Watch List notes:

Naval General Service Medal 1793-1840, - clasp - Port Spergui 17 March 1796. Duncan McArthur. Impressed. Original ribbon, but this damaged, otherwise good very fine and very rare with this clasp as only four issued.

Duncan McArthur was Surgeon on the 38-gun frigate Diamond.

In March 1796, the brigs Liberty and Aristocrat had chased a French convoy consisting of a corvette, two luggers, four brigs, and two sloops, which had taken refuge in Spergui Bay on the coast of Brittany, a peninsular region bordered by the English Channel to the north and the Bay of Biscay to the south. Sir William Sidney Smith arrived in his 38-gun frigate Diamond, and proceeded to blockade the port while taking soundings. On 18 March 1796 at noon he sailed in, with the two brigs also volunteering to go in too. The French had two shore batteries, one of one 24-pounder on one side, and another of two 24-pounders, augmented by a third gun on a higher point, on the other. As the three British warships sailed into the port, they were able quickly to silence the one-gun battery, but the other three guns remained a problem. Smith sent in a landing party under his first lieutenant Horace Pine and Lieutenant Edmund Carter of the Royal Marines. This party faced intense small arms fire from the garrison of the battery, who had descended to the beach. The landing party then scrambled ashore at another point and scaled the precipice, getting to the guns before the men on the beach could regain their position. The landing party spiked the guns and then withdrew, suffering only one casualty, Lieutenant Carter, who was mortally wounded.

The British succeeded in setting fire to all but one lugger, which kept up its fire throughout the action. French records report that during the engagement, the commander of the corvette Etourdie, Lieutenant de Vaisseau Dusaulchoy, was killed. The crew of the corvette then set fire to the vessel to prevent the British from capturing her and abandoned her. Throughout the action, Aristocrat covered the British boats. British casualties totalled two men killed and seven wounded, including Lieutenants Pine and Carter, the latter mortally. In 1847 the Admiralty awarded the Naval General Service Medal with clasp "Port Spergui", to the four surviving claimants from the three ships that had taken part in the attack. (ex Wikipedia Creative Commons)

Dr Duncan McArthur, born 1773 at Glasgow, Scotland; educated as a surgeon in which capacity he entered the Royal Navy; created a Doctor of Medicine by the University of Aberdeen 01Mar1810; admitted a Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians 25Jun1818; admitted a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians 10Jul1841; physician to the fleet and for many years physician to the Royal Naval Hospital at Deal, Kent, England; was physician to the Duke of Wellington.

With photocopy of relevant Medal Roll page and also a box with ribbon remnants.