Joseph Trewavas

The Royal Navy Sailor Who Cut Russia’s Lifeline Under Fire

Six sailors in a small boat faced roughly two hundred Russian troops. Their gun had failed, their target had defeated two earlier attacks, and the enemy held the shoreline only eighty yards away. Yet when the boat reached the floating bridge at Genitchi, nineteen-year-old Joseph Trewavas leapt aboard with an axe and began cutting. Under a storm of musket fire, he severed the bridge’s hawsers, helped break a vital Russian supply route, and earned both the Victoria Cross and the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal.

Joseph Trewavas was born on 14 December 1835 in the Cornish fishing village of Mousehole. The eldest child of fisherman Joseph Trewavas and Anne Roose, he grew up in a community shaped by the sea. At eighteen, he joined the Royal Navy at Devonport and was posted to HMS Agamemnon on 15 October 1853. Within a year, he was serving in the Crimean War, far from the harbour and fishing boats of his childhood.

Trewavas landed with the Naval Brigade and served in the trenches before Sebastopol, where British sailors fought ashore alongside the Army. He also took part in the Battle of Inkermann on 5 November 1854, one of the most confused and savage battles of the Crimean campaign. His service in these operations later brought him the Crimea Medal with the clasps Inkermann and Sebastopol.

In February 1855, Trewavas returned to HMS Agamemnon. On 24 May, he was lent to the gunboat HMS Beagle for operations in the Sea of Azov. The Royal Navy’s mission was to destroy Russian stores, shipping, transport routes, and anything else that could sustain the armies defending Sebastopol. His service in these later operations earned the third clasp on his Crimea Medal, Azoff.

One of the most important targets was a large floating pontoon bridge across the Genitchi Strait. The bridge connected Genitchi with the Arabat Spit and formed part of a major Russian supply route. Destroying it would force Russian transport to make an additional journey of about 120 miles. Two attempts to cut the bridge’s hawsers had already failed, alerting the Russian defenders and making another attack even more dangerous.

On 3 July 1855, HMS Beagle launched a third attempt. Gunner John Hayles commanded a four-oared gig, while Midshipman Martin Tracy supported the operation with a small paddle-box boat carrying a gun. The supporting weapon failed after its first discharge, leaving the gig’s six sailors with only one rifle, ten rounds of ammunition, and their cutlasses against troops and riflemen positioned along the shore and inside nearby buildings.

Trewavas was pulling the bow oar as the boat approached the bridge. The Russians initially held their fire, apparently believing the sailors intended to attack nearby shipping rather than the bridge itself. The moment the gig reached the pontoons, Trewavas jumped out and attacked the heavy hawsers with his axe. Once the ropes were severed, the sections of the bridge began drifting apart.

Then the Russians opened fire.

Musket balls struck the boat like hail. Three men were wounded, the gig was riddled with shot, and the shallow water made escape difficult. Trewavas was wounded, but the crew managed to pull away and reach the protection of HMS Beagle. By the time they reached safety, their boat was full of water and close to sinking.

The official Victoria Cross citation, published in the London Gazette on 24 February 1857, stated that Trewavas was:

“Particularly mentioned as having cut the hawsers of the floating bridge in the Straits of Genitchi, under a heavy fire of musketry.”

The citation also recorded that the shore was lined with troops, nearby houses were occupied by riflemen, and the action took place at a range of about eighty yards. Trewavas was specifically identified as the sailor who cut the hawser.

The same extraordinary action brought him the Royal Navy’s Conspicuous Gallantry Medal. The surviving accounts do not provide a separate extended citation for that award, but they explicitly state that both the Victoria Cross and the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal recognized his courage in cutting the bridge hawsers under fire. His original CGM survives as part of his five-medal group at Penlee House Gallery and Museum.

Queen Victoria personally presented the Victoria Cross to Trewavas at Hyde Park on 26 June 1857 during the first great public investiture of the new decoration. His original cross bears the dark-blue ribbon then used for Royal Navy recipients. Penlee House identifies him as the first Cornishman to receive the Victoria Cross.

His wider Crimean War service was also recognized internationally. France appointed him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, the knight’s grade of France’s premier national order. The Ottoman Empire awarded him the Turkish Crimea Medal, British issue. These honours joined his Victoria Cross, Conspicuous Gallantry Medal, and Crimea Medal with the clasps Inkermann, Sebastopol, and Azoff. The campaign medals carried no individual gallantry citations, but recorded the breadth of his service ashore, before Sebastopol, at Inkermann, and in the Sea of Azov.

Trewavas continued serving in the Royal Navy for another seven years and left the service on 10 December 1862. Returning to Mousehole, he married Margaret Harry in 1866, and the couple had three children. He bought a fishing lugger and named it Agamemnon in memory of the warship on which his naval career had begun.

His service to the community continued long after his naval career ended. Trewavas became involved in local government, served on Cornwall County Council and the County Fisheries Committee, and later worked with the Mousehole Harbour Commissioners. He served as the harbour body’s secretary and treasurer during the 1890s, bringing the experience of a sailor and fisherman to the affairs of his home port.

Joseph Trewavas died in Mousehole on 20 July 1905, aged sixty-nine. He was buried in an unmarked grave at Paul, near Mousehole. Nearly a century later, a memorial plaque was unveiled at St Pol de Leon Church in June 2002, ensuring that Cornwall’s first Victoria Cross recipient would no longer pass without visible remembrance. His complete medal group is preserved by Penlee House Gallery and Museum in Penzance.

Joseph Trewavas did not win fame through command, rank, or privilege. He earned it in a leaking boat beneath a shoreline filled with enemy riflemen. Two attacks had failed before him. The weapon meant to protect his party had broken. The bridge was guarded, the range was short, and escape was uncertain.

Trewavas still jumped onto the pontoons.

With an axe in his hands and musket fire around him, he finished the task and helped bring his comrades home. That single decision made Able Seaman Joseph Trewavas one of the defining Royal Navy heroes of the Crimean War.