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Auction: 23001 - Orders, Decorations and Medals
Lot: 1

Naval General Service 1793-1840, 1 clasp, Java (W. T. Riches, Midshipman.), polished, suspension slightly slack and a little edge bruising, very fine

Provenance:
Glendining's, August 1902 & February 1936

Watson Thomas Riches, a unique name on the published Roll, is confirmed with this single-clasp Medal for Java. He also appears to have been entitled to the clasp 'Gluckstadt 5 Jany 1814', but did not submit a claim for such and it was therefore never issued to him.

Seeing a great deal of service during his career, Riches is first noted as a Midshipman aboard the 98-gun H.M.S. Windsor Castle at the Battle of Cape Finisterre (22 July 1805) - an inconclusive precursor to the Battle of Trafalgar after which the British commander, Admiral Sir Robert Calder, was court-martialled and severely reprimanded for failing to decisively defeat the combined (and numerically superior) Franco-Spanish fleet under admirals Villeneuve and Gravina. Windsor Castle was much in the thick of this confused action, and indeed suffered the most casualties of any British vessel that day with 10 killed, 35 wounded, and significant damage to her masts and spars. Riches was still aboard this ship when she was present (but did not play an active part in) the Action of 25 September 1806, when a British blockading squadron of six ships of the line and a brig under the command of Commodore Sir Samuel Hood captured four newly-built and large French frigates in a short but fierce engagement.

Reassigned from European to Mediterranean waters, Windsor Castle (with Midshipman Riches aboard) was part of Vice-Admiral Sir John Duckworth's fleet during the Dardanelles operation of 19 February 1807, a failed assault by the Royal Navy against the coastal fortifications of Constantinople. At the forcing of the Dardanelles passage, Windsor Castle suffered some seven men wounded and upon the final withdrawal she had the misfortune to be hit by a gigantic 800-pound stone shot (fired by the 'Dardanelles Gun') which with a single round caused her mainmast to collapse and killed and wounded 24 men - undoubtedly a terrifying experience for the men on board, who would never have previously encountered a gun of this size and power.

In 1810 Riches was present aboard the 38-gun frigate H.M.S. Clorinde for the Invasion of Isle de France (Mauritius; 29 November - 3 December) and the following year found him at the Invasion of Java, still as a Midshipman, with the 74-gun H.M.S. Illustrious, commanded by Captain Robert Festing. In due course returned to European waters, with Napoleon's empire beginning to crumble and the allied nations closing in for the kill, Riches had the unusual distinction of commanding a gun-boat on the river Elbe during the reduction of Cuxhaven and Gluckstadt, north-west of Hamburg. The blockading squadron consisted of six smaller warships and eight gunboats, tasked with providing any and all assistance possible to the army of the Crown Prince of Sweden - previously known as Jean Bernadotte, Marshal of France.
Promoted Lieutenant on 22 January 1814 (perhaps as reward for his services on the Elbe, at the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars Riches appears to have been placed on Half-Pay and is next noted, from January 1839, as commander of a station of the Coast Guard. He died ten years later, on 5 December 1849.

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Sold for
£2,400

Starting price
£1100