There is a long and illustrious history of Royal Marines’ involvement in Royal Tours. In 1920 Colour Sergeant Nathaniel Stacey developed a close relationship with the Prince of Wales on a tour of Australia and new Zealand.

The Museum was recently given an exceptional item relating to a key moment in Britain’s history and a pivotal point in the history of the Naval Service.

Recently I’ve been thinking about access a lot, access to the museum for people with physical impairments has been particularly in my mind. As Learning & Access Officer, I normally think about access quite a bit: it’s my job to have an eye on it at all times. The museum is housed in a Victorian Officers’ Mess where accessibility can be a real challenge. At the moment, though, I’m really thinking about it an awful lot. So what has changed?

The second blog from our volunteer Lloyd.

I’ve been at the museum a few weeks now, and in that time I’ve learnt quite a lot, not just about how museums are run but also the history of the Royal Marines. One thing that becomes apparent is how many things you can look at that can help you find out about the people you are researching. One example is the Royal Marines service number
.

My name’s Lloyd and I am an archaeology graduate. I’ve just joined the museum’s curatorial staff as a full-time volunteer for a few months, looking to gain valuable experience and skills in the museum sector. With the economic climate as it is, finding the right job without any experience is almost impossible for today’s graduates. Therefore, it seems to me that this short-term placement is the best way forward for me.

Help our Wounded Royal Marines are one of the fundraisers for the Royal Marines Charitable Trust Fund (RMCTF). The cause was started by Chris Stubbings BEM in March 2010 and as now spread to all corners of the UK and the World. Local teams take on challenges and run events to raise funds and awareness for H.O.W.

Our next challenge is a 50 miles Yomp (March) ending at the Royal Marines Museum, with 50lbs of weight in aid of our wounded Royal Marines and to commemorate 30 years of the Falklands war.

Two medals have been reunited after 100 years, following a query by a medal collector. The museum has over 8,500 medals in our collection which means the curatorial team often gets medal-related enquiries. Recently we were contacted by a collector to see if we had a medal to a particular Royal Marine in our collection. This led to a remarkable reunion of two medals originally awarded to the same man.

 The Royal Marine in particular was a Private Francis Toole, who served in the Marines for 21 years, 17 of which were at sea. During the first Burma War, he was aboard the sloop Liffey and he took part in the operations on the coast of Syria in 1840. During his service he was eligible for two medals; the Army of India Medal with clasp Ava and the Naval General Service Medal with clasp: Syria.

We’ve recently undertaken an audit of our Commando daggers, more properly known as the Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knife. We’ve got several dozen of them of many different types, most of them donated by Marines who have owned them.

First introduced in 1940 the daggers were designed for silent killing and close quarter combat by Commandos. A thrust to the jugular vein was said to be the best way of killing your enemy and would guarantee death in around 12 seconds. In close proximity to your enemy, it must have been an intense and sobering way of killing an adversary.

“It’s ok, you can do it”

“…..”

“I promise, I’ve got you. All you have to do is move your weight forward.”

“…ok….”

“Keep going, you’re almost there.”

“I don’t think I can do this.”

“You can, you’ve almost got it….see? Now climb down. Told you you could do it”

Before the major assault that would happen at D-Day, the allied forces wanted to test an amphibious operation and storming of a defended coastal area. The raid on Dieppe took place on the morning of 19 August 1942, and was a disaster. Miscommunication between different commanders, and stronger German defences the previously thought, led to the raid being aborted. Thousands were killed and injured.

The Royal Marines Museum stocks a large range of books in its gift shop and from time to time members of staff at the Museum will be reviewing books on this blog. This review is from Jim Tann on Ian Gardiner's book 'The Yompers'

‘Och no, it’s for real-get yerself back into Condor Barracks now!’

Two original musical scores have recently been donated to the Royal Marines Museum archive in the hand of the former Director of Music Lt-Colonel Vivian Dunn. One of the compositions was hitherto unknown, and was titled ‘The Amphibian’, and was specially written to commemorate the visit of Major General Houghton CBE MC to Deal in 1962. The General was Chief of Amphibious Warfare at the time, and visited the RM School of Music on the 9 March that year. It is believed this was the only occasion the piece was performed.

The Royal Marines School of Music was originally named ‘The Royal Naval School of Music’ and it was formed at Eastney Barracks (the current Royal Marines Museum location) in 1903 when the Royal Navy passed responsibility to the Royal Marines for training and providing ship’s bands. Every major British ship carried a Royal Marines Band who had a military as well as a musical role. During the First World War forty-nine musicians were killed at the Battle of Jutland alone.

On 22 July the Royal Marines School of Music will be performing at the Royal Marines Museum’s annual Band Concert.  The Museum is delighted to have the School of Music playing and in the lead up to their concert we’ll share with you some of the history of the School of Music and an insight in to the training that the students go through.

Below is an extract from Navy News. To see the full version of this feature, see the July edition of Navy News.

As we have reached the end of the 30 Anniversary of the Falklands conflict I was reminded of a very unusual item held here at the Museum, which illustrates an aspect of the career of General Sir Jeremy Moore .  Sir Jeremy was the Commander of the Land Forces which re-took the Falkland Islands; by any measure a highly regarded soldier and commander.

Sir Jeremy was best known in this role, for which he was knighted by The Queen. However prior to 1982 he had received many other awards during a long and distinguished career in the Royal Marines. Sir Jeremy had already been decorated twice with the Military Cross (MC), itself a highly unusual occurrence.