How an Appeal in the NHCRA Review Helped Reunite a Group of Victorian Medals
by Richard Taylor

THE name Shanks is still famous around the world. With it are linked the names of two Victorian brothers, John and Andrew, who put their firm on the road which eventually saw their sanitary ware in almost every corner of the globe - and on the High Seas, too.

As the company's history says: "The sun never sets on the name Shanks." Indeed, it continues today even after the merger with Armitages in 1969.

There was, however, another brother born to the Shanks family in Paisley in the last century - Arthur Hutton Shanks, who was 24 years old when he joined the Royal Navy as a humble assistant engineer in August 1859.

The first medal he earned was the China (Taku Forts 1860) for service in the wooden steam gunboat HMS Banterer. He was with the 50-gun HMS Octavia when he qualified for his Abyssinia Medal in 1868 and five years later he earned the Ashantee Medal for his work with another gunboat, HMS Coquette, on the West African coast. I had his Abyssinia Medal, but where were the others?

An appeal in the quarterly journal of the NHCRA soon brought a response from a member who had seen Arthur's Ashantee Medal in a Spinks' list. They agreed to contact the collector who had bought the medal and fortunately he was prepared to sell. An un-named China Medal with the appropriate bar later completed the group which had at one time formed part of the A A Payne collection of some 2,500 awards to officers and men of both Army and Navy. Payne was a Sheffield doctor who published details of his collection in his 1911 book "British and Foreign Orders, War Medals and Decorations", which has since been reprinted.

When I discovered Arthur Shanks had been born in Paisley, the penny should have dropped because it is a town in which the name of Shanks is famous. Only later, with the help of David Roberts at Paisley Museum, was I lucky enough to establish that Arthur was, in fact, a brother of John who made the name Shanks renowned not just in Paisley but around the world as the local plumber who established the internationally known firm of sanitary ware manufacturers.

The local studies department at Paisley Central Library had already found a death notice in the Paisley & Renfrewshire Gazette which announced that Arthur had died on passage through the Suez Canal. An approach to Paisley Museum led to copies of family birth entries in the local parish registers and, eventually, the gem of information that Arthur was a brother of the famous engineering family.

He was one of the four children of William Shanks, a grocer in School Wynd, Paisley, who also filled the role of church officer and grave digger to the nearby United Secession Church. The 1851 census shows John, the oldest son, as a 25-year-old plumber, while Arthur, then 16, is listed as an apprentice grocer, no doubt working for his father.

It was in that year - the year of the Great Exhibition - that John set up in business on his own. Four years later he invited his other brother, Andrew, to join the expanding firm. Did Arthur have any involvement in a company, which later was to be among the best known in the world? There appears to be no evidence one way or the other, although by 1859, if not before, he had decided on a career as an engineer - but on a very different path to that taken by his brothers.

He began naval life as a 3rd Class Assistant Engineer serving with HMS Minotaur, then the receiving ship at Sheerness. By October 1859 he had been posted to HMS Cumberland, guard ship at Sheerness, and the following month he was on his way to join the troopship HMS Simoom on the China and East Indies Station.

After a few months with HMS Princess Charlotte, the receiving ship at Hong Kong, he was posted on 24 May 1960 to the Albacore-class gunboat HMS Banterer which the previous year had taken part in the attack on the fortifications at the mouth of the Peiho. As Shanks joined her, action was looming again.

In June an expedition to take the Taku Forts on the Peiho was beginning to concentrate at Ta-Lien Whan Bay near Port Arthur and the following month a Times report listed the Banterer among the assembling fleet. On 21 August she was a unit of the naval forces engaged in the capture of the forts at the end of a ten-day campaign.

Arthur's promotion to 2nd Class Engineer followed on 16 April 1861 after which he had a succession of postings before going in June 1865 to HMS Octavia which in September set sail from Portsmouth for Madeira and Teneriffe. After passage round the Cape she arrived at Bombay where she became flagship on the East Indies Station.

On 18 August 1866 Arthur was promoted to Engineer, by which time he had no doubt heard that his brother John was building a brass foundry - the Tubal Foundry - on the firm's site at Barrhead. During the Abyssinian operations two years later he served in the Octavia, which brought the C-in-C, Sir Robert Napier, from Bombay to Zouilla on Annesley Bay, by then a busy port serving the needs of the British forces.

Some 611 officers and men from the Octavia earned the medal awarded for this one-sided campaign which led to the capture of Magdala. (The medal roll for the Octavia was published in the Summer 1992 edition of the NHCRA Review.)

Arthur passed his exams for Chief Engineer in June 1870, at about the time John Shanks began producing sanitary ware for ships. Did Arthur have any advice for his brother, based on his own experiences at sea? Who knows. In any event, ship installations became a significant part of the Shanks' manufacturing output. Some of the famous liners, which were later equipped by the company, included the ill-fated Titanic, the Lusitania and the Queens.

In February 1872 Arthur was posted to the steam corvette HMS Druid on the Cape and West Coast of Africa Station, although he was soon to be moved to the 430-ton composite steam gunboat HMS Coquette (pictured), whose log (PRO: ADM53/10335) records him transferring from the Druid at Cape Coast Castle on 16 May.

The following year the Coquette was involved in various minor actions during the campaign against the West African Ashantee tribe and on 28 October 1873, steaming on both engines, she cleared for action to support landings from HMS Argus and HMS Decoy at Dix Cove, after which she opened fire on native villages; 68 of her crew were awarded the medal without bar.

Arthur stayed with the Coquette until March 1875, following which he underwent a succession of brief postings, including the famous iron ship HMS Warrior, now preserved at Portsmouth. From October 1875 he spent two years with the 6,211-ton troopship HMS Crocodile, traipsing monotonously between the UK and India. By October 1877 he was with the 774-ton wooden gun vessel HMS Lapwing and he was still with her when he was finally promoted to Chief Engineer in January 1878.

In June he was in hospital at Hong Kong, returning to the Lapwing on 5 July. A week later, however, he was back in hospital, this time at Singapore where he stayed until 2 September. His death in January 1879 aboard the P&O ship Australia is recorded in the General Register Office's Marine Death Indices.

He was on passage through the Suez Canal and was the first of the three Shanks brothers to die. Andrew Ferrier Shanks passed away on 12 May 1893 and John, who was mainly responsible for making the family name a household word, died on 18 December 1895 after a second stroke.

The story of the two elder brothers and their firm is contained in "The First Hundred Years 1851-1951" by Gilbert M Shanks. Of their seafaring sibling Arthur there is no mention...

This article appeared under the heading 'The Forgotten Brother' in the August 2000 edition of Medal News.

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