Board of Trade Medal for Gallantry in Saving Life at Sea, V.R., large, silver (Edward...

Board of Trade Medal for Gallantry in Saving Life at Sea, V.R., large, silver (Edward Gardner, Wreck of the S.S. “Pelton” on the 26th March 1882) light scratch to obverse left field, otherwise good very fine £600-£800 --- Provenance: Denham Collection, Sotheby’s 1971; Dix Noonan Webb, December 2010. Edward Gardner of the schooner Uzziah was awarded the Board of Trade Gallantry Medal in Silver for his efforts during the furious gale which raged on the north coast of Devon and Cornwall. The large schooner-rigged steamer Pelton, outward bound from Newport and laded with coal, foundered about three miles off Bull Point, near Ilfracombe on 26 March 1882. Seven men succeeded in getting into a lifeboat before she sank taking the master and remaining crew of nine with her. The seven men were adrift in the lifeboat from four to five hours before the schooner Uzziah, of Salcombe, bore down on them. Five of the men in the boat were dead from exposure when the schooner arrived. When the boat was alongside the schooner, it capsized and flung its living and dead into the water. Thomas Hogg, the sole survivor, was rescued by the mate of the Uzziah who fastened a rope round his arm and jumped into the boat and grasped Hogg before being hauled back onboard the Uzziah. Henry Smith, of Exeter, also jumped in from the Uzziah to save the only other man alive but did not take the precaution to make a rope fast to himself. Repeated efforts were made by Captain Gardner of the Uzziah to save Smith but he was washed away, his body being later recovered by the Ilfracombe lifeboat Broadwater. Sold with copied research.