Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Naval General Service 1793-1840, 1 clasp, Basque Roads 1809 (F. Phillips, Midshipman.) original ribbon. Sold with two very fine portrait miniatures believed to be of Lieutenant Phillips R.N. and his wife, together with a Victorian period photograph of a mother and child, all three in red cloth frames, cloth worn but images in good condition, the medal dark toned, extremely fine (4) £2,000-£3,000

This lot is to be sold as part of a special collection, A Fine Collection of Medals, the Property of a Lady.

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Purchased many years ago from a family source together with M.G.S. to Ensign Joseph Wickham (see Lot XXX) and possibly related in some way.

Frederick Phillips entered the Navy, 28 August 1805, as First-class Volunteer, on board the Bellona 74, Captains Charles Dudley Paler and John Erskine Douglas; under the latter of whom we find him present, as Midshipman, at the destruction of the French 74-gun ship Impétueux, off Cape Henry, 14 September 1806, also in the attack upon the enemy’s fleet in Basque Roads and in the expedition to the Walcheren in 1809, and at the capture, 18 December 1810, of Le Héros du Nord privateer of 14 guns and 44 men. On 22 June 1807, he chanced to be, as a Supernumerary, on board the Leopard 50, Captain Salusbury Pryce Humphreys, when that ship compelled the U.S. frigate Chesapeake to surrender, in consequence of a refusal on the part of the latter to allow the British to search her for deserters. Following Captain Douglas from the Bellona, in May 1812, into the Prince of Wales 98, he sailed with him soon afterwards for the Mediterranean, where, in April 1814, he beheld the fall of Genoa. On his return to England in April 1815, from the West Indies, whither he had gone with convoy in the Swiftsure 74, Captain William Henry Webley Parry, Mr. Phillips found that he had been promoted to the rank of Lieutenant 7 February preceding. From May 1824, until March 1831, he served in the Coast Blockade as a Supernumerary of the Ramillies 74 and Hyperion 42, Captains William M‘Culloch and William James Mingaye. He has been since serving in the Coast Guard.