Three: Paymaster-in-Chief W. C. P. Grant, Royal Navy

Naval General Service 1793-1840, 1 clasp, Syria (W. C. P. Grant, Clerk); Baltic 1854-55, unnamed as issued; St. Jean d’Acre Medal 1840, silver, unnamed, pierced with ring suspension, good very fine (3) £1000-1400

Ex Spink, October 1959; Sotheby’s, March 1988; Spink, 19 April 2007.

William Charles Perry Grant was born in the Cape Province on 19 March 1821. He entered the Royal Navy as a Clerk’s Assistant on 14 February 1839 on board Lightning. He served as a Clerk on the Cyclops (Capt. H. T. Austin) on and off the coast of Syria 1840 for which he was subsequently awarded a medal. The Cyclops, a six-gun paddle frigate, delivered the ultimatum to Mehemet Ali in Alexandria, 9 August 1840, and delivered the subsequent rejection to Admiral Stopford, 7 September 1840. The ship was involved in the bombardment of the fort at Djebel, 11 September 1840; the bombardment and capture of the fort at Batroun, 15 September 1840 and the bombardment and capture of Sidon, 28 September 1840.

Grant, having passed his examinations, was appointed an Assistant Paymaster in February 1842 and was advanced to Paymaster of the Growler in September 1847. Served in the Baltic as Paymaster on the Dauntless, January-October 1854 and was then specially appointed as Purveyor to Lord Granville’s Embassy to St. Petersburg for the coronation of Tsar Alexander III in August 1856. He was then specially appointed Purveyor for the Prince of Wales’s visit to Canada and the U.S.A., 1860 and specially appointed to the Royal Yacht Osborne for the Prince of Wales’s visit to the Middle East, 1862. He later served as Secretary to Rear-Admirals H. T. Austin, A. Phillimore and W. M. Dowell. Grant retired as Paymaster-in-Chief in 1881.

With copied research.