Regency Personalities Series-Vice Admiral Sir Richard King 2nd Baronet

Regency Personalities Series

In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.

Vice Admiral Sir Richard King 2nd Baronet
28 November 1774 – 5 August 1834

Richard King

Vice Admiral Sir Richard King 2nd Baronet was the son of Sir Richard King, 1st Baronet, a wealthy and high-ranking member of the Navy. King was placed on board ship at fourteen thanks to the influence of his father and made Post Captain just six years later, an achievement made possible by his father’s rank of admiral. Normally an officer would be waiting double or triple that time before gaining such a prestigious rank. He was first promoted to Lieutenant on 14 November 1791, Commander in 1793 and Post Captain 14 May 1794. Nonetheless, King was no incompetent, and proved his worth as captain of HMS Sirius, capturing four enemy privateers whilst in command, as well as sitting on the navy board which condemned Richard Parker to death for his part in the Nore mutiny in 1797. At the Action of 24 October 1798, King captured two Dutch ships. In 1801 he captured a French frigate, and was rewarded with command of the large 74 gun ship of the line HMS Achille.

A month before the battle of Trafalgar, sensing that there was glory to be won in the coming operations off Cadiz, King used his influence with his father in law, Admiral Sir John Duckworth, to persuade Nelson to give him a position in the blockading fleet. Since his reputation was good, Nelson endorsed the move and King joined just in time to catch the combined fleet off Trafalgar on 21 October 1805. The seventh ship in Collingwood’s division, Achille was heavily engaged, chasing off the Spanish Montanez and the battling alongside HMS Belleisle with the Argonauta. Whilst chasing this ship through the melee, Achille was cut off by her namesake, the French Achille, with whom she began a savage cannonade until joined by the French ship Berwick, whom Achille turned her attention on. An hour of savage fighting forced the French craft to eventually surrender, but at the cost of 13 dead and 59 wounded, severe losses in comparison with most of the British fleet.

King was, along with the other captains, voted many honours following the battle, and unlike several of his compatriots retained his command at sea, being engaged the following year in the action against a French frigate squadron in an action in which Sir Samuel Hood lost an arm. The same year he inherited his fathers baronetcy and transferred to the Mediterranean, where in 1812 he made the jump to Rear-Admiral of the Blue on August 12th, and second in command to Edward Pellew. He was appointed KCB on 2 January 1815 and served as commander-in-chief on the East Indies Station from 1816. Continuing in service postwar in 1819 as a Vice-Admiral and Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, King served as commander in chief in the East Indies and also remarried following his first wife’s death to the daughter of Admiral Sir Charles Cotton, Maria Susannah. As Commander-in-Chief, The Nore from 1833 after an eventful life, King continued his successful career past the age many of his contemporaries retired at. Such devotion to duty often has a price, and King died in office in 1834 whilst at Sheerness from a sudden outbreak of cholera. He was buried nearby, survived by twelve children and his second wife.

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Regency Personalities Series-Rear Admiral Sir George Burlton

Regency Personalities Series
In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.

Rear Admiral Sir George Burlton
– 21 September 1815

Rear Admiral Sir George Burlton was commissioned as a Lieutenant on 15 September 1777 and in 1783 was in command of HMS Camel, 24. He was made Commander on 5 July 1794.

In March 1795 he was acting captain of the 32-gun frigate Lively when she captured the French corvette Tourtourelle, and he was promoted to post captain on 16 March that year into the 74-gun HMS Vengeance. Towards the end of 1796 he travelled to Cape Town. There in November he received command of the Dutch frigate Castor, which the British had captured at the capitulation of Saldanha Bay and renamed HMS Saldanha. Burlton sailed her to Britain where she was paid off.

Subsequent commands included Success, 32; Adamant, 50; and Resolution, 74, the last of which he commanded at the Battle of the Basque Roads in April 1809.

In 1812 Burlton was captain of the 110-gun HMS Ville de Paris and in March 1813 he was given command of HMS Boyne, 98. On 4 December 1813 he was made a Colonel of Marines.

On 13 February 1814 Boyne engaged the French ship-of-the-line Romulus, for which Burlton was commended by Vice-Admiral Sir Edward Pellew. On 4 June 1814 Burlton was raised to flag rank as a Rear-Admiral of the White and on 2 January 1815 he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath.

On 24 December 1814 Sir Samuel Hood died. He had been Commander-in-Chief on the East Indies Station and when the vacancy became known in England Sir George Burlton was appointed to succeed him. He hoisted his flag in HMS Cornwallis, Captain John Bayley, on 10 January 1815. On the voyage out the American sloops-of-war USS Peacock and USS Hornet mistook the 74-gun Cornwallis for a merchant ship. Cornwallis pursued Hornet between 28 and 30 April without success, though Hornet was obliged to jettison all her guns and arms in order to escape. Burlton took over the East Indies command from acting-Commodore George Sayer in June 1815, but died at Madras on 21 September. Sayer resumed command until the arrival of Sir Richard King in 1816.

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Regency Personalities Series-Mary Elizabeth Frederica Mackenzie

Regency Personalities Series
In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.

Mary Elizabeth Frederica Mackenzie
1783 – 28 November 1862

Mary Elizabeth Frederica Mackenzie

Mary Elizabeth Frederica Mackenzie was the eldest daughter and heiress of Francis Mackenzie, 1st Baron Seaforth. Also known as “Lady Hood Mackenzie”, or by the sobriquet “The Hooded Lassie”, she was married in turn to Vice Admiral Sir Samuel Hood and James Alexander Stewart of Glasserton.

Mackenzie was the subject of a portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence and a prophecy attributed to the Brahan Seer. She was also responsible for introducing the first evangelical Calvinist preachers to the Isle of Lewis.

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Regency Personalities Series-Sir Samuel Hood 1st Baronet

Regency Personalities Series
In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.

Vice-Admiral Sir Samuel Hood 1st Baronet
1762 – 24 December 1814

Samuel Hood

Sir Samuel Hood 1st Baronet entered the Royal Navy in 1776 at the start of the American Revolutionary War. His first engagement was the First Battle of Ushant on 27 July 1778, and, soon afterwards transferred to the West Indies, he was present, under the command of his cousin, at all the actions which culminated in Admiral George Rodney’s victory of 12 April 1782 in the Battle of the Saintes.

After the peace, like many other British naval officers, Hood spent some time in France, and on his return to England was given the command of a sloop, from which he proceeded in succession to various frigates. In the 32-gun fifth-rate frigate Juno his gallant rescue of some shipwrecked seamen won him a vote of thanks and a sword of honour from the Jamaica assembly.

Early in 1793, after the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars, Hood went to the Mediterranean in Juno under his cousin Lord Hood, and distinguished himself by an audacious feat of coolness and seamanship in extricating his vessel from the harbour of Toulon, which he had entered in ignorance of Lord Hood’s withdrawal. In 1795, in Aigle, he was put in command of a squadron for the protection of Levantine commerce, and in early 1797 he was given command of the 74-gun ship of the line Zealous, in which he was present at Admiral Horatio Nelson’s unsuccessful attack on Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Captain Hood conducted the negotiations which relieved the squadron from the consequences of its failure.

Zealous played an important part at the Battle of the Nile. Her first opponent was put out of action in twelve minutes. Hood immediately engaged other ships, the Guerriere being left powerless to fire a shot.
When Nelson left the coast of Egypt, Hood commanded the blockading force off Alexandria and Rosetta. Later he rejoined Nelson on the coast of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, receiving for his services the order of St Ferdinand.

In the 74-gun third-rate Venerable Hood was present at the Battle of Algeciras on 8 July 1801 and the action in the Straits of Gibraltar that followed. In the Straits his ship suffered heavily, losing 130 officers and men. In 1802, Captain Hood was employed in Trinidad as a commissioner, and, upon the death of the flag officer commanding the Leeward Islands station, he succeeded him as Commodore. Island after island fell to him, and soon, outside Martinique, the French had scarcely a foothold in the West Indies. Amongst other measures Hood took one may mention the garrisoning of Diamond Rock, which he commissioned as a sloop-of-war to blockade the approaches of Martinique. For these successes he was, amongst other rewards, appointed a Knight Companion of the Order of the Bath (KB).

In command next of the squadron blockading Rochefort, Sir Samuel Hood lost an arm during the Action of 25 September 1806 against a French frigate squadron. Promoted to Rear Admiral a few days after this action, Hood was in 1807 entrusted with the operations against Madeira, which he brought to a successful conclusion.

In 1808 Hood sailed to the Baltic Sea, with his flag in the 74-gun Centaur, to take part in the Russo-Swedish war. In one of the actions of this war Centaur and Implacable, unsupported by the Swedish ships (which lay to leeward), cut out the Russian 50-gun ship Sevolod from the enemy’s line and, after a desperate fight, forced her to strike. King Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden rewarded Admiral Hood with the Grand Cross of the Order of the Sword.

Present in the roads of A Coruña at the re-embarkation of the army of Sir John Moore after the Battle of A Coruña, Hood thence returned to the Mediterranean, where for two years he commanded a division of the British fleet. In 1811 he became Vice Admiral.

In his last command, that of the East Indies Station, he carried out many salutary reforms, especially in matters of discipline and victualling. He died without issue at Madras in 1814, having married Mary Elizabeth Frederica Mackenzie, eldest daughter and heiress of Francis Mackenzie, 1st Baron Seaforth.
A lofty column, the Admiral Hood Monument was raised to his memory on a hill near Butleigh, Somersetshire. There is another memorial in Butleigh Church with an inscription written by Robert Southey. The Hoods Tower Museum in Trincomalee gains it name form the fire control tower named after him at Fort Ostenburg.

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