Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A rare Great War campaign service group of three awarded to Able Seaman T. B. Breckenridge, Royal Navy, who served in H.M’s Armoured Train Jellicoe in support of the Royal Naval Division in Antwerp
1914 Star, with clasp (197531 T. B. Breckenridge, A.B., Armd. Trains); British War and Victory Medals (197531 T. B. Breckenridge, A.B., R.N.), minor contact marks, very fine and better (3) £600-800

Thomas Barbour Breckenridge was born in Paisley, Renfrewshire, in May 1882, and entered the Royal Navy as a Boy 2nd Class in January 1898. But an unhappy career ensued, his service record noting a number of offences, among them a charge ‘for improperly leaving the ship and behaving with contempt to a superior officer’, conduct that was punished by a court martial sentence of one year’s hard labour. He was discharged ashore time expired as an Able Seaman in May 1912.

Recalled on the outbreak of hostilities, Breckenridge quickly found himself out in France, manning H.M’s Armoured Train Jellicoe in support of the Royal Naval Division. Skippered by Lieutenant-Commander Littlejohns, the Jellicoe was armed with three 4.7-inch guns and, a handful of R.N. and R.M. personnel aside, was manned by around 70 Belgian volunteers. And, in the company of H.M’s A.T. Deguise, lent valuable support in the Antwerp operations in October, prior to assisting in the Ypres sector. A third armoured train, the Churchill, was present at the Ostend operations.

Having then returned to the U.K., Breckenridge joined the boom defence vessel Wallington in April 1916, and remained similarly employed until coming ashore to Pembroke I in October of the same year. His final wartime seagoing appointments were in the battleship Commonwealth in February-August 1917, and in another battleship, the Lord Nelson, from September 1917 until his demobilisation in July 1919; sold with copied research.