Orders, Decorations and Medals

Naval General Service 1793-1840, 1 clasp, Egypt (M. Norman, Midshipman) nearly extremely fine

Masters Norman was born 30 March, 1784, at Portsea, Hampshire. His eldest brother, James, died whilst serving as First-Lieutenant of the Prince George; the second, William, after having fought at Trafalgar, as Second-Lieutenant of the Thunderer, was killed in 1810 while leading a storming party at the capture of the Ile de la Passe, in the Isle of France; and the third, Charles Rice, a Lieutenant of the Rota, was killed in the boats in a sanguinary attack on the General Armstrong American privateer, in Fayal Roads, 26 September, 1814. Masters Norman entered the Navy in 1799 as a Volunteer on board the Cormorant, in which ship, after having assisted at the capture of El Batador Spanish privateer of 14 guns, he was wrecked, while in the conveyance of despatches from Lord Keith to Sir William Sidney Smith, off Damietta, 20 May, 1800. He was captured but subsequently exchanged after a few months of cruel captivity. In the frigate Diane, commanded by Captain Stephenson, he shared as Midshipman in the operations in Egypt in 1801 and, after the peace, returned to England. In March 1803, he went afloat once more and for the next five years saw service in various ships on different stations. In the summer of 1808 he sailed for the West Indies in the Flying Fish schooner but, in the ensuing November, a fall from the rigging obliged him to invalid. So serious was the injury he sustained that he was unable to go afloat again until March 1811. With the exception of the partial actions of November 1813, and February 1814, off Toulon, with the French Fleet, he saw no further action of any note. His last appointment was to the Coast Guard in 1820, in which service he continued a period of five years and three months. Lieutenant Masters Norman died on 8 July, 1876, at the advanced age of 92 years.