Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Naval General Service 1793-1840, 1 clasp, Martinique (Edwd. Brice, Chaplain) minor edge bruising, otherwise extremely fine and rare
£2500-3000

Only 26 N.G.S. medals issued to Chaplains in the Royal Navy, more than half of which received clasps for Navarino or Syria. This clasp for Martinique is unique to a Chaplain.

Edward Brice entered the Navy on 24 November 1807, as Chaplain on board the York 74, Captain Robert Barton, and proceeding to the West Indies, was there present, in 1809, at the reduction of Martinique and the Saintes, and the capture of the French 74-gun ship Haupoult. He left the York in 1810, and was afterwards appointed, in 1812, to the Medway 74, flagship of Sir Charles Tyler, at the Cape of Good Hope; April 1816, to the Salisbury 50, flagship of Rear-Admiral John Erskine Douglas, at Jamaica, where he was for two years Acting Chaplain to the Naval Hospital at Port Royal; December 1818, to the Hyperion 32, Captain Thomas Searle, at Leith; April 1819, to the Windsor Castle 74, Captains Thomas Gordon Caulfield and Charles Dashwood, at Plymouth; November 1823, as Supernumerary Chaplain, to the Ocean 110, Captain Lucius Ferdinand Hardyman, at the same port; and July 1824 and July 1828, to the Britannia 120, flagship of Sir James Saumarez and Lord Northesk, also at Plymouth, and Victory 104, flagship of Hon. Robert Stopford, at Portsmouth. He was placed on the retired list about June 1829. Mr Brice has received a medal for the capture of Martinique. He is incumbent of Humshaugh, a living in the gift of Greenwich Hospital (Ref O’Byrnes Naval Biography, 1861).