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Auction: 18001 - Orders, Decorations and Medals
Lot: 374

(x) The mounted group of five miniature dress medals worn by Admiral Sir George Watson, K.C.B., Royal Navy

The Most Honourable Order of the Bath, badge, gold and enamel, with gold riband buckle; China 1842; Crimea 1854-56, 1 clasp, Sebastopol; Turkey, Ottoman Empire, Order of the Medjidie, badge, gold, silver and enamel; Turkish Crimea 1855, British die, mounted as worn, contact marks, very fine (5)


PROVENANCE:
Acquired from the recipient's grand-daughter.

George Willes Watson was born at Great Melton, Norfolk in April 1827, a grandson of Sir E. K. Lacons, Bt. Educated at Doctor Burney's and the Royal Naval Academy, Gosport, he was appointed a Midshipman - aged 15 - in 1842. At this tender age he saw active service aboard H.M.S. Dido in the First Opium War. His most engaging service in the Far East was in 1843-44, when Dido was heavily involved in anti-piracy patrols which took place in - and around - Borneo with Rajah Brooke; Dido would attack strongholds in the Tambelan Islands, besides an attack on Paddi on 8 June 1843.

Watson was subsequently posted as Lieutenant and Commander in Royal Albert (1854-58), Captain in Crocodile (1866-70) and Temeraire (1879-80). Whilst Commander-in-Chief of North Africa and the West Indies, he was embroiled in accusations of assisting the Confederate States of America in the Civil War by selling them C.S.S. Florida. Watson retired in 1892 and died at 'The Hut', Mannamead, Plymouth on 26 April 1897; sold with copied research and an USB-drive containing a quantity of copied documents taken from a family archive.


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Sold for
£350