Auction Catalogue

1 & 2 March 2017

Starting at 11:00 AM

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Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

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Lot

№ 649

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2 March 2017

Hammer Price:
£3,600

Army of India 1799-1826, 2 clasps, Nepaul, Bhurtpoor (T. Howe, 14th Foot.) short hyphen reverse, officially impressed naming, edge bruising, otherwise good very fine and scarce £1800-2200

Ex Cheylesmore 1930, Mackenzie 1934, and Elson 1963.

Thomas Howe was born in the Parish of Wolston, near Warwick. He attested for the 24th Foot at Coventry on 6 April 1807, at the age of eighteen, and served in that regiment until 7 October 1822, when he volunteered for the 14th Foot, where he served until 29 August 1831, his total service amounting to thirty-four years and 357 days.

When discharged in August 1831, the Medical Board described Thomas Howe as being ‘in the decline of life’, the reason for which becomes apparent after reading the description of his service which included Twenty Years, Three Hundred and Thirty Days in the East Indies. Was on board the Astell East Indiaman when engaged with two French Frigates & a Corvette in the Mozambique on the 3rd July 1810, one of which the [blank] Frigate struck to the Astell. Served two campaigns against Nepaul; was at the reduction of Hurreehurpoor; was at the Storming and Capture of Bhurtpoor, was wounded there in the Head by a shot & in the Body with a sword. Was blown up upon a mine being sprung by the enemy during the Storming of the Fortress & was injured in the loins.’

The action of 3 July 1810, referred to above, was a minor naval engagement in which a French frigate squadron under Guy-Victor Duperré attacked and defeated a convoy of H.E.I.C. East Indiamen near the Comoros Islands. During the engagement the British convoy resisted strongly and suffered heavy casualties but two ships were eventually forced to surrender. These were the British flagship, the Windham, which held off the French squadron to allow the surviving ship Astell to escape, and the Ceylon. The engagement was the third successful French attack on an Indian Ocean convoy in just over a year, the French frigates being part of a squadron operating from the Île de France under Commodore Jacques Hamelin.

Although a British frigate squadron under Josias Rowley was under orders to eliminate the French raiders, Rowley was distracted by the planned invasion of Île Bonaparte, which began the following week. Combined with limited British resources in the region, this allowed the French frigates significant freedom to attack British interests across the Ocean. The attack on Île Bonaparte was however part of a wider British strategy to seize and capture French raiding bases, and the success of the operation severely limited future French operations as Hamelin's squadron was required for the defence of Île de France. As a result, this was the last successful attack on a British merchant convoy in the Indian Ocean during the Napoleonic Wars.

Sold with copied discharge papers.