Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria including the collection to Naval Artificers formed by JH Deacon

Three: Captain’s Coxswain R. Whitebread, Royal Navy

Naval General Service 1793-1840, 1 clasp, Syria (R. Whitebread); Royal Navy L.S. & G.C. Medal, V.R., wide suspension (Capns. Coxn., H.M.S. Racoon, 20 Yrs.); St. Jean d’Acre 1840, cast silvered copy, polished, fine or better (3) £300-400

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Collection of Medals formed by the late Jack Deacon.

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Robert Whithead was born in London in May 1823 and joined the Royal Navy as a Boy 1st Class aboard the Cambridge in March 1840. Quickly witnessing active service in the Syria operations of the same year, he went on to gain Petty Officer status as a Captain of the Maintop in November 1847, serving variously thereafter in the rates of Yeoman of the Signals, Quarter-Master and, finally, in June 1861, as Captain’s Coxswain. In the interim his foreign commissions took him to the Mediterraean, the Cape and the Pacific, and he saw further active service throughout the whole of the Baltic and Crimea operations, while aboard the Virago, including the attack on Petropaulovski in Kamtschatka in September 1854. Whitehead was awarded his L.S. & G.C. Medal on being pensioned ashore from the Racoon in January 1862.