Medals for Services at Sea from the Collection of the Late Oliver Stirling Lee

Six: Petty Officer J. C. Apsey, Royal Navy

China 1900, no clasp (Lg. Smn., H.M.S. Dido); 1914-15 Star (176290 P.O., R.N.); British War and Victory Medals (176290 P.O., R.N.); Royal Navy L.S. & G.C., G.V.R., 1st issue (176290 P.O., H.M.S. Actaeon); Italian Messina Earthquake Medal 1908, silver, unnamed as issued, the earlier awards with contact marks and edge bruising, about very fine, the Great War awards very fine or better (6) £220-250

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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John Capen Apsey was born at Reading, Berkshire in March 1878 and entered the Royal Navy as a Boy 2nd Class in October 1893. He subsequently witnessed active service aboard H.M.S. Dido off China during the Boxer Rebellion and was present in the Lancaster during the rescue operations mounted in the wake of the earthquake at Messina in 1908. Awarded his L.S. & G.C. Medal in July 1911, he served for much of the Great War in the destroyer flotilla depot ship Tyne, but between June 1917 and March 1918 returned to sea in the destroyer Express. Interestingly, at this juncture, his service papers note that just 12 days after joining his next appointment, another destroyer, the Lark, he was ‘Deprived [of his] L.S. & G.C. Medal’ for drunkenness and absence, yet the above described award appears to be entirely as issued to him in 1911. He was also reduced from Chief Petty Officer to Petty Officer, in which rank he was demobilised from Pembroke I in June 1919.