Auction Catalogue

9 & 10 May 2018

Starting at 10:00 AM

.

Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Live Online Auction

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Lot

№ 188

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9 May 2018

Hammer Price:
£2,000

Naval General Service 1793-1840, 2 clasps, Basque Roads 1809, St. Sebastian (David Davis.) edge bruising and polished, otherwise toned, nearly very fine £2000-2600

Provenance: By direct descent to the present David John Davis.

David Davis is confirmed as an Able Seaman aboard H.M.S. Lyra for both actions. One other man of this name is shown on the rolls as an Ordinary Seaman aboard H.M.S. Mars at Trafalgar.

Davis served on the 10-gun Cherokee-class brig-sloop
Lyra from 1808 to 1815. At Basque Roads the sloops Lyra and Redpole were equipped as light ships to guide the fireships into the channel.

On 6 April 1828, David married Joanna Taylor in the Parish of St Dunstan, Stepney, Middlesex. They had several children one of whom was David John Davis, born in 1839. He attended the Royal Naval Hospital School and later became a seaman. After his father’s death on 5 May 1856, he inherited his Naval General Service medal and, in 1858, emigrated to Australia at the age of 19, taking the medal with him. It has since passed down the family to the present vendor. Sold with further family details contained on a memory stick.