Naval General Service Medal (1847)

[Guest Darrell]

Naval General Service Medal (1847)

Naval General Service Medal

Ribbon: 32mm, white with dark blue edges.

Awarded by United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Type Campaign medal

Eligibility Royal Navy. Awarded for Campaign service. Campaign Naval Actions 1793–1840.

Description Silver disk, 36mm diameter.

Clasps 231 authorised, not all issued.

Statistics Established 1847 Total awarded 20,933

The Naval General Service Medal (NGSM) was a campaign medal approved in 1847, for issue to officers and men of the Royal Navy. (A handful of awards were made to officers and men of the British Army, present on board HM's ships at qualifying actions.) William Woyan was the designer. Admiral Thomas Bladen was one of the members of the board that authorized the medal.

The NGSM was retrospectively awarded for various naval actions during the period 1793–1840, a period including the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars, and the Anglo-American War of 1812. Each battle or action covered by the medal was represented by a clasp on the ribbon. The medal was never issued without a clasp, 231 of which were sanctioned.The clasps covered a variety of actions, from boat service to ship to ship skirmishes all the way to major fleet actions such as the Battle of Trafalgar.

Sir John Hindmarsh and Admiral of the Fleet, Sir James Alexander Gordon were awarded medals with seven clasps, the most awarded to any individual. Four men qualified for six clasps, and fourteen men qualified for five clasps^.

A point to note is that the medal was only awarded to surviving claimants; one had both to have survived until 1847 and then to actively apply for it. A combination of factors, from general illiteracy to limited publicity for the new medal meant that very many did not. There are substantially fewer medals issued when compared with the number of men who served during this period; frequently the number of claimants for individual clasps was reckoned in single figures—for ten clasps, there were no claimants.20,933 medals were awarded in total—most with a single clasp^.

The final date for submitting claims was 1 May 1851 the medal was awarded only to surviving claimants; next of kin could not apply for a medal on behalf of a deceased relative. However, the medal was awarded to next of kin of those claimants who had died between the date of their application and the date of presentation.

This medal and its army counterpart, the Military General Service Medal, were amongst the first real British campaign medals, the first to be issued to all ranks just for "being there".

Background to the War with Syria.

Syrian War

The war was the climax of the long power-struggle between the Ottoman Empire and the wily, aggressive Pasha of Egypt, Mehmet Ali, which had reached a point of crisis that threatened to destabilize the whole of the Levant Near East.

On June 29, 1839 an invading Turkish army was destroyed in Syria by Mehmet's general Ibrahim Pasha at the Battle of Nezib, putting him in possession of the whole of Syria, which threatened to place Constantinople itself and the rule of the entire Eastern Mediterranean within his grasp. A few days after the battle the Ottoman Sultan, Mahmud II, died, leaving his Empire in the hands of his 16-year-old heir Abdülmecid. Meanwhile the Turkish fleet had defected to Mehmet Ali. Britain, Russia and Austria were all pledged to support the tottering Turkish Empire and to force Mehmet Ali (who had the support of France and Spain) to withdraw from Syria.

Although the new Sultan's ministers moved to resolve the crisis by offering to cede the rule of Syria to Mehmet, the British, Austrian and Russian ambassadors forced them to rescind this offer and stand firm against him. There was even a possibility of war with France, who looked to Mehmet's success to increase its sphere of influence in the Near East.

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Naval intervention in Syria

In June 1840 Admiral Sir Robert Stopford, commanding the British Mediterranean Fleet, sent Commodore Charles Napier with a small squadron to the Syrian (now the Lebanese) coast. He was then ordered to proceed to Beirut to compel the Egyptians to withdraw. The situation on the ground was extremely volatile, and called for quick and decisive action; this Napier provided, acting as if his was an entirely independent command.

On 11 August 1840 Napier’s ships appeared off Beirut and he called upon Suleiman Pasha, Mehmet’s governor, to abandon the town and leave Syria, whose population shortly revolted against Mehmet’s occupying army. With such a small force, there was little that Napier could do against fifteen thousand Egyptian troops until September, when the Stopford's ships joined up with him. Open war broke out on 11 September, when Napier bombarded Beirut and effected a landing at Junieh with 1,500 Turks and Marines to operate against Ibrahim, who was prevented by the revolt from doing more than trying to hold the coastal cities.

The following NGSM is attributed to David Humphries. He served aboard the HMS Hastings during the War with Syria in 1840.

Obverse:

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Closeup of the SYRIA Clasp:

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Closeup of Obverse:

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Reverse:

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Closeup of Reverse:

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Naming (Officially Impressed on Rim:

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Naming 2:

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Naming 3:

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Humphries listed on the online rolls of DNW:

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And ... the entry of David Humphries directly from the NGSM Rolls:

a. Original Page:

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The page where Humphries name is listed for the Hastings:

[Guest Darrell]

Recently obtained another copy of the original rolls:

[Paul R]

The first English campaign medal!! Pretty cool stuff. Have you ever seen the War of 1812 clasp?