Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Naval General Service 1793-1840, 1 clasp, Navarino (John Melling.) edge bruising and contact marks, otherwise nearly very fine £800-1200

Provenance: Glendining, May 1903.

John Melling served as a Private, Royal Marines, in H.M.S. Genoa during the battle of Navarino in which the combined fleets of Britain, France and Russia engaged and routed the Turkish fleet, 20 October 1827. The morning after the battle Admiral Sir Edward Codrington described the state of the Turkish fleet as such, ‘Out of a fleet composed of eighty-one men-of-war, only one frigate and fifteen smaller vessels are in a state to ever to put to sea again.’