108 AWARDED FOR VALOUR
Daniel was stripped of the award on 4 September 1861 for desertion and
failure to answer court martial charges. The VC Registry being at the War
Office, the Admiralty had to write the Secretary of State for War to have his
name officially struck from the list. Initially the Navy tried to gloss over the
case, stating only that Daniel was a deserter and thus was to be struck. The
War Office asked for details of the offense before proceeding with the action,
to which the Navy replied that Daniel had deserted rather than face trial on
charges of a ‘disgraceful offence.’ At this point the official communications
between the Admiralty and the War Office became quite circumspect. There
was one cryptic comment that alluded to the degradation of Sir Eyre Coote
from the Order of the Bath, noting that ‘His case was like the present, a very
bad one.’^39 Coote was degraded from the Order in 1816 on allegations of
‘indiscretions’ with schoolboys at the Bluecoat School. Here the War Office
files at the Public Record Office stop.
Michael Daniels, PhD, a possible collateral relative of Midshipman Daniel,
undertook a research project into the young officer’s case. He reports the
nature of the ‘disgraceful offence’ was described in a letter from Captain
William Clifford of HMSVictor Emanuel(Daniel’s commanding officer at the
time of his desertion) to Rear Admiral Dacres, Captain of the Fleet and senior
officer at Corfu, that Daniel had been arrested for ‘taking indecent liberties
with four of the Subordinate Officers of theVictor Emanuel.’ His desertion
may have been encouraged, as he absconded between the time of his arrest
on 28 June 1861 and 10:00 p.m. the following night, when his absence
was reported by theVictor Emanuel’s Master-At-Arms. In any case, it allowed
the Navy to simply mark him down as a deserter and strike his name from
the Navy List rather than go through an embarrassing public trial.^40
The current warrant retains the provision that a winner may be struck
from the list for serious offenses, but this clause has not come into play
since Ravenhill’s case in 1908. Shortly after the publication of the updated,
post-First World War warrant in 1920 King George V’s private secretary,
Lord Stamfordham wrote: ‘The King feels so strongly that, no matter the
crime committed by anyone on whom the VC has been conferred, the
decoration should not be forfeited. Even were a VC to be sentenced to be
hanged for murder, he should be allowed to wear his VC on the scaffold.’
One subcategory of heroism does not appear in any of the above tables,
perhaps the most difficult to quantify in all but the most blatant cases:
Victoria Crosses granted as a result of command blunder. There are many
instances in which hindsight reveals a command flaw or a poorly crafted
battle plan that results in the men on the sharp end performing Herculean
labors to survive the day. The Battles of Balaclava and Isandlwana come
lily
(lily)
#1