IT WAS a celebrated David and Goliath battle of the Great War – a gloriously brave mismatch between a sparsely armed Scottish herring drifter and the might of the Austro-Hungarian navy. And tomorrow the Victoria Cross awarded to the heroic skipper and the courageous crew of the Gowanlea is expected to be sold for up to £160,000 when Britain’s highest medal for gallantry goes under the hammer at Spinks in London.

The medal was awarded in 1917 to Joseph Watt, a 30-year-old fishing skipper born in the Banffshire fishing village of Gardenstown, for his “most conspicuous gallantry”. In an epic confrontation – celebrated in poetry – the brave skipper refused to surrender his 87ft wooden trawler and instead sailed headlong towards an enemy light cruiser, the 424ft Navara, the ship of Captain Miklós Horthy, later to become Regent of Hungary.