Beschreibung:

A Great War D.S.M. awarded to Able Seaman H. M. Richardson, Royal Navy, who was decorated for his gallant deeds as a 16-year-old Boy 1st Class in the famous North Sea duel between the Alcantara and the German raider Greif in February 1916, ‘an action which savoured of the days of Nelson, the two ships being engaged at point blank range’ - and both sunk Distinguished Service Medal, G.V.R. (J. 34229 H. M. Richardson, Boy 1 Cl., H.M.S. Alcantara, 29 Feb. 1916), edge bruising and polished, otherwise better than good fine £1,800-£2,000 Footnote Provenance: R. C. Witte Collection, Dix Noonan Webb, December 2007. D.S.M. London Gazette 22 June 1916. Horace Matthew Richardson was born in Chatham, Kent in April 1899 and entered the Royal Navy as a Boy 2nd Class in the training establishment Powerful in January 1915. Quickly rated Boy 1st Class, he joined the Alcantara, commanded by Captain Thomas Erskine Wardle, just three months later, and would have been employed on patrol work between Scapa Flow and the coast of Norway prior to her famous North Sea duel with the German raider Greif on 29 February 1916. At about midday on that date, in a position of 60 miles E. of the North of the Shetlands, the Alcantara was due to rendezvous with her relief ship, the Andes, when a wireless message instructed her to remain thereabouts and keep a sharp lookout for a suspicious steamship coming out of the Skagerrak. But it was not until about 8.45 a.m. on the following morning that Captain Wardle spotted smoke on the horizon on his port beam. During the course of making passage to this unidentified steamship, he received a wireless warning from the Andes that this was in all probability the vessel he was seeking, so Wardle signalled to the latter to stop, and fired two rounds of blank ammunition. By this stage the two ships had approached to within 1,000 yards of each other, the Alcantara coming up astern and lowering a boarding boat. At that moment, however, the “stranger” - which had Norwegian colours painted on her side and the name Rena-Tonsberg - dropped her bulwarks and ran out her guns. She was, infact, the enemy raider Greif, and the point blank nature of the ensuing 20 minute duel is best summarised in Deeds That Thrill The Empire: ‘From the very first the British gunners got home on the enemy. His bridge was carried away at the first broadside, and then, systematically, our guns searched yard by yard along the upper works of the enemy, seeking out the wireless room from which were emanating the meaningless jargons that “jammed” the Alcantara’s wireless. This had been set to work at once to call up assistance - a proper fighting precaution in any event, but doubly so in this case, seeing that it was quickly apparent the Greif carried considerably heavier ordnance than her own. Before long the enemy’s wireless was smashed, and our guns promptly turned themselves upon the hull and water-line of their opponent. In a few minutes the Greif had a great fire blazing aft; a few more, and she began to settle down by the stern; and as the Alcantara’s guns methodically and relentlessly searched her from stem to stern her return fire grew more and more feeble until, after about fifteen minutes’ fighting, it died away almost entirely. On paper, judging by the difference between the armaments, the Alcantara ought to have been blown out of the water by this time; but, although she was hit frequently, the actual damage she sustained was almost negligible. The Greif was already a beaten and doomed craft when other vessels came up in answer to Alcantara’s wireless. The first to arrive was the Andes, Captain George B.W. Young (another converted unit of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Line), and a few rounds from her apparently completed the enemy’s discomfort. Not long after, a “pukka” cruiser appeared on the scene; but it is reported that, seeing the Alcantara had already made a hopeless mess of her opponent, this cruiser clicked out the signal “Your Bird” and went