Four: Lieutenant-Commander R. E. Marcon, Royal Navy

Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, no clasp (Lieut., R.N., H.M.S. Rattler), second initial given as ‘C.’; 1914-15 Star (Lt. Cr., R.N.); British War and Victory Medals (Lt. Commr., R.N.), very fine and better (4) £300-350

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Barrett J. Carr Collection of Boer War Medals.

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Just 76 Queen’s South Africa Medals were awarded to the ship’s company of H.M.S. Rattler, all of them without clasp.

Reginald Ernest Marcon was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia in April 1879, the son of a Fleet Paymaster, R.N., and attended the R.N.C. Britannia as a cadet 1893-95, prior to being appointed a Midshipman in December of the latter year. Advanced to Sub. Lieutenant in August 1899, he joined the gunboat H.M.S. Rattler as Navigating Officer in February 1901, and served in her off South Africa until her departure for Zanzibar later that year - meanwhile, his C.O., Lieutenant-Commander G. Tibbets, noted for the record instances of Marcon ‘having exceeded the limit of temperance when at private entertainments’.

Notwithstanding this early blot on his copy book, Marcon was advanced to Lieutenant in December 1901 and received his first command, the destroyer Contest, in July 1906, followed by the Leopard in February 1908, in addition to further promotion to Lieutenant-Commander in December 1909. But his subsequent wartime career attracted Their Lordships displeasure on several occasions, the whole in relation to his excessive use of punishment and discipline - consequently his removal from the command of the seaplane carrier Empress in February 1916, a command that he had assumed in November 1915, and the sloop Mimosa in August of the same year. Thereafter, he was employed ashore, but once more attracted the wrath of Their Lordships for arresting and confining an R.A.F. Private.

Marcon was placed on the Retired List at his own request in April 1922 and died in February 1947.