Orders, Decorations and Medals

Ashantee 1873-74, 1 clasp, Coomassie (Lt. E. S. Evans, R.N., H.M.S. Active, 73-74) suspension neatly re-fixed, otherwise very fine £600-800

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Medals for the Ashantee War 1873-74.

View
Collection

118 clasps issued to H.M.S. Active.

Edward Seymour Evans was born on 10 January 1844, and joined the Royal Navy as a Cadet on 4 December 1858. He landed during the first phase of the Ashantee War and was present at Abrakampa. Afterwards he commanded the 4th company Naval Brigade during the Ashantee campaign of 1874 and was present in every action and skirmish, concluding with the occupation of Coomassie (Mentioned in despatches; Medal with Clasp).

Evans had been senior Lieutenant of H.M.S. Megaera in February 1871 when his ship became involved in a scandalous shipwreck in June of that year. The careers of some ships seem to be nothing but misfortune or even disaster. H.M.S. Megaera was one such. She was built in 1849 as one of the Royal Navy's first iron-hulled warships, but even before her launching the admiralty ordered her to be converted to a troopship. As soon as she set sail an engine crank broke and she was towed back to the dockyard; her maiden voyage was a disaster in which she was nearly lost in a storm ... and so it went on: de-rated to a store-ship and finally placed in reserve. There she might have rotted away quietly and been forgotten, if the admiralty hadn't suddenly decided to send her, of all ships, on the voyage round The Cape to Australia with 300 souls on board. It was her final voyage, for she was completely unseaworthy, with her bottom plates rusted through. She was beached on St. Paul, a tiny volcanic island in the Indian Ocean, where her crew survived for nearly three months before being rescued. Evans retired as a Commander in January 1889 and died on 20 March 1920. The medal is sold with a quantity of research including contemporary articles from the Illustrated London News and Blackwood's Magazine, reports of the subsequent Court Martial of the Megaera shipwreck, despatches and reports mentioning Lieut. Evans during the Ashantee campaign.