Orders, Decorations and Medals

An R.N.L.I. Medal with Second and Third Service clasps awarded to Coxswain Superintendent Richard Roberts of the North Deal Lifeboat

Royal National Lifeboat Institution, V.R., silver (Mr Richard Roberts. Voted 3rd Augt. 1882) with Second Service clasp (Voted 11th Jany. 1894) and Third Service clasp (Voted 13th June 1907) with uniface ‘double dolphin’ suspension, suspension slack, nearly extremely fine £1600-2000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Collection of Life Saving Awards formed by The Late W.H. Fevyer.

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Ref. Spink Exhibition 1985, No. 65; Sotheby ‘Rule, Britannia!’ Exhibition 1986, No. 333.

R.N.L.I. Medal - Richard Roberts, Assistant Coxswain, North Deal Lifeboat: ‘For going out on every occasion, except one, in 17 years, a total of 78 times in which Mr Roberts helped to save 202 lives’.

Second Service clasp - Richard Roberts, Coxswain, North Deal Lifeboat: ‘In acknowledgement of his long continued services in the lifeboat with which he was connected for upwards of 30 years in which period he .... assisted in saving 409 lives. Outstanding services were those to the barque Louisa (1873), the barque Monte Carmelo (1875), the barque Hadvig Sophia and the ship Crusader (1877), the barque Mia Madre E and the ships Leda and Paul Boyton (1879), the ship Ganges (1881) and the barque Mandalay and the steam trawler Euphrates (1891)’.

Third Service clasp - Richard Roberts, Coxswain Superintendent, North Deal Lifeboat: ‘Awarded “on his resignation of the post of Coxswain Superintendent. Roberts had been Assistant Coxswain and Coxswain since the formation of the station, upwards of forty-two years”. Since the award of his second clasp on 11 January 1894, he has given service to the following: the brig Franz von Mathies and the schooner Clacton (1894), a boat from H.M.S. Research, a boat from the brigantine G. L. Walters and the schooner Michael Kelly (1895), the barque Unione (1897), the barque Maria (1901) and the dredger Beaufort (1907)’ (Ref. Lifeboat Gallantry, by Barry Cox). Together with his ‘Third Service’ clasp, Roberts was awarded a Certificate of Service and a gratuity of £50.


Richard Roberts was born in 1838. He was 2nd Coxswain of the lifeboats Van Kook and Mary Somerville, 1865-85. He was Coxswain of the Mary Somerville and Charles Dibdin, 1885-1907. After his ‘retirement’ in 1907, he turned out as an ordinary hand when required and by 1918 when 80 years old he had participated in the rescue of some 485 lives. He died on 18 August 1933 aged 95 years.

Sold with copied photographs of the recipient and his lifeboats. One, taken in 1890 with two other coxswains, was entitled ‘The Boom of the Distress Gun’. It was reproduced in late Victorian journals and in colour prints under the title, ‘Heroes of the Goodwin Sands’, but was known locally as ‘Deaf, Dumb and Blind’! - the photograph is reproduced on the front cover of the Life Saving Awards Research Society Journal (No.23, February 1995 onwards). Also with photocopied extracts from Heroes of the Goodwin Sands, by Rev. Thomas Stanley Treanor, M.A. and Seamen of the Downs, by George Bethel Bayley and William Adams - these with numerous references to Roberts.