First Naval Victoria Cross of World War I Expected to Fetch £260,000 at Auction

A Victoria Cross awarded to Captain Henry Peel Ritchie, of the Royal Navy, could fetch up to £260,000 when it goes under the hammer in July 2024. (Noonans/PA)

The first naval Victoria Cross (VC) medal awarded during World War I is expected to fetch up to £260,000 at a London auction.

To VC will go under the hammer at auctioneers Noonans Mayfair on July 23.

The highest and most prestigious decoration of the British honours system, the naval VC medal is part of a collection of 250 medals. Noonans has estimated that the collection will fetch around £2 million.

Captain Ritchie

The naval VC medal was awarded to Captain Henry Peel Ritchie, of the Royal Navy, who was born in Edinburgh, for his gallant command of H.M.S. Goliath’s steam pinnace at Dar-es-Salaam in East Africa on Nov. 28, 1914.

“When the pinnace came under a withering fire, 38-year-old Ritchie took over the wheel from his wounded coxswain and steered for the harbour’s entrance, but it took 20 minutes to get clear, in which period he was wounded eight times - on the forehead, in the left hand, twice in the left arm, in his right arm and hip and, finally, by two bullets through his right leg,” said Nimrod Dix, deputy chairman of Noonans and director of the medal department.

Ritchie was promoted to captain on the retired list in January 1924. He died in Edinburgh at the age of 83, in 1958.

His naval VC medal ended up as part of a collection owned by a former officer of the United States Navy, Jason Pilalas, born in 1941.

“His love of all things nautical stemmed from his service as an officer in the United States Navy, with whom he completed three tours of Vietnam,” the auction house said.

Noonans described Mr. Pilalas as a man of “many talents and many interests,” with a “relentless pursuit of knowledge of all things relating to the Royal Navy.”

“This voracious appetite for knowledge being matched only by his seemingly unquenchable thirst to collect objects relating to his passion. However, as much as Jason cherished his collection, he was always mindful of the fact that he was just the custodian of these objects in his own lifetime,” said Mr. Dix.

Lieutenant-Commander Hiscock

The collection auctioned by Noonans later this month covers more than 200 years of naval history. Among the items presented are a unique and poignant Second War bomb and mine disposal George Cross (GC), a Distinguished Service Cross group of ten.

They were awarded to Lieutenant-Commander William Ewart Hiscock of the Royal Navy, born in Dorchester in 1886. The estimated price for this part of the collection is £80,000-£120,000.

“In his capacity as Controlled Mining Officer at H.M.S. St. Angelo, Malta, Hiscock dealt with no fewer than 125 ‘incidents’ at the height of the island’s siege, among them an ‘Italian torpedo machine’ and other unknown types of ordnance: in dismantling the former, which contained a 650lb. high explosive charge fitted with four firing devices and a time fuse, the clock mechanism whirred into action, but he calmly neutralised the device nonetheless,” said Mr. Dix.

Lt. Cmdr. Hiscock and his wife were killed in 1942, in a bombing raid on Valetta. It happened just a few days after the announcement of his award of the GC. The medal was presented to one of his daughters by King George VI at Buckingham Palace on June 23, 1942.

In 2022, Noonans actioned off the first Victoria Cross awarded to a civilian—an Irishman from Co-Westmeath, Thomas Henry Kavanagh—for almost £1 million. The medal went for a £750,000 hammer price from a phone bidder but the total cost was £930,000.

“The record price achieved for Kavanagh’s Victoria Cross reflects not just Kavanagh’s extraordinary gallantry, but also the strength of the market for small collectables more generally where the prices for high-quality items continue to go from strength to strength,” said the auction house chairman and chief executive, Pierce Noonan.

PA Media contributed to this report.