The exceptional Great War Tigris Flotilla operations Posthumous V.C. awarded to Lieutenant-Commander C. H. Cowley, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, the “Pirate of Basra”: having served on steamships up and down the Tigris and Euphrates rivers pre-hostilities, he mastered Arabic and made many local friends, and was ideally suited to serve as a river-pilot, interpreter and intelligence agent for the British - small wonder then that his Turkish captors murdered him after he was taken prisoner in a suicidal attempt to reinforce the Kut garrison in the Julnar in April 1916 Victoria Cross, the reverse of the suspension bar engraved (Lt. Comdr. C. H. Cowley, R.N.V.R.), the reverse centre of the cross dated ‘24 April 1915’, in its Hancocks & Co case of issue; together with his original Buckingham Palace memorial scroll in the name of ‘Lt. Commander Charles Henry Cowley, V.C., R.N.V.R.’, extremely fine £180,000-£220,000 --- Importation Duty This lot is subject to importation duty of 5% on the hammer price unless exported outside the UK --- --- Provenance: Private sale by Cowley’s descendants to Spink & Son and thence to the R. C. Witte Collection. V.C. London Gazette 2 February 1917 - joint citation with Lieutenant H. O. B. Firman, R.N.: ‘At 8 p.m. on 24 April 1916, with a crew from the Royal Navy under Lieutenant Firman, R.N., assisted by Lieutenant-Commander Cowley, R.N.V.R., the Julnar, carrying 270 tons of supplies left Falahiyah in an attempt to reach Kut. Her departure was covered by all artillery and machine-gun fire that could be brought to bear, in the hope of distracting the enemy’s attention. She was, however, discovered and shelled on her passage up the river. At 1 a.m. on the 25th, General Townshend reported she had not arrived, and that at midnight a burst of heavy firing had been heard at Magasis, some eight and a half miles from Kut by river, which had suddenly ceased. There could be but little doubt that the enterprise had failed, and the next day the Air Service reported the Julnar in the hands of the Turks at Magasis. The leaders of this brave attempt, Lieutenant H. O. B. Firman, R.N., and his assistant - Lieutenant-Commander C. H. Cowley, R.N.V.R. - the latter of whom throughout the campaign in Mesopotamia performed magnificent service in command of the Mejidieh - have been reported by the Turks to have been killed; the remainder of the gallant crew, including five wounded, are prisoners of war. Knowing well the chances against them, all the gallant officers and men who manned the Julnar for the occasion were volunteers. I trust that the services in this connection of Lieutenant H. O. B. Firman, R.N., and Lieutenant-Commander C. H. Cowley, R.N.V.R., his assistant, both of whom were unfortunately killed, may be recognised by the posthumous grant of some suitable honour.’ Charles Henry Cowley was born in Baghdad in February 1872, the eldest son of Henry Victor Cowley, an Irishman who was Senior Captain of the Euphrates and Tigris Steamship Company. His mother was half Armenian, being the daughter of Captain A. C. Holland, a former officer of the Indian Navy who later became a Tigris river boat captain, and Sushan Minas, a refugee from Persia who had fled to Baghdad in the 1830s, following the massacre of her parents. However, under English Law at the time of his birth, Cowley was a British subject - a significant distinction in light of future events. Educated in Liverpool, Cowley joined the training ship Worcester as a Cadet in January 1885 and, in July 1888, he was apprenticed to McDiarmid & Co., with whom he gained his first seagoing experience under sail. Four years later, on the sudden death of his father, he joined his mother at her adopted home in Baghdad, where he followed his grandfather and father into Lynch Bros employ on the waterways of Mesopotamia. A professional to his finger tips, he quickly soaked up the local language and customs, so much so that a fellow employee observed that by the outbreak of hostilities, no man carried greater influence over the Arabs than Cowley. By August 1914, he was the company’s senior captain and in command of the Mejidieh, in which steamer he was ordered from Basra to Baghdad to evacuate all British nationals who wished to leave. His command having then been formally requisitioned by the Royal Navy, he went on to play a critical role in carrying troops back and forth on the Euphrates and Tigris, fine work that also came to the attention of the Turks, who sentenced him to death in absentia at a military court hearing held in Baghdad - and even sent him a message declaring him to be a ‘pirate’. Such accusations appealed to Cowley’s sense of humour and, far from being perturbed, he took to flying the ‘skull and cross-bones’ flag whenever he returned to Basra. Among the more notable operations carried out by the Mejidieh in this period was her part in shelling enemy troops during the capture of Kurnah, when she had embarked two 18-pounder guns and some gunners from the R.G.A. Cowley’s ‘meritorious conduct’ was duly noted by their Lordships and he received a special letter of thanks from the Admiralty. While during the rapid advances made in the spring and summer of 1915, Cowley’s command was a leading participant of “Towshend’s Regatta”, often acting as a floating H.Q. for the General and his staff. Later still, after the tide turned at Ctesiphon, the Mejidieh was the means by which hundreds of wounded men escaped Basra. In August 1915, in an effort to protect Cowley in the event of capture, he was appointed to the temporary rank of Lieutenant-Commander in the “Wavy Navy”, and duly borne on the books of H.M.S. Espiegle for service with river steamers in Mesopotamia. But by this stage his reputation for being an infuriating thorn in the side of Turkish interests was sufficient to prompt an attempt to have him murdered, an assassin with a dagger boarding the Mejidieh one night in November 1915, only to seriously wound Captain Wingate, who was occupying the bed normally used by Cowley. Here, then, admirable evidence to contend that his subsequent decision to join the ill-fated Julnar enterprise was doubly courageous. Of his subsequent V.C.-winning exploits, Stephen Smelling’s history of Great War Naval V.Cs states: ‘Cowley received orders to take Julnar to Amarah on 14 April. The following day a call for volunteers to crew her resulted in every man of the Tigris Flotilla stepping forward. Twelve unmarried men were selected: Leading Seaman William Rowbotham, Engine Room Artificer Alexander Murphy, Leading Stoker Herbert Cooke, Able Seaman Montague Williams, Stoker Charles Thirkill, Stoker Samuel Fox, Able Seaman Herbert Blanchard, Able Seaman John Featherbee, Able Seaman Harold Ledger, Stoker George Foreshaw, Able Seaman Alfred Veale, and Able Seaman William Bond. And on 19 April Wemyss reported Julnar commissioned ‘for special duty’. Like Reed’s rank, the steamer’s new status was to be a brief one, lasting only as long as the mission. Six days were spent in Amarah fitting out. Reed wrote: ‘All cabin woodwork was removed from the inside, and the mast and top-deck stanchions were cut away. The ship was plated with armour 3/8-inch thick round the bridge and over the boiler and engine rooms, bags of atta [flour] being placed between the armour and the ship’s sides to give additional protection against bullets and shell splinters.’ The steamer was then carefully loaded with around 270 tons of food and medical provisions until, in Able Seaman Bond’s description, she resembled a floating &...
