He was a patriotic man who was forever loyal to the United States, yet he served as a British merchant seaman before enlisting in Britain’s Royal Navy. He served with courage and distinction and became the first American to earn Great Britain’s highest military award. And this British naval hero was born and raised in Topsham.

William Henry Harrison Seeley was born on May 30, 1840, to Dayton A. and Lucy J. Thompson Seeley at Topsham. William was minimally educated, yet this young Sagadahoc County lad was headstrong, willful and filled with an independent and adventurous spirit.

In 1850, at the tender young age of 10, William worked locally as a laborer “on the docks,” in the shadows of the shipyards located on the banks of the Androscoggin and on the Kennebec at Bath.

By 1854, at 14 years old, a family argument saw William abruptly leave home for Boston where he signed onto “the merchantman Salem … a British merchant ship … built in Maine.”

For the next 10 years, William Seeley learned the ropes of being a British merchant seaman as the Salem traveled the world.

Seeley’s heroic side first appeared when “old Bill Sharp … the carpenter on the Salem … was washed overboard. [Sharp] wasn’t much on swimming so I jumped in” and saved Sharp from drowning.

On July 4, 1864, as the American Civil War raged into its third year in America, “The Salem berthed in Hong Kong.” Young William “was a Yankee [at] the very home of the fire-cracker” and “was dead-set to get ashore and celebrate” the Fourth of July.

When Seeley asked his captain for permission to go ashore, his request was curtly denied. The “Stars and Stripes – red, white and blue – are my colors,” and being the headstrong young man that he was, Seeley simply “deserted, jumped overboard and swam ashore.”

“After I worked off my native enthusiasm” and afraid to return to face the consequences aboard the Salem, “I enlisted in the British Navy” and served aboard the “H.M.S. Euryalus … a fourth rate wooden-hulled Screw Frigate.”

The H.M.S. Euryalus immediately steamed for Japan where a year-long Naval engagement “to control the Shimonosecki Straits” was ongoing.

The Euryalus joined with eight British, four Dutch and three French warships, “along with a U.S. chartered steamer,” to reopen the strait as British “Admiral Augustus Kuper made the Euryalus his Flagship.”

Seeley joined alongside “2,000 soldiers, Marines, and sailors” while the Euryalus’ captain, John H. I. Alexander, “led the assault on the enemy Batteries.”

Seeley charged the enemy alongside Captain Alexander, and when Alexander “was severely wounded,” Seeley “carried him on his back a half a mile under fire … in the very front line of attack upon the enemy stronghold.”

Despite Seeley’s “left arm [being] put out of business by a bullet… I did the best I could… I just picked him up like I had many a bag of Potatoes down in Sagadahoc County and pretty soon we were out of harm’s way.”

On Sept. 22, 1865, at Southsea in Portsmouth, England, while recuperating from his wounds, Seeley was recognized “for his courageous actions during the Shimonosecki Campaign.”

William Seeley became the first American ever to be awarded the Victoria Cross — Great Britain’s highest military honor — for gallantry and valor. All totaled, William had been wounded “three times” in service to the crown.

By 1866, Seeley ended his royal naval service and returned to America where he started a farm in Dedham, Massachusetts, was married and eventually had three children.

For the remainder of his life, Seeley received “50 pounds a year” as a “British pensioner,” an amount of money that, Seeley admitted, “was nothing to sneeze at.”

Despite his illustrious achievement as “the first American to earn Britain’s highest military award,” Seeley’s only regret was that he gave service to a foreign nation instead of his own country.

“Yes Sir … I’ve had my share of stirring times,” serving in the Royal Navy, but “as for me I’d rather [have been] in Uncle Sam’s Merchant Service.”

On Oct. 1, 1914, William Henry Harrison Seeley died at the age of 74 at his son’s home in Dedham, Massachusetts, and his remains were interred in the Evergreen Cemetery at Stoughton.

During World War I, “William Henry Metcalf of Talmadge Maine” became the second American to earn the Victoria Cross while serving in the 12th Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Forces, near Arras France, in September 1918.

To date, “only seven Americans have earned the Victoria Cross” for “gallantry in the face of the enemy,” and William Henry Harrison Seeley of Topsham was the very first to do so.

Today, Seeley’s life, service and historic achievements are forever remembered in our Stories from Maine.

Historian Lori-Suzanne Dell has authored five books on Maine history and administers the popular “Stories From Maine” page on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.

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