Orders, Decorations and Medals

A pair of Royal Tournament medals awarded to Captain C. S. B. Swinley, D.S.O., D.S.C., Royal Navy

Royal Tournament Prize Medal, bronze, obverse, Britannia seated on a lion, with ‘Royal Tournament’ above, reverse, engraved inscription within laurel wreath, ‘Nore Command 1929, Foil v. Foil, Officers, Lieut. Comdr. C. S. B. Swinley, R.N.’, 38mm., in fitted Mappin & Webb of Oxford Street case of issue, with gilt lid title ‘Royal Tournament’; together with another similar, with engraved reverse inscription, ‘Atlantic Fleet Command, Foil v. Foil, Officers, Lt. Cdr. C. S. B. Swinley, H.M.S. Repulse, 1931’, this in fitted Carrington & Co. Ltd. case of issue, with gilt lid title ‘Royal Tournament’, good very fine (2) £40-60

Casper Silas Balfour Swinley, grandson of Major-General George Swinley, Bengal Artillery (see Lot 878), was awarded the D.S.C. for gallant deeds in the Calais operations (London Gazette 26 July 1940, refers) and the D.S.O. for his command of the destroyer H.M.S. Isis during the evacuation of Greece (London Gazette 11 November 1941, refers). He died in 1983; his memoirs, and other documentation pertinent to active service in the last war, are held in the collections of the Royal Naval Museum, Portsmouth (Reference 1982/33), and the Imperial War Museum, London (Reference MRA 15456).