George Hinckley

Under heavy fire, he carried two wounded men into safe cover

George Hinckley was born in Liverpool in June 1819 and entered the Royal Navy as a boy. He served through a long naval career and was an able seaman in HMS Sphinx when British forces operated around Ningbo during the Taiping conflict in China.

On 9 October 1862 at Fenghua, Hinckley saw William Coker, the ship’s assistant master, badly wounded ahead of the main force. Ignoring heavy fire, he went forward and carried Coker about one hundred and fifty yards to the shelter of a temple. Returning to the exposed ground, he found another casualty, Mr Bremner, an army officer associated with the artillery supporting the operation. Hinckley also brought him into cover, then returned to duty at the gate. His repeated rescues earned the Victoria Cross.

The award was announced in February 1863 and presented at Devonport that July. Later in the year Hinckley reported losing his cross while attending a funeral, and a replacement was authorized. This helped create a complicated later history in which several crosses bearing his name appeared in collections, some accepted as replacements and others identified as copies.

Hinckley eventually retired from the Navy as a quartermaster and lived in Plymouth. He died on 31 December 1904 at the age of eighty-five and was buried in Ford Park Cemetery.

Victoria Cross citation

For volunteering, while under the East Gate of the city of Fung-wha, to carry to a joss house, a hundred and fifty yards distant, under a heavy and continuous fire of musketry, gingalls and stinkpots, Mr. Coker, Master’s Assistant of the “Sphinx,” who had been wounded in the advance to the gate; in which object Hinckley succeeded. On his return to the gate, under a similar fire, he again volunteered, and succeeded in carrying to the joss-house Mr. Bremen, an officer of Ward’s force, who had been also wounded in the advance on the gate; and he again returned to his post under the gate.