Queen Victoria's Silver, for the Men Who Pulled a Drowning Crew from the Surf
Six Washington coast men who braved the November breakers off Long Beach to save a foundering British ship's crew are honored with silver medals sent by the Queen herself.
Customs Collector Taylor, of Astoria, came over on the Starr Tuesday morning to perform a pleasant and becoming duty, in presenting handsome silver medals from the British government to the following gentlemen: Robert O. Stone, Phil G. Stout, Theodore H. Parks, M. D. Clarence N. Hutton, Leonard D. Pike and Otto V. Heil, for their gallant conduct in rescuing the shipwrecked crew of the British ship Strathblane, on Long Beach last November. The gift of Queen Victoria to our fellow-citizens was gracefully presented by Collector Taylor in behalf of her majesty with a few well chosen remarks. The medals are handsome silver ones, about the size of a half dollar, with the figure of the queen on the obverse side, and on the reverse the name of the recipient and the words "From the British Government," surrounded by a wreath, outside of which is the inscription "For Bravery and Humanity."
“The gift of Queen Victoria to our fellow-citizens was gracefully presented by Collector Taylor in behalf of her majesty.”
Long before the Coast Guard formalized lifesaving on the Washington coast, local men launched rowboats into the November surf to reach foundering ships, and their courage was honored on both sides of the Atlantic. The strand where the Strathblane's crew was hauled ashore is today the Long Beach Peninsula, a place of beachcombing rather than shipwrecks. The medals themselves—small silver discs 'For Bravery and Humanity'—survive as reminders that the coast's most dangerous history was written in rescues, not just wrecks.
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