Richard Darton Thomas

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Richard Darton Thomas
Admiral Richard Darton Thomas
Born(1777-06-03)3 June 1777
Saltash, Cornwall
Died21 August 1857(1857-08-21) (aged 80)
Stonehouse, Devon
AllegianceUnited Kingdom
Service/branchRoyal Navy
Years of service1790–1857
RankAdmiral
Unit
Commands held
Battles/wars

Admiral Richard Darton Thomas (3 June 1777 – 21 August 1857) was an officer of the British Royal Navy who served during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and went on to become Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Station in the 1840s.

Biography

Background and early naval service

Thomas was born in Saltash, Cornwall, and entered the Navy on 26 May 1790, just before his 13th birthday, as a captain's servant aboard the

paid off in June 1792, and in December he joined the sloop Nautilus
as a midshipman.

Wartime service

On 1 January 1793 France declared war on Great Britain, and for the next two years Thomas served aboard Nautilus in the West Indies under the Captains

William Gordon Rutherford, while taking part in operations against the French islands of Tobago, Saint Lucia, and Martinique, where he commanded a boat in the attack on Fort Royal, landing and escalading the walls simultaneously with Captain Robert Faulknor of the sloop Zebra.[1]

Thomas returned to England as master's mate of the Boyne, the flagship of Sir John Jervis. He was aboard her at Spithead on 1 May 1795 when a fire broke out aboard and the ship was destroyed. Thomas was forced to jump overboard, and swam to a nearby boat. He served aboard the Glory, then Barfleur, flagship of the Honourable William Waldegrave, with whom he sailed to the Mediterranean. From there he moved into Victory, flagship of Sir John Jervis. He was subsequently sent on shore with a party of seamen to man the guns at the Fort of St. Fiorenza, in Corsica, remaining there until the island was evacuated in October 1796.[1]

On 15 January 1797 Thomas was commissioned as a

Halifax, Nova Scotia. In early June 1803 Thomas finally received notification of his promotion to commander of the fifth-rate Chichester, dated 18 January.[1]

He sailed from Halifax as a passenger aboard the 179-ton

Lower Island Cove on 4 June, all suffering from various degrees of malnutrition and frostbite. The only casualty was the French captain, who threw himself overboard in a fit of depression.[2]

Thomas eventually returned to England and in December 1803 was appointed to command of the

Captain of the Fleet, and Collingwood was for much of the time severely ill with the cancer that would eventually kill him in March 1810. After Collingwood's death Thomas served as captain of the Ville de Paris until December 1810. The following February he was appointed to command of the frigate Undaunted initially engaged on operations on the coast of Catalonia, then on the blockade of Marseilles and Toulon. He was eventually invalided home in February 1813, and saw no further wartime service.[1]

Post-war career

Between April 1822 and April 1825, and again from May 1834, Thomas served as Superintendent of the Ships in Ordinary at Portsmouth and Plymouth,

unauthorized annexation of the Sandwich Islands by one of his own subordinates. His conduct in office, particularly his handling of the Sandwich Islands crisis received the full approval of the Foreign Office and Admiralty, and King Kamehameha III ordered a portrait of Thomas in full uniform for his palace. He also received the thanks of the government of the United States and was appointed an honorary member of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.[1]

Thomas was promoted to vice-admiral on 8 January 1848,[4] and to admiral on 11 September 1854.[5] He died in Stonehouse, Devon on 21 August 1857.[6]

Personal life

On 2 October 1827 Thomas married Gratiana, the third daughter of Lieutenant-General Robert Williams,

Sir Mathew Wilson, 1st Baronet, one of the Wilson baronets.[8]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g O'Byrne, William Richard (1849). "Thomas, Richard" . A Naval Biographical Dictionary . John Murray – via Wikisource.
  2. ISBN 9780665351068
    . Retrieved 6 January 2015.
  3. ^ "No. 19456". The London Gazette. 10 January 1837. p. 71.
  4. ^ "No. 20815". The London Gazette. 14 January 1848. p. 122.
  5. ^ "No. 21594". The London Gazette. 15 September 1854. p. 2836.
  6. ^ George Clement Boase, William Prideaux Courtney (1878). Bibliotheca Cornubiensis: P-Z. Vol. 2. Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer. p. 715.
  7. ^ Mosley, Charles, ed. (2003). Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage. Vol. 3 (107th ed.). Wilmington, Delaware: Burke's Peerage (Genealogical Books) Ltd. p. 4205. Retrieved 6 January 2015.
  8. ^ "Wilson of Eshton Hall". Malhamdale Local History Group. 2014. Retrieved 6 January 2015.
Military offices
Preceded by Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Station
1844–1847 		Succeeded by
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