Four: Ship’s Steward 1st Class J. F. Slate, Royal Navy

Ashantee 1873-74, no clasp (Ship’s Stewd’s Asst., H.M.S. Beacon, 73-74); Egypt and Sudan 1882-89, dated reverse, no clasp (S. Stewd. 2 Cl., H.M.S. Orion); Royal Navy L.S. & G.C., V.R., narrow suspension (Ship’s Steward 3rd Class, H.M.S. Implacable), impressed naming, with third initial ‘S.’; Khedive’s Star 1882, contact marks and edge bruising, particularly to the second, otherwise generally about very fine or better (4) £300-350

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Medals for Services at Sea from the Collection of the Late Oliver Stirling Lee.

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James Francis Slate was born at Portsea, Hampshire in May 1851 and entered the Royal Navy as a Ship’s Steward Boy in December 1867. He subsequently witnessed active service aboard H.M.S. Beacon in the Ashantee operations of 1873-74 - for which he became one of just 90 crew members to receive the Medal - and again in the Egypt operations of 1882, on this occasion aboard the Orion. Having in the interim been awarded his L.S. & G.C. Medal in June 1879, he was finally pensioned ashore as a Ship’s Steward 1st Class in June 1889.

Sold with the recipient’s original parchment Certificate of Service, together with Ship’s Steward’s “flimsies” (8), covering appointments 1874-1890, the first of them from the Captain of H.M.S. Beacon at the time of the Ashantee War.