Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

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.

View
Collection

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.