Edward Unwin
recipient of the Victoria Cross (1864–1950)
Captain Edward Unwin, (20 April 1864 – 19 April 1950) was a Royal Navy officer and an English recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.
Early life
Born in Fawley, Hampshire on 20 April 1864, Unwin joined the merchant navy at the age of 16 and spent 15 years serving on clippers with P&O. He trained at HMS Conway and joined the Royal Navy on 16 October 1895 (part of the "Hungry Hundred", merchant mariners recruited to the Navy to fill a shortage of junior officers) and served in the Benin Expedition and the Second Boer War. In November 1901 he was appointed to HMS Vivid to serve in HMS Forth, but only five months later he was transferred in April 1902 to HMS Monarch, serving in the South Pacific. He was lent to HMS Hawke for service on that ship during the voyage to South Africa where the Monarch was stationed. Returning to the United Kingdom later the same year, he was early 1903 sent on a pilotage and compass course at RN College.
Unwin retired in 1909 with the rank of commander. He was recalled to the service on 29 July 1914, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War.
First World War
Initially Unwin served aboard HMS Iron Duke on the staff of Admiral Sir John Jellicoe but in February 1915 he took command of the torpedo gunboat HMS Hussar which had operated as a despatch vessel for the Commander in Chief, Mediterranean and was now a minesweeper.
In 1915, when planning began for the amphibious landing on the Gallipoli peninsula, Unwin proposed beaching the 4,000 ton collier SS River Clyde on the narrow beach beneath Sedd el Bahr at Cape Helles, known as V Beach, thereby allowing 2,000 troops to be landed together. At the age of 51, Unwin was promoted to acting Captain and given command of the River Clyde for the operation.
“Edward Unwin” enters the record as recipient of the Victoria Cross (1864–1950). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Edward, Unwin and recipient can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Edward Unwin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.