Seven: Shipwright Lieutenant-Commander T. H. Stonehouse, Royal Navy

1914-15 Star (Carpr., R.N.); British War and Victory Medals (Wt. Shpt., R.N.); 1939-45 Star; Defence and War Medals; Jubilee 1935, the Great War awards with a little contact wear, otherwise very fine, the remainder rather better (7) £100-120

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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Thomas Henry Stonehouse was born at Gillingham, Kent in January 1887 and entered the Royal Navy as a Shipwright’s Apprentice in November 1905. By the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, he was serving on the strength of Leda, at which establishment he was advanced to Acting Carpenter in March 1915. Then, following a very brief appointment at Pembroke, he joined the monitor Raglan in April of the same year, and was lucky to be transferred to the Hibernia on 2 January 1918, just a week or two before his former ship was sunk with heavy loss of life by the Breslau. Stonehouse ended the War as a Warrant Shipwright aboard the cruiser Antrim.

The inter-war period witnessed his further advancement to Commissioned Shipwright in April 1925 and to Shipwright Lieutenant in October 1934, and he appears to have been placed on the Retired List at the end of 1936. But with the renewal of hostilities in September 1939, he returned to uniform and served as a Barrackmaster at the training establishment Glendower and as a Shipwright Lieutenant-Commander at the Sheerness maintenance base Wildfire. Stonehouse, who was released in September 1945, still appeared on the Retired List as late as 1961, when he would have been in his mid-seventies.

Sold with a good quantity of original documentation, including an excellent run of ship’s “flimsies” (approximately 50); several rate qualification certificates and a “True Copy of Certificate of Service”, covering the period 1905-15; Buckingham Palace forwarding letter for the 1935 Jubilee Medal; Certificates for Wounds and Hurts (2), dated 28 March 1935 and 5 May 1944, the latter for several contusions as a result of falling off the gunwhale of H.M. drifter Constant Hope while supervising repairs; and Order for Release from Naval Service, dated 9 July 1945.