The Sea Gallantry Medal (SGM) (officially 'The Board of Trade Medal for Saving Life at Sea'), is an award for civil gallantry at sea in Great Britain and the Commonwealth. The Merchant Shipping Act 1854 permitted the issue of this award and SGMs were first struck in 1855. They were first awarded either for 'humanity' (where there was little risk to the life of the recipient), or for gallantry (where there was significant risk to the recipient).
Recipients are entitled to the post-nomial "SGM". There have been two awards of the Sea Gallantry Medal (Bronze) since 1974: one in 1981 and the other in 1989. No Sea Gallantry Medals (Silver) have been awarded since this time.
Read more about Sea Gallantry Medal: Notable Recipients
Famous quotes containing the words sea and/or gallantry:
“Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning—an endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea by measuring the distance we have run, but without any observation of the heavenly bodies.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)
“Age wins and one must learn to grow old.... I must learn to walk this long unlovely wintry way, looking for spectacles, shunning the cruel looking-glass, laughing at my clumsiness before others mistakenly condole, not expecting gallantry yet disappointed to receive none, apprehending every ache of shaft of pain, alive to blinding flashes of mortality, unarmed, totally vulnerable.”
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