Exceptional Naval and Polar Awards from the Collection of RC Witte


‘Whitfield left, myself right, returned from a depot trip (120 miles)’ (Dailey’s caption refers)


Provenance: Christie’s, 17 November 1987 (Lot 71); see Lot 707 in this catalogue for the recipient’s Russian Order of St. Anne Medal of Distinction for Foreigners.


D.S.C. London Gazette 3 March 1915. As per Admiral Beatty’s despatch for gallant services in the action off the Dogger Bank, dated 24 January 1915.


Frederick Ernest Dailey was born in Portsmouth in 1873 and served his apprenticeship as a carpenter in Devonport Dockyard, following which, after ‘seven years of practical and theoretical shipbuilding’, he transferred to the Royal Navy and was serving in Ganges when recruited by a friend of Scott’s - a naval officer by the name of Arthur Ewart - for the Antarctic expedition.


Scott wrote to Dailey from his residence in Chelsea in November 1900, confirming his appointment as Carpenter - ‘Before you go to Dundee, where the ship is building, I shall hope to see you in London and tell you more of our plans and your work.’


Depot-laying team, Dailey circled Scott’s first expedition


Having duly assisted in the construction and fitting-out of the Discovery, Dailey was embarked for the journey South, a voyage during which he quickly made his mark with Scott, who wrote:


‘In his own department our carpenter, F. E. Dailey, worked with the same zealous care as the Boatswain. He possessed the same ‘eye’ for defects and the same determination that his charge should be beyond reproach.’


So, too, with the expedition’s Deputy Chief Scientist, George Murray, F.R.S., who was compelled to return home once the Discovery reached South Africa. Immediately on his return to the U.K. he wrote to Dailey’s mother in the following terms:


‘I promised your son when I left the Discovery at Simon’s Bay to write and assure you of his good health and and excellent spirits. He was respected and trusted by all his officers and personally I found him most useful and obliging on the voyage out to the Cape. He is a man of such excellent character that I regard him as one of the mainstays of the Expedition.’


A mainstay indeed, for, as verified by numerous published sources, he went on to participate in a number of sledging trips, Dr. Wilson noting in his diary on Wednesday 24 September that Dailey, in company with Koettlitz and Bernacchi, ‘went off man-hauling a lightly loaded sledge towards the west to investigate the old penknife ice Royds had met with in his journey’, and similarly of their return nine days later - ‘They were pretty tired out, but very perky and pleased to get home again.’


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