Royal Navy Long Service and Good Conduct Medal, GVR awarded to Cooper C. Craig, H.M.S. Skirmisher, Royal Navy who would be awarded his Long Service and Good Conduct Medal on 28th August 1914 seeing Great War service as part of the home fleet and then part of the Aegean Squadron during the Great War.
Royal Navy Long Service and Good Conduct Medal, GVR, (342919 CHARLES CRAIG. COOPER. H.M.S SKIRMISHER.)
Condition: Good Very Fine
Charles Craig was born in Bideford, Devon on 20th November 1879 and giving his trade as a Cooper joined the Royal Navy for 12 years service on 23rd August 1899 initially serving as a Second Class Cooper with Vivid II, before being advanced to Cooper aboard Bulwark on 23rd August 1903.
He would see Great War service aboard Skirmisher which he joined on 7th October 1913, being awarded his Long Service and Good Conduct Medal on 28th August 1914 whilst serving aboard the ship, which he would remain with until 18th September 1918.
Skirmisher remained leader of the 7th Flotilla, based at Devonport, on the eve of the outbreak of the First World War. Following the outbreak of war, the 7th Flotilla moved to the Humber on the East Coast of Britain. On 15 December 1914, German battlecruisers, supported by the battleships of the main German High Seas Fleet set out on a raid against the coastal towns of Scarborough, Whitby and Hartlepool. While the British had been warned by radio intercepts that the Germans were likely to carry out some sort of action, and sent out forces from the Grand Fleet to intercept, Admiral George A. Ballard, Admiral of Patrols in overall command of all the patrol flotillas, had, owing to poor weather, ordered the forces under his command to remain in harbor until they received explicit orders to sail. On receiving word of the bombardments, Ballard set out from the Humber in Skirmisher at together with eight torpedo boats. Heavy seas forced Ballard to send the torpedo boats back to port, while he searched up the coast in Skirmisher for the German raiders. Skirmisher failed to find the Germans, who had sailed eastwards well before Ballard reached the bombarded towns.
In May 1915 Skirmisher, still based on the Humber, joined the 6th Light Cruiser Squadron, with duties including patrolling to spot German Zeppelins. By October 1915, the 6th Light Cruiser Squadron had been broken up, and Skirmisher had joined the Mediterranean Fleet. Skirmisher remained part of the Mediterranean Fleet throughout 1916 and into 1917, joining the Aegean Squadron in September that year. On 20 January 1918, the Turkish battlecruiser Yavuz Sultan Selim (formerly the German Goeben) and light cruiser Midilli (formerly Breslau) made a sortie into the Mediterranean from the Dardanelles. The two Turkish ships attacked and sunk the monitors Raglan and M28 in the Battle of Imbros. On hearing of the attack on the monitors, Captain P. W. Dumas, commander of the old pre-dreadnought battleship Agamemnon, in port at the British base of Mudos with Skirmisher, the scout Foresight and the light cruiser Lowestoft, ordered these ships to raise steam in preparation to set out against the enemy force. Meanwhile, Vice-Admiral Hubert von Rebeur-Paschwitz, commander of the Turkish force ordered Yavuz and Midilli to attack Mudros. Both Turkish ships struck mines, with Midilli soon sinking and Yavuz badly damaged. By the time the British ships had left Mudros harbor, Yavuz was re-entering the Dardanelles, protected against surface attack by shore batteries. Skirmisher remained part of the Aegean Squadron until the end of the war.
He would move ashore on 19th September 1918, and other than a period aboard H.M.S. Concord from 10th September 1919 until 20th February 1921, remained ashore and was pensioned on 5th September 1921.
