Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Five: Chief Petty Officer H. Groom, Royal Navy

1914-15 Star (160828 Act. C.P.O., R.N.), erroneous initial ‘J.’; British War and Victory Medals (160828 C.P.O., R.N.); Coronation 1911; Royal Navy L.S. & G.C., E.VII.R. (160828 P.O. 1 Cl., H.M.Y. Alexandra), this last with minor official correction, very fine and better (5) £160-180

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Medals for Services at Sea from the Collection of the Late Oliver Stirling Lee.

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Henry Groom was born at Woolwich, Kent in December 1875 and entered the Royal Navy as a Boy 2nd Class in May 1891. Not having witnessed any active service, he joined the royal yacht Osborne in June 1902, and, as a Petty Officer 1st Class, the Alexandra in May 1908, and was awarded his L.S. & G.C. aboard the latter yacht in December of the same year. On the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, however, Groom was transferred to the armed merchant cruiser Kinfauns Castle, in which ship he served until removing to the cruiser Weymouth in April 1915. He subsequently witnessed action off the Rufiji Delta during the operations aganist the Konigsberg, and off Durazzo, Italy during a raid by Austrian light forces. Sadly this was to prove his last active seagoing commission, for he was invalided home from Malta in the Carisbrooke in August 1918 and ‘died of melancholia’ in the same month.