A Boer War Great War Dardanelles campaign awarded to Painter 1st Class H.J. Acock, Royal Navy who was 1 of 415 men of H.M.S. Forte to receive the Queen’s South Africa Medal without clasp, he would later be awarded the Long Service and Good Conduct Medal in 1909 whilst serving aboard the battleship H.M.S. Implacable with whom he would still be serving upon the outbreak of the Great War. Then present at Gallipoli with Implacable landing and supporting the troops at X Beach on the first day of the landings, along with dispersing the Ottoman counterattack the following day and supporting the allied troops during the Second Battle of Krithia that took place in the early days of May. Moved ashore in April 1916, from December 1916 he would serve aboard the Fleet Tender H.M.S. Hecla for the remainder of the war before being demobilised ashore on 21st February 1919
Group of 5: Queen’s South Africa Medal 1899-1902, no clasp; (H.J. ACOCK, PTR. 1ST CL. H.M.S. FORTE) 1914-1915 Star; (340339 H.J. ACOCK. PTR. 1. R.N.) British War Medal and Victory Medal; (340339 H.J. ACOCK. PTR. 1. R.N.) Royal Navy Long Service and Good Conduct Medal, EVII; (H.J. ACOCK. PAINTER 1CL. H.M.S. IMPLACABLE.) Court-mounted for wear
Condition: court-mounted for wear, minor contact wear and pitting throughout, otherwise Very Fine
Henry James Acock was born at Ramsgate, Kent on 28th November 1872 and worked as a housepainter before joining the Royal Navy on 14th August 1894. He would be serving aboard H.M.S. Forte at the beginning of the Boer War, and would serve aboard her until 14th May 1902 being 1 of 415 men aboard the ship to earn entitlement to a Queen’s South Africa Medal without clasp.
He would then serve on a number of vessels prior to the outbreak of the Great War including Northampton and Albion, and was board the Battleship Implacable when the war began having been aboard her since 2nd February 1909. He had been awarded his Long Service and Good Conduct Medal on 26th August 1909 whilst aboard the ship.
When First World War began in August 1914, the 5th Battle Squadron was assigned to the Channel Fleet and based at Portland. Implacable and her half-sister Queen were attached temporarily to the Dover Patrol in late October 1914 to bombard German Army forces along the coast of Belgium in support of Allied forces fighting at the front. The German forces were attacking French positions to the east of Dunkirk, and they were in dire need of heavy artillery support. A flotilla of destroyers and monitors helped to break up the attack before Implacable and Queen arrived, but reports of an imminent German counterattack with armoured cruisers, which ultimately failed to materialize, led the British to send the battleships to guard against it in company with the Harwich Force. When it had become clear that the German fleet posed no threat, they returned to the Channel Fleet. On 14 November 1914, the 5th Battle Squadron was transferred to Sheerness in case of a possible German invasion attempt, but it returned to Portland on 30 December 1914. In January 1915, the British and French navies began to draw ships to the eastern Mediterranean to begin operations against the Ottoman Empire, including several ships from the 5th Battle Squadron. By the end of the month, only Implacable, Queen, and their sisters Prince of Wales and London, along with the light cruisers Topaze and Diamond that had been assigned to support the 5th Squadron, were still at Portland.
In March 1915, as the British and French fleets waging the Dardanelles campaign were preparing to launch a major attack on 18 March, the overall commander, Admiral Sackville Carden, requested two more battleships of the 5th Squadron, Implacable and Queen, to be transferred to his command in the expectation of losses in the coming operation. The Admiralty ordered the two ships to transfer to the Dardanelles, and they left England on 13 March 1915 and arrived at Lemnos on 23 March 1915. By the time they arrived, the British had lost two battleships in the 18 March attack, prompting the Admiralty to send the last two ships of the 5th Squadron to join the fleet. On her arrival off the Dardanelles, Implacable joined 1st Squadron, which included seven other battleships under the command of Rear Admiral Rosslyn Wemyss. Over the course of the next month, the British and French fleet began preparations for the landings at Cape Helles and at Anzac Cove, the beginning of the land portion of the Gallipoli Campaign.
Late in the day on 23 April, the Allied forces began to move into position for the landing; troop transports made their way to the concentration point off Tenedos. Wemyss followed in the armoured cruiser Euryalus, and Implacable and the battleship Cornwallis accompanied him. On the night of 24–25 April, soldiers transferred from the troopships to Implacable, Cornwallis, and Euryalus, which then steamed to their landing beaches under cover of darkness. Implacable arrived off X Beach, part of the landings at Cape Helles, and started sending men ashore at 04:00 under cover of her own bombardment of Ottoman defences. In the course of the bombardment, she fired twenty 12-inch shells and 368 rounds of 6-inch. In recognition of the critical support she had provided the troops as they attacked Ottoman positions, they named the landing site "Implacable Beach".
Over the course of the following days, Implacable continued to bombard Ottoman positions around the landing beaches. As Ottoman forces began to gather at Krithia to launch a counterattack against Y Beach on 26 April, Implacable opened a heavy bombardment that completely dispersed the Ottomans. Two days later, she was again off X Beach, and she and several other British and French battleships bombarded Ottoman troop concentrations during the First Battle of Krithia. She helped to break up an Ottoman attack on Y Beach on the night of 1 May and supported an unsuccessful British and ANZAC attack on Krithia five days later, the Second Battle of Krithia.
Implacable, along with the battleships London, Prince of Wales, and Queen, was detached from the Dardanelles on 22 May 1915 to become part of a new 2nd Detached Squadron in the Adriatic Sea to reinforce the Italian Navy after Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary. Implacable arrived at Taranto, Italy, her base for this duty, on 27 May 1915. In November 1915, Implacable transferred to the 3rd Detached Squadron. Based at Salonika, this squadron was organised to reinforce the Suez Canal Patrol and assist the French Navy in blockading the Aegean coasts of Greece and Bulgaria. She shifted her base to Port Said, Egypt, later that month. Implacable departed on 22 March 1916 for a refit in the United Kingdom, arriving at Plymouth Dockyard on 9 April 1916.
Acock then remained ashore until 1st December 1916 when he transfer to the fleet tender Hecla where he would serve for the remainder of the war. He would be demobilised ashore on 21st February 1919 and later died in Chichester, Sussex in 1944.
