Master Frederick Parslow, Mercantile Marine: a civilian VC commemorated

On 4th July 2015, ship’s Master Frederick Parslow, VC, Mercantile Marine, will be honoured with the unveiling of a commemorative paving stone on Islington Green in London, near to where he was born in 1856. The ceremony will take place one hundred years to the day of his death in an action for his ‘most conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty’ in which, he became the first Mercantile Marine officer and the first civilian in the First World War to be awarded Britain’s highest military decoration, the Victoria Cross.

On 4th July 1915, the SS Anglo Californian, a British merchant ship, was off Ireland, heading from Montreal to Avonmouth near Bristol. It was carrying 927 pack horses bound for the Western Front and its Master, Frederick Parslow, was making his eighth such trip of the First World War.
Around 0800, the ship was spotted by the German submarine, U-39. The clear weather revealing no other ships in the vicinity, the U-boat commander decided upon a surface attack to conserve torpedoes. ’ Merchant ship convoys were not introduced until May 1917, so not only was Parslow’s ship unarmed, it was unescorted too.

Lasting three and a half hours, what followed was described as ‘One of the gamest and most unequal fights ever put up by a shipmaster’, while the crew of the U-39 later told the then-neutral American press that Parslow deserved the Iron Cross. Parslow was killed at its close as had been around 33 of his crew and 30 horses. The arrival then of two Royal Navy destroyers forced the U-boat to escape. Wanting to honour Parslow, the Admiralty had reservations about elevating him and another Mercantile Marine Master, Archibald Smith who died in action in 1917, to the level of members of the Royal Navy. Eventually, in May 1919, they were posthumously commissioned as Lieutenants in the Royal Naval Reserve and awarded the Victoria Cross.