his commission in the 12th or Suffolk Regiment, the same regiment as my father. He retired after getting his company in 1865 and started farming near Barkly East..... When the Birkenhead was wrecked he was with my father serving in the Kaffir War of 1852.´ Henry Nesbitt was commissioned Ensign 12th Foot, 1854; Lieutenant 1858 and went to India with the regiment, where he was gazetted Captain; he left the army and went to live in Maclear, South Africa; with the outbreak of the war in South Africa (1877-79), Nesbitt joined the 2nd Cape Mounted Yeomanry as a Captain and after serving during that conflict saw service in 1880-81, ´A great many of our readers will remember that after the treacherous murder of Mr. Hope by Umhlonhlo, the residency of Maclear was invested by the Kaffirs, so that a large number of the inhabitants of the surrounding districts - mostly women and children - (the men had flown to arms to punish the audacious rebels) had fled to the residency for protection and safety, Maclear had become a veritable rat trap to them, they were surrounded by the Kaffirs and were in danger of being either starved to death or because the victims of the rebels. What the latter meant every one of our readers know. It fell to Captain Nesbitt´s lot to relieve the beleaguered residents of Maclear, and a relief column was organized under his command - how well he executed his mission, how the starving women, children and officials were relieved by him from a fate which would ultimately been worse than death to the women and certain death to the men, with but the loss of one man on the return march, has become a matter of Colonial history and will be forever remembered by the then residents of Maclear and their descendants.´ (Recipient´s Obituary in the Barkly East Reporter, dated 1.2.1890, refers). Henry´s nephew, Major R.C. Nesbitt, continued the family´s military history by winning the Victoria Cross in 1896, near Salisbury, South Africa.

Sold for
£1,200