Long Service and Good Conduct Medal 1848

Obverse: Head of Queen Victoria with a diadem, hair tied in a knot (left). Legend: 'VICTORIA REGINA'. Reverse: Within a knotted rope starboard broadside view of a ship of the line at anchor. Legend: 'FOR LONG SERVICE AND GOOD CONDUCT'. Inscription on edge: 'H.J.GAGE. P.O.1Cl., H.M.S.VERNON'. Suspended from a bar and dark blue ribbon edged with white.

Harry John Gage (1859-1929) was born in Huntingford, Gloucestershire, the son of a gardener, Henry Gage. By 1861, the family had moved to Acton, Middlesex. Harry was one of five children and in 1875, he decided to enter the Royal Navy as a boy 2nd class. He trained on HMS ‘Impregnable’ and HMS ‘Implacable’ at Devonport, then served in ‘Minotaur’ from 22 August 1876 to 21 August 1879, being rated Ordinary Seaman from 27 November 1877. This time was spent in the Channel Squadron. He joined the troop ship ‘Malabar’ in May 1880. Gage was rated Able Seaman in 1880 and Leading Seaman in 1881. ‘Malabar’ transported troops and railway plant to Port Said in September 1882 during the Anglo-Egyptian War. Gage was awarded the campaign medal and star for this conflict. He served for a short period from 1 October 1882 on another Indian troop ship ‘Crocodile’. From July 1883, to September 1884, he was in ‘Orontes’ - used as a hospital ship during the British attempt to build a railway from Suakin to Berber during the campaign in Sudan. For this service he received the bar for Suakin. He then spent a year in the turret ship ‘Monarch’. He was promoted to Petty Officer First Class on 15th October 1875. Between 11 May 1886 and 2 Dec 1887, he was in ‘Satellite’ on the Pacific Station. Between 1891 and 1894 he served in torpedo ships ‘Hecla’ and ‘Vulcan’ and between December 1895 and June 1897 in the pre-Dreadnought ‘Empress of India’. In 1897, he served briefly in HMS ‘Jupiter’. Gage retired on 3 February 1898. He was briefly recalled at the beginning of World War 1, but was rejected as unfit.

Harry Gage married Georgina Jane Vince in Portsmouth in 1890. During the 1901 census he was living in Chertsey and working as a civil engineer (the local iron founding and engineering firm at that time were Herring and Son). In 1921, Harry Gage was running a public house - the White Hart in Melton Regis, Kent, where he died eight years later.