Length: 8in (20cm)
Silver. A pair miniature 1935 Home Fleet Regatta presentation prize oars. The first inscribed ‘HOOD 1935 / R.M.A. CUTTER 1st / N.T. DAVIES Mne’, and the second, ‘HOOD 1935 / ALL COMERS CUTTER 1st / N.T. DAVIES Mne’. Maker’s marks of the Navy, Army & Air Force Institutes (est. 1920). Both hallmarked Birmingham 1934.
Pulling races at Fleet Regattas in the 1920s and 30s were eagerly anticipated events and were held periodically in the Royal Navy’s principal fleets. For weeks beforehand, every opportunity was taken to train the crews entered by each ship. A ship’s gig might be crewed by officers, midshipmen or ratings under the urging of a coxswain, who was often a petty officer. Though a heavy boat by comparison, a gig with a good crew could be made to move though the water at surprising speed.
The battlecruiser Hood was considered the most powerful warship in the world during the interwar period, and the Portsmouth-manned flagship of the Home Fleet she won the Silver Cock at the Home Fleet Pulling Regatta of 1935, with her crews winning 15 out 21 races. The Silver Cock was presented presented, no doubt with the present prize oar on Hood's quarterdeck the day after the regatta. Hood was sunk in Denmark Strait in the North Atlantic by the German battleship Bismarck in May 1941.
Corporal Norman T. Davies, Royal Marines, was later serving in the battlecruiser H.M.S. Royal Oak when she was torpedoed by Gunther Prien’s U-47 while at anchor in Scapa Flow. He was one of 399 survivors out of the ship’s complement of 1,234.