Specially Meritorious Medal (Ens T.J. Turner), late issue

Navy Specially Meritorious Medal, with applied brooch (6-hole flat brooch with wire pin-catch), hand-engraved “Ensign/Thomas/ J. Turner/US Navy/Rescuing crews from and/in close proximity to burning/ships after the battle off/Santiago/Cuba/July 3rd/1898″. The medal, ribbon and brooch are from the first batch of 150 struck by the Philadelphia Mint in 1904.

Ensign Turner is confirmed on the Sampson Medal roll for the USS Harvard, but he does not appear in the published roll for the Specially Meritorious Medal. Turner was commissioned from civilian life at the start of the war and resigned in the fall of 1898, with no further naval service.

This medal appeared in Col Al Gleim’s Medal Auction No.21 (November 1988) with this research background: “The Bureau of Navigation had great difficulty getting the engraving completed for the original 1904 issues. This was contracted to the Mint and apparently completed by the J.K. Davison Company of Philadelphia for the Mint or direct for the Bureau of Navigation. At that time the Bureau of Navigation determined that any further engraving of Specially Meritorious Medals should be done by the (unidentified) contractor who has doing Medals of Honor. In 1908 Senator A.S. Clay requested a Specially Meritorious Medal be awarded to former LT John Bradshaw of the Harvard. A report of the commander of the Harvard was reviewed, which commended the 9 officers and naval cadets who had commanded the 9 boats sent from the Harvard to rescue Spaniards on 3 July, but named only 8. These 8 were listed as Lieutenants Beale, Roberts, Davis and Bradshaw; Ensigns Turner and Cuming; and Naval Cadets Moa and Bruff; no explanation provided for the ninth boat and its commander. On 28 January 1908 a letter to Senator Clay advised that a Specially Meritorious Medal would be sent to Bradshaw as soon as it could be engraved. Beale and Davis had been on the original 1904 medal list as wll as Naval Cadet Halligan, who may have commanded the ninth boat. It seems likely that when a medal was issued to Bradshaw in 1908 medals were also issued to Roberts, Turner, Cuming, Moa and Bruff who had equivalent service on 3 July 1898; and that the engraving would have been done by a different engraver from that used in 1904. This theory is partially supported by the fact that Navy Bureau of Navigation files have a copy of the letter of transmittal to Bradshaw dated 7 Feb 1908 and another for ex-Ensign Cumings with the same date. If all six boat commanders had received medals at the same time there should have been letters for all, but the files on such cases are incomplete in other respects.”