Royal Marines sword, which is thought to have belonged to General John Tatton Brown-Grieve (1795-1880). The hilt of the sword consists of a gilt openwork half-basket guard, with the Queen's cypher and a crown inserted in the outward bars. There is a hinged flap on the inside of the guard. The sword has a gilt pommel and back-piece. The fish-skin grip is bound with three gilt wires. The curved, flat-backed steel blade has one broad shallow groove running to within 203mm of the double-edged spear point. The obverse of the blade is engraved on the shoulder with a proof mark, and there is decoration around and above the proof mark, along with a crown over the Royal cypher 'VR', with further decoration above and below the cypher. The reverse of the blade is decorated in the same way, except it omits the proof mark. The brass scabbard has two bands with rings 51mm and 251mm from the mouth of the scabbard. The shoe and the top band in wake of the ring are very much worn, indicating that the owner had worn it for a considerable length of time.

The sword was presented to the National Maritime Museum by Commander Mark Wyndham Phipps Hornby (active 1918) who found it among the effects of the late Lady Francis Osborne. It is therefore presumed to have belonged to her grandfather, General John Tatton Brown-Grieve, known as the 'Father of the Marines'. A photograph taken of him in Florence in old age shows him wearing a sword of a similar type. It has been suggested that Lady Osborne might have acquired the sword from her step-grandmother, whose first husband had been Colonel Elliott of the Connaught Rangers (88th Foot), but this attribution, though possible, seems less likely.

General John Tatton Brown-Grieve was born in 1795 and became a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Marines on the 21st May 1811. He served in the Peninsular War and became a 1st Lieutenant on the 14th November 1829. He was promoted to the rank of Captain on the 28th February 1839 and served in the First China War, (1840-1842) in 1842. He was promoted to the Army rank of Major on the 11th November 1851 and to Lieutenant-Colonel on the 13th December 1852. He became a Colonel on the 22nd June 1855, Major-General on the 8th September 1858 and Lieutenant-General on the 28th November 1865. He became a General on the 13th February 1867 and added the name of Grieve to Brown on marrying his second wife, in 1872. He died in 1880.