Diameter: 7.5cm (3in)
Provenance: Sir John William Campbell Bt
Lacquered brass prismatic compass by Elliott, 56 Strand, London, with green dial, Arabic numerals, the lift-off lid inscribed with owner’s name ‘Sir John W. Campbell Bt’. With original leather case.
Major-General Sir John William Campbell, 1st Baronet, CB (1836–1915) inherited his father’s baronetcy in at the age of seventeen and was commissioned into the Royal Artillery two years later. He saw active service in the Crimea in 1855, very possibly with the present compass in hand in the trenches before Sebastopol. He afterwards served in the China Expedition (1860) and the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1879-80). He was made a Companion of the Bath in 1886. Upon the founding of the Standing Council of the Baronetage in 1898 his baronetcy, Campbell of Ardnamurchan, was not recognised. However, he persisted in his claim and was granted a new baronetcy, Campbell of Ardnamurchan, Argyll in 1913 with precedency of 1804. His son, the 2nd Baronet, commanded a battalion of the Royal Scots with distinction on the Western Front during the First World War. He died in 1943 while a prisoner of the Japanese in Palenbang Camp, Sumatra. That same year his son and heir went missing in London. Searches were made over subsequent years but yielded nothing. It is assumed he died in an air raid.