The scarce ‘Syria’ and ‘Anchor’ type long service medal pair awarded to Colour-Sergeant Edward Palmer, Royal Marines and Yeoman of the Guard, the only Yeoman to wear the N.G.S. medal

Naval General Service 1793-1840, 1 clasp, Syria (Edwd. Palmer.); Royal Navy L.S. & G.C., Anchor obverse (Edward Palmer Color Sergt. Royal Marines H.M.S. Thunderer 22 Years) pierced as issued with ring suspension, very fine (2) £2,000-£2,600

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Collection of Medals to Yeomen of the Guard formed by Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Denny.

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Provenance: Spink, November 2005; the L.S. & G.C. was previously held in the Douglas-Morris collection as a single, sold in these rooms in February 1997, and since reunited as a pair.

Edward Palmer was born in the Parish of Dean Prior, Devon, in 1804, and attested to serve as a Private R.M.L.I. with the Plymouth Division on 26 March 1821, a labourer by trade. Whilst his service papers have not survived, some details can be gleaned from Yeoman of the Guard records which state that he was ‘shipwrecked in H.M.S. Columbine on 25 January 1824’, in the harbour of Port Longue, island of Sapientza, Greece. The Captain and the Master were reprimanded for having only one anchor down during the storm. He also served in ‘H.M. Schooner Speedwell [at the] capture of a Spanish Piratical 10 Gun Brig and two Schooners with 1300 slaves’. These captures took place in 1832 on the Jamaica Station when, on 6 April Speedwell captured the Planeta with 183 slaves; on 3 June when she captured the Aquila, 10-gun brig with 596 slaves; and on 25 June when she captured the Indagadora with 134 slaves. Palmer served in H.M.S. Thunderer during the operations off the coast of Syria and at St Jean D’Acre in 1840, and was still serving in that ship when he received his L.S. & G.C. medal with gratuity of £15 in October 1843. He was pensioned on 18 December 1843, and is shown in the 1851 census as living in Shoreditch as a Greenwich Pensioner and Policeman. In that same year he was appointed to the Yeomen of the Guard and died on 15 February 1870. He was the only Yeoman of the Guard to wear the N.G.S. medal.

Sold with research.