Description
Naval General Service Medal, bar Persian Gulf 1909-1914, PLY 7169 Private David William O’Keefe, Royal Marines Light Infantry, HMS Fox, Killed in Action 1st Nov 1914 sinking of HMS Monmouth at the Battle of Coronel, Chile.
Officially impressed: “PLY. 7169. D.W. O’Keefe. R.M.L.I. H.M.S. Fox.”
With copy service papers & medal roll etc.
Virtually mint condition as unworn posthumous issue, confirmed on the medal roll as issued to “Widow Nora O’Keefe, 18th January 1916”
It is unclear if his 1914-15 trio was ever issued, the medal rolls unusually show no mentions of how it was issued leaving it most likely as unclaimed by his widow and full entitlement.
With the outbreak of World War 1, Private O’Keefe was serving with the Royal Marines on board HMS Monmouth. Being engaged in the South Atlantic to protect allied shipping and hunt German Raiders, the ship would join Rear Admiral Christopher Craddock’s Squadron to search for the German East Asia Squadron.
They were successful in finding the squadron, taking them on during the Battle of Coronel on 1st November 1914 off the coast of Chile. The German’s outnumbered the British Fleet managing to sink 2 of the British armoured cruisers.
Pte O’Keefe was on board 1 of these ships, HMS Monmouth, every man went down with the ship when it was sunk with all 734 hands lost.
He is lost at the bottom of the sea but is now commemorated on the Plymouth Naval Memorial.
David was born in Plymouth, Devon on 22nd March 1881, the son of Norah Elizabeth O’Keefe. However his wife remarried when he was a boy to William O’Grady, a Royal Marine stepfather who raised him, and likely who led to him joining the Royal Marines.
Having worked as an “Errand Boy” as a Fresh faced 14 year old boy not even 5 foot tall, he signed on for service in the Royal Marines on 3rd April 1895 with Plymouth Division.
Being underage from 3rd April 1895 to 21st March 1899 by the time he became of age to sign on legally at 18 he had grown from 4 foot 10 to 5 foot 9.
One of his postings was HMS Donegal, from 23rd May 1911 until 21st December 1913.
For this service he was on 14th February 1914: “Paid Prize Money for Salvage of S/S Glenmark”
This was for the salvage of the Norwegian Barque Glenmark by HMS Donegal between 15-17th July 1913, when it was sent out to recover the lost ship.
He saw many ships service in a 20 year career, starting at 14 years old, one of them was HMS Fox, where he served on board during Mid 1914, earning this medal when the ship took part in the “Persian Gulf” campaign in the lead up to the war, where the Fox took part in the capture of Persian Gulf Gun-Runners in the region.
Most of his time was actually spent onboard the Armed Launch HMS Harold in the Persian Gulf, from 28th Feb 1914 until 30th June 1914, followed by the Fox from 1st July 1914 to 23rd July 1914.
An amusing anecdote from the memoirs of Naval Surgeon Rear Admiral Jeans reads:
“We have just stopped off a small island, a mere rock, where H.M.S. HAROLD is lying, to drop an engineer of Indian Marine whom we had on board. The HAROLD is typical of what our naval men have to put up with in the Gulf; she is nothing more than a Liverpool tug, with no accommodation but the deck, and spends her time cruising about these tropical seas after gun-runners”
With war on the horizon, he joined the crew of HMS Monmouth shortly afterwards serving on board from 1st August to 1st November 1914.
Just 3 months after joining the ship he was engaged in the Battle of the Coronel, where he and the entire crew were sunk.
Notably out of the 734 men on the ship, 94 were Royal Marines, the Royal Marines also losing 100 men on HMS Good Hope, totalling 194 Marines lost during the battle over 2 sunken ships, the Royal Navy manning the ships suffered greatly, in total over 2 sunken cruisers there was about 1,600+ men lost.
Details on the battle from the view of the ship can be read below:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Monmouth_(1901)#Battle_of_Coronel
