THE VICTORIA CROSS AT SEA by Winton, John

London 1979, Michael Joseph, 2nd impression of English First edition of 1978, 6x9, Fine/Fine condition, 256 pages, numerous illus., bibliog, index. What sort of man wins the Victoria Cross? In The Victoria Cross at Sea, a new biographical study of 124 winners from the Royal and Dominion Navies, the Fleet Air Arm, Royal Marines and Coastal Command, John Winton shows that the answer is : almost anybody. The only common factors the winners shared were extreme gallantry and. devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy.Naval VCs have been won in places as far apart in time and distance as the Baltic in 1854 and Japan in 1945, in trenches from the Crimea to the Western Front, in harbours from Dar es Salaam to Zeebrugge, from the Barents to the Java Sea, from New Zealand to the North Atlantic, and from China to the Channel. They have been won in battleships and trawlers, in submarines and in aircraft, on horseback and in hand-to-hand fighting.Age and rank meant nothing. Boy Cornwell was not seventeen at Jutland, and Frederick Parslow was in his sixtieth year when he won his VC in Anglo-Californian. Commander Unwin won his Cross at Gallipoli but VCs were won alongside him by two of his midshipmen and two Able Seamen. By no means were all the winners British: Ingouville came from the Channel Islands; William Hall was a Canadian, a coloured man who was the son of a freed slave; William Seeley was an American citizen, from New England; while William Johnstone, the first man on the lower deck to win a VC, was not a seaman but a stoker, and was most probably Swedish or German. In later life, the VC winners had as varied fortunes as the backgrounds they came from. Some became Admirals of the Fleet, others were court-martialled and dismissed the Service. Some died of old age in their homes, others committed suicide in despair and grief.From action despatches, citations, memoirs, printed books, newspaper cuttings, ships' muster rolls, private correspondence, family photographs and birth, death and marriage certificates, from memorials and tombstones in country churchyards, John Winton has produced the first attempt to get behind the Gross and take a look at the man - his family, his Service career, his subsequent life, and his home and background.