Gordon Charles Steele

He steered his motor boat under gunfire to torpedo warships.

Gordon Charles Steele was a Royal Navy officer whose Victoria Cross was earned in a daring 1919 attack on the Bolshevik fleet at Kronstadt. Born in Exeter, Devon, on November 1, 1891, he came from a naval family and was educated at Vale College before training aboard the naval cadet ship HMS Worcester. He joined the Royal Naval Reserve in 1909 and initially pursued a merchant-navy career with the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, earning his second mate’s certificate. At the outbreak of the First World War he was serving as an acting sub-lieutenant in the RNR. In 1915 he transferred to the Royal Navy after distinguished service as gunnery officer in the Q-ship Baralong, including the sinking of German submarine U-27, and was mentioned in dispatches.

Steele served at the Battle of Jutland aboard HMS Royal Oak and later HMS Iron Duke. He commanded patrol craft and a sloop during the latter part of the war. In 1919 he was serving with the North Russia Relief Force during Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. On August 18, Coastal Motor Boat 88 entered Kronstadt harbour as part of an attack on Bolshevik warships. Steele was second-in-command. Under heavy fire, the boat’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Dayrell-Reed, was shot through the head and the boat went off course. Steele took the wheel, steadied the craft, and moved the wounded officer away from the steering and firing position. He then torpedoed the battleship Andrei Pervozvanny at close range. With smoke obscuring a second target, Petropavlovsk, Steele manoeuvred CMB 88 in the confined harbour to obtain a clear shot and torpedoed it as well. He then turned the boat toward the harbour entrance, firing its machine guns along the wall as it escaped through heavy fire from the forts.

Steele received the Victoria Cross for his “conspicuous gallantry, skill and devotion to duty” at Kronstadt. Afterward, he continued in the Navy, commanding a patrol boat, learning Russian, and specializing in antisubmarine work. In 1929 he became captain superintendent of HMS Worcester, the training ship on which he had earlier served as a cadet, and held the post until 1957 apart from wartime duties. During the Second World War he returned to naval service as an antisubmarine commander and inspector of equipment. He died in Devon on January 4, 1981, and was buried at All Saints New Cemetery, Winkleigh. His Victoria Cross is held by Trinity House in London.

### Victoria Cross citation

“For most conspicuous gallantry, skill and devotion to duty on the occasion of the attack on Kronstadt Harbour on the 18th August, 1919. Lieutenant Steele was second-in-command of H.M. Coastal Motor Boat No. 88. After this boat had entered the harbour the Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Dayrell-Reed, was shot through the head and the boat thrown off her course. Lieutenant Steele took the wheel, steadied the boat, lifted Lieutenant Dayrell-Reed away from the steering and firing position and torpedoed the Bolshevik battleship Andrei Pervozvanni at a hundred yards range. He had then a difficult manoeuvre to perform to get a clear view of the battleship Petropavlovsk, which was overlapped by the Andrei Pervozvanni and obscured by smoke coming from that ship. The evolution, however, was skilfully carried out, and the Petropavlovsk torpedoed. This left Lieutenant Steele with only just room to turn, in order to regain the entrance to the harbour, but he effected the movement with success and firing his machine guns along the wall on his way, passed under the line of forts through a heavy fire out of the harbour.”