THE VICTORIA CROSS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24912, 11 May 1942, Page 6

THE VICTORIA CROSS

NEW SUPPLY OF BRONZE NO MORE SEBASTOPOL METAL (0.C.) LONDON, Mar. 17. Victoria Crosses are being made from a new supply of bronze. The original supply has run out. A director of the West End jewellers who fashion and inscribe the crosses said: "When Queen Victoria instituted her new war decoration 86 years ago she decreed that the medals should be struck from the metal of guns captured by British forces at Sebastopol during the Crimean War. That has been done ever since until now, when the supply of the Sebastopol metal has run out. In future the Maltese crosses will be made from a gunmetal supplied by the Mint." The Royal Warrant for making the medals remains with the firm with whom it was first placed in 1856. The commissions for the crosses have gone through only three men, the founder of the firm, his son, and his grandson, one of the present directors, who is in the army. The firm usually keeps a small stock of the crosses ready to fulfil any demand from the War Office, Admiralty, or Air Ministry. Their intrinsic value is about 3d, but in the salerooms they have fetched between £SO and £6O, one once selling for £l7O. Locked in the strongroom at the jeweller's is a "ledger" recording the names and valorous war deeds of the V.C. winners since the days of Midshipman Charles David Lucas, first to be awarded the V.C. for throwing a live shell from the deck of his ship into the Baltic Sea in 1854, two years before the institution of the award. It contains nearly 1190 names. There were 525 awards between 1856 and 1914, including 62 in the Crimean War, and 633 in the last war. The 32 V.C.'s in this war have been won by 17 army men, eight airmen, and seven naval men. A woman has yet to win the Cross, for which women have been eligible since 1920.