AUSTRALIA: Australian Victoria Cross auctioned off for world record medal price
- 00:00:35
- ITN Source
AUSTRALIA: Australian Victoria Cross auctioned off for world record medal price
An Australian Victoria Cross bought for almost 1 million U.S. dollars (USD) smashed the world record paid for a medal -- the one given to Admiral Horatio Nelson's flagship captain after the Battle of Trafalgar, officials said on Tuesday (July 25). The medal, one of a group posthumously awarded to Australian Captain Alfred John Shout for bravery at Gallipoli during World War One, was sold at a Sydney auction on Monday for a bid of 1 million Australian dollars (751,000 USD). The total price for the group of medals, including commission, was 1.2 million Australian dollars (910,000 USD), auctioneers Bonhams & Goodman said. "It's a record for any group of military records ever sold," said a spokesman for Australian veterans' group, the Returned Servicemen's League (RSL). The previous record for a military medal was set last October when an unidentified bidder paid 248,800 pounds (460,280 USD) for a medal awarded to Thomas Masterman Hardy, captain of Nelson's flagship HMS Victory, after the epic 1805 Trafalgar battle. Britain won command of the sea for more than a century after the battle off the Spanish coast. Nelson famously asked his close confidant Hardy to kiss him as he lay dying after he was shot by a French sniper. The identity of the winning VC bidder was not revealed at Monday's auction, but the RSL said Australian media entrepreneur Kerry Stokes had paid for the medals, which would go on display at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. Stokes said in an interview that he bought the medal so that it would be displayed at public place where all Australians can honour the valour the Anzac troops displayed in Gallipoli. "I have never believed that anybody should collect or have proprietary over somebody else's valour, these particular awards are part of our history, part of who we are, and the only appropriate place that they belong is in a national museum which is where these will be," he said. Shout was awarded the Victoria Cross for his part in a charge on Ottoman Turkish forces in the Lone Pine battle during the Gallipoli campaign in 1915. He died three days after he was injured in the battle. Shout's Victoria Cross was one of nine given to Australians at Gallipoli and was the only one still in private hands. The previous auction record for a Victoria Cross was the 235,000 pounds (434,750 USD) paid for a medal awarded to British Royal Air Force pilot Norman Jackson during World War Two. The Victoria Cross is the highest award for acts of bravery in wartime for those serving for a British or Commonwealth country. A total of 1,355 Victoria Crosses have been awarded since 1856.
ITN Source | July 29, 2006
