Mauritius Medal for Life Saving presented to the Captain, Officers and crew of the American barque ‘Young Phoenix’ in 1875. Obverse: A shield of the arms of Mauritius surrounded by a looped ribbon against a diapered background. The legend reads, ‘PRESENTED BY THE INHABITANTS OF MAURITIUS 1876’. On the reverse of the medal is the following inscription, ‘For Heroic conduct of the Captain, Officers and Crew of the American barque “Young Phoenix” in the rescue of the survivors from the ship Strathmore wrecked on the Crozet Islands 1875’. The inscription on the ribbon is ‘STELLA CLAVISQUE MARIS INDICI’. The number ‘505’ is stamped on the edge.

The sailing ship ‘Strathmore’ left Gravesend on 19 April 1875 for New Zealand carrying 51 passengers, 38 crew and a cargo of railway iron and gunpowder. On July 1 the ship sailed into thick fog in the South Indian Ocean and was wrecked on the Crozet Islands. Captain Macdonald and the first officer were washed overboard but the second officer and crew managed to launch two lifeboats and survivors were taken ashore onto one of the islands. They remained there for seven months until rescued by Captain D. L. Gifford of the American whaler ‘Phoenix’ on 21 January 1876. Twenty of the survivors were transferred to the ‘Sierra Morena’ and landed in Ceylon while Captain Gifford took the rest to Mauritius.

Of the 89 passengers and crew of the ‘Strathmore’, 45 had drowned or died of exhaustion. One of the survivors later wrote, ‘The food we chiefly lived on was albatross of which the young gave more eating than the old…..two dishes I prepared for my mother were brains of birds, fried, and the heart and liver minced with moss. We had no salt and flavoured our dishes with gunpowder and salt water’.