Orders, Decorations and Medals

South Africa 1877-79, 1 clasp, 1879 (T. H. Cook, Bugler, R.M., H.M.S. Active) onetime acid-cleaned (?), edge bruising, thus fine £300-350

Thomas Henry Cook was born in Gosport, Hampshire in December 1850 and entered the Royal Marines as a Bugler in the Portsmouth Division in December 1865. Among his subsequent seagoing appointments was H.M.S. Active, from which ship he was ‘landed with the Naval Brigade in the Zulu War from 19 November 1878 to 14 May 1879’, following which he was invalided home suffering from ague, aboard the Orontes (his service record refers). Cook, who was once tried by Court-Martial and four times entered in the defaulter’s book, was discharged in February 1890.