Orders, Decorations and Medals

Naval General Service 1793-1840, 1 clasp, Lion 15 July 1798 (James Bowdry) a few very light marks, otherwise good very fine £5000-6000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The collection of Medals formed by the Late Clive Nowell.

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Ex Cheylesmore 1930 and B.D.W. 1995 (incorrectly catalogued as ‘Bowdrey

James Bowdry (or Boardy) is confirmed on the roll as a Boy 3rd class aboard H.M.S. Lion. Approximately 23 clasps were issued for this action in which Lion engaged four Spanish frigates resulting in the capture of one, the Santa Dorotea

On 15 July 1798, the Lion 64, Captain Manley Dixon, about thirty leagues off Carthagena met with four thirty-four gun Spanish frigates, one of them, the Santa Dorotea 42, having lost her fore-topmast. The Spanish ships formed in line of battle, but the Lion having the weather gage, bore down, and succeeded in cutting off the Dorotea, left astern by her consorts. This ship though her topmast was gone, sailed nearly as well as the Lion, and the other three frigates tacked, and made three attempts to support her, but each time receiving a broadside from Captain Dixon, at length hauled off, and stood away to the north west. The Lion then got alongside the Dorotea and engaged her yard arm to yard arm, shooting away her mizzen mast and damaging her main mast and rudder, till seeing herself abandoned by her comrades, and having twenty of her crew killed and thirty-two wounded, she struck her colours. The Lion who was fifty men short of her complement, had a midshipman and one man wounded. The Santa Dorotea was afterwards, under the same name, added to the British Navy as a thirty-six gun frigate.