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

Five: Chief Boatswain W. Jones, Royal Navy

India General Service 1854-95, 1 clasp, Perak (P.O. 1st Cl., H.M.S. Modeste), with a later engraved asterisk decoration between surname and rank; Egypt and Sudan 1882-89, dated reverse, no clasp (Bos’n, R.N., H.M.S. Euphrates); Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, no clasp (Ch. Bosn., R.N., H.M.S. Monarch); Royal Navy L.S. & G.C., V.R., narrow suspension (C.M. Top, H.M.S. Modeste), engraved naming; Khedive’s Star 1882, minor contact wear, generally good very fine and a scarce combination of awards (5) £450-550

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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William Jones was born at Carrig-too-Hill, Co. Cork in January 1846 and entered the Royal Navy as a Boy 2nd Class in February 1861. His subsequent stints of active service comprised time aboard H.M.S. Modeste as a Petty Officer 1st Class off the Malay Peninsula in 1875-76, which earned him the India General Service 1854-95, with “Perak” clasp, and time aboard the Euphrates as a Boatswain in the Egypt operations of 1882, which earned him the Egypt 1882-89 Medal, without clasp, and the Khedive’s Star 1882. He had, meanwhile, been awarded his L.S. & G.C. Medal in August 1875.

In December 1895, Jones went out to South Africa to join the receiving ship Penelope, but was actually employed ashore ‘for Cape Yard’. When the Penelope was replaced by the Monarch in May 1897, he was similarly borne on the books of that ship, but continued with his duties ashore, and, at the time of the Boer War, he was appointed Boatswain of Simon’s Town Dockyard, with charge of assorted “Kroomen”; see accompanying feature and photograph from the Navy and Army Illustrated, 27 January 1900.

Awarded the Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902 Medal, without clasp, he returned home in February 1901 and was pensioned ashore that April. Jones died in October 1915.