THE NAVAL GENERAL SERVICE MEDAL 1793-1840 WITH EGYPT CLASP TO BOY 3RD CLASS (LATER LIEUTENANT) W. HORNSBY, HMS EXPERIMENT, WHO SAW SERVICE AS A 15 YEAR OLD BOY THIRD CLASS ABOARD HMS EXPERIMENT DURING THE EGYPT OPERATIONS OF 1801,

THE NAVAL GENERAL SERVICE MEDAL 1793-1840 WITH EGYPT CLASP TO BOY 3RD CLASS (LATER LIEUTENANT) W. HORNSBY, HMS EXPERIMENT, WHO SAW SERVICE AS A 15 YEAR OLD BOY THIRD CLASS ABOARD HMS EXPERIMENT DURING THE EGYPT OPERATIONS OF 1801, SUBSEQUENTLY ROSE THROUGH THE RANKS, BEING APPOINTED MIDSHHIPMAN IN 1807 PRIOR TO BEING COMMISSIONED LIEUTENANT IN 1811. Naval General Service Medal 1793-1840, 1 clasp, Egypt (officially named, impressed in serifed block capitals: W. HORNSBY). Good Very Fine to Almost Extremely Fine.

615 Egypt clasps to the Royal Navy, including 3 to HMS Experiment (1 officer and 2 other ranks).

The NGS Medal with Egypt clasp was Lieutenant Hornsby’s sole medal entitlement.

Medal accompanied by biographical details, copied service record (ADM 107/42) and Lieutenant’s passing papers (ADM 6/108) for Lieutenant Hornsby, extracts 1841 and 1851 census returns and copied medal rolls (2, original and published, both of which confirm medal and clasp to the then Boy 3rd class William Hornsby.)

William Hornsby was born 3/6/1787 in North Yarmouth and baptised 29/6/1787, Yarmouth, Norfolk (the biographical sketch for Hornsby on Ancestry incorrectly gives his place of birth as Yarmouth, Hampshire). He entered the navy as a Boy 3rd Class, 10/11/1799, aged 15, and first saw service aboard HMS Experiment. Hornsby was promoted Boy 2nd Class, 2/1/1802, Landsman, 13/11/1804, Ordinary Seaman, 4/4/1805, Ordinary Seaman and Able Seaman, 13/7/1805, Able Seaman, 27/4/1807, Midshipman, 4/6/1807 and commissioned Lieutenant, 26/9/1811.

The following details regarding Lieutenant Hornsby’s services with the Royal Navy have been extracted from O’Byrne’s “Naval Biographical Dictionary” (1849 edition).

William Hornsby entered the navy in September 1799 on board the Experiment, 44 guns, “armee en flute” (a ship of the line, with reduced armament, converted for use as a troop ship), Captains John G. Saville and George Charles Mackenzie; to which ship (attending intermediately the expedition of 1801 to Egypt), he continued attached until the close of 1805. He afterwards joined the Megaera, fire-vessel, Captain Archibald Duff, and the Rose, 18 guns, Captains Lucius Curtis and Philip Pipon, in the Channel; served from June 1807 to July 1810 in the Resolution and Rodney, 75 guns, each commanded by Captain George Burlton, under whom he was present at Midshipman of the Resolution at the bombardments of Copenhagen and Flushing; then became Acting-Lieutenant, for a short time, of the Tonant, 80 guns, Captain Sir John Gore; and after a further employment off Havre and Lisbon, in the Cyane, 22 guns, and Abercromby, 74 guns, Captains Francis. Augustus Collier and William Charles Fahie, was officially promoted, 26 Sept. 1811, into the Canopus, 80 guns, Captain Charles Inglis. His last appointments were to the Rose, 18 guns, Captain Robert Maunsell and Ville de Paris, 110 guns, and Boyne, 98 guns, both under orders of Captain Burlton. He served in the Rose in the Baltic station; and was a participator in the Boyne in Sir Edward Pellew’s partial actions of 5th Nov. 1813 and 30th Feb. 1814 with the Toulon fleet. He has been on half pay since Sept. of 1814.

Hornsby is recorded in the 1841 census as a 50 year old Lieutenant, Royal Navy, resident in Great Yarmouth with his 50 year old wife, Maria Hornsby, and in the 1851 census as a 63 year old Lieutenant, Royal Navy, living in Great Yarmouth with a 46 year old servant, Caroline Porter (the age discrepancy between the 1841 and 1851 census returns is due to the fact that ages in the 1841 census were rounded to the nearest 5 years).

There is one other William Hornsby on the Naval General Service Medal roll, who was awarded the clasp Ap and May 1813 whilst serving as Boy aboard HMS Marlborough.

This medal was struck from the dies used for medals issued to officers and men entitled to the Egypt clasp on their Naval General Service Medal, confirming that it was the medal awarded to Boy (later Lieutenant) William Hornsby of HMS Experiment.

The HMS Experiment of 1801 was a 44-gun Roebuck class of 1769 5th rate two-decker, ordered in 1780, her keel laid in 1781 and launched in 1784. She saw service during the American revolutionary war during the 1770s and during the early years of the French revolutionary wars. By 1793 she had been converted to a troop ship. HMS Experiment saw service as a troop ship during the Egypt campaign of 1801, transporting part of the expeditionary army to Egypt, and although the Experiment was not involved in the landings prior to the battle of Abukir, 8/3/1801, several of HMS Experiment’s ships boats were used as landing craft during the operation, transporting soldiers ashore from another troop ship, and Experiment’s commanding officer, Captain Saville, saw service ashore during the operations. At the conclusion of the Egypt campaign the Experiment sailed back to Britain in 1803.