A Collection of Awards to Merchant Seamen and D.E.M.S. Gunners

Six: Chief Steward T. W. Peers, Merchant Navy, late Loyal North Lancashire Regiment

British War Medal 1914-20 (26471 Pte. T. W. Peers, L.N. Lanc. R.); Mercantile Marine War Medal 1914-18 (Thomas W. Peers); 1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star; Burma Star; War Medal 1939-45, in their original addressed card forwarding box, together with the recipient’s Minister of Transport condolence slip in the name of ‘Thomas William Peers’, the Great War medals very fine, the remainder extremely fine (6) £80-100

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Awards to Merchant Seamen and D.E.M.S. Gunners.

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Thomas William Peers, who was born in Liverpool in May 1891, served as a Private in the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment in the early part of the Great War, his MIC entry confirming his single entitlement to the British War Medal, even though he is recorded as having entered the Gallipoli theatre of war in August 1915 - probably, therefore, he never actually set foot on the Peninsula, his ship having been torpedoed. Be that as it may, he clearly ended the War as an Assistant Steward in the Mercantile Marine.

A Steward serving aboard the S.S. Samite on the renewal of hostilities, he appears to have removed to the Alcinious in July 1943 and to the Atreus, as Chief Steward, in early 1945, aboard which latter ship he died of heart disease at Calcutta that July. He was buried in Bhowanipore War Cemetery, and his widow, Eliza Alice Peers, applied for his 1939-45 War campaign awards in November 1949; sold with a file of research.