Orders, Decorations and Medals

Egypt and Sudan 1882-89, dated reverse, 2 clasps, Alexandria 11th July, Tel-El-Kebir (W. H. Beard, A.B., H.M.S. Penelope) extremely fine and rare £350-400

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Medals to Offices and Ratings of H.M.S. Penelope.

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Beard was one of just 27 men from the Penelope present with the Naval Brigade in the action at Kassassin on 9 September 1882.

William Henry Beard was born in India in November 1856 and entered the Royal Navy as a Boy 2nd Class in January 1873. Quickly embarked for the Gold Coast as a Boy 1st Class, he served variously in H.M. Ships Amethyst, Druid and Simoom, and may have qualified for the Ashantee Medal 1873-74 - although his service records notes the first of many gaol sentences in the same period.

An Able Seaman by the time of his service in the Penelope (June 1882 to February 1883), he was among a handful of her crew to be landed for service in the Naval Brigade in 1882, the whole for services in the horse-drawn Naval Armoured Train - in fact more of an armed truck than a train, being a four-wheeled vehicle with steel plated sides that were ‘fairly bullet-proof’, and sandbags hung around the sides, with an awning above and a 40-pounder gun for firepower (a separate box-car similarly fitted with steel side plates and sandbags had two compartments for the 230 shells, mostly shrapnel, and charges, the entrance to each magazine being only from the top).

This ‘armed contrivance’, manned by Penelope’s men, was pulled along the rails from Ismalia to Nefiche by 16 horses, four abreast, on 26 August 1882, immediately ahead being another armed truck manned by an R.M.A. detachment under Captain Tucker, and equipped with a captured 8-cm. Krupp gun. And on 9 September, after onward transportation to Kassassin, Penelope’s armed truck went into action against a strong enemy reconnaissance party. The commanding officer, Lieutenant C. K. Purvis, R.N., and his 2nd in Command, Sub. Lieutenant James Erskine, had been working the truck on the line a little beyond the camp, when the enemy turned their guns on it - both officers had dismounted from the truck to take some observations and were standing close together when a shell burst near them, striking Purvis in the foot and tearing a portion of it off, necessitating immediate amputation at the ankle joint. Command of this ‘Armoured Train’ thus passed to Lieutenant F. E. W. Lambart, R.N., of Penelope, but it was never engaged after 9 September and on 23 September, 10 days following Tel-el-Kebir, Penelope’s small detachment was re-embarked.

Beard was still serving as an Able Seaman, aboard the Crocodile, in late 1885.

Named in a slightly later style; another medal is known to the recipient