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Orders, Decorations, Campaign Medals and Militaria
Chief Skipper J. Watt with H.R.H. The Duke of Kent aboard the Benachie
Later Life After spending six weeks in hospital in Malta, Watt was advanced to Chief Skipper, given a period of leave, and allowed to return home. The Fraserburgh town council had planned a hero’s welcome, but Watt had had enough publicity, and he travelled home secretly, arriving back one evening in November 1917. The following day, attired in his fisherman’s clothes, he went to relax down at the harbour. Although well known for his friendliness and happy disposition he was very reticent and never talked about his great gallantry, leading one journalist to describe him as ‘a painfully modest man’. His shyness owed something to his natural reserve, but also to the fact that he felt that his gallantry had been greatly embellished by the press, desperate for a war hero. His one concession to local opinion was to accept a gold watch, given to him by Mr. George Walker, the owner of the Gowanlea. His Victoria Cross was presented to him by H.M. King George V at Buckingham Palace on the 6th April 1918. Following the end of the War, his drifter Annie having been sunk clearing mines a few weeks after the Armistice, he bought another vessel, the drifter Benachie, named after Aberdeenshire’s highest mountain, and went back to fishing for herring. During the Second World War he commanded a drifter serving the Home Fleet, with a crew that included his son, invalided home in 1940 after being wounded whilst serving in the Gordon Highlanders. Between the Wars he was visited on the Benachie by H.R.H. The Duke of Kent, where, unaccustomed to the occasion, the broad smiling skipper forgot to remove his cap. His Victoria Cross, so bravely earned, was kept in a small drawer on his boat, amidst the accumulated junk of a sailor’s life. Joseph Watt died at home in Fraserburgh from cancer of the gullet on the 13th February 1955, and was buried alongside his wife in Kirktown Cemetery. His loss was felt all over the Northeast fishing communities with deep regret. In addition to his unique Victoria Cross for the Otranto Barrage, Joseph Watt was also entitled to a 1914-15 Star trio; however, there is no record of him every applying for, or receiving, his Great War campaign medals.
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