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The Naval Chronicle Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2011
“In intercourse, be gentle, generous, just,
By wisdom polish'd, and of manners fair;
But, on the sea, be terrible, untam'd,
Unconquerable still; let none escape,
Who shall but aim to touch your glory there.”
Thomson.THE officer, whose professional life we are now about to trace, was born at Portsmouth, in the year 1776, and is the third son of Matthew King, Esq. the present transport storekeeper at that port. His grandfather, Captain Matthew King, died in the East Indies, about the 7th June, 1749, whilst in the command of the Syren frigate. His maternal uncle, Captain Peter Blake (son of the late Thomas Blake, Esq. formerly of Portsea) perished at sea, with all the crew, on his return from America, in the L'Epreuve brig of war, at the commencement of the present reign. Captain William Elletson, his godfather, appears on the Admiralty list as a superannuated commander, whose promotion to the rank of lieutenant was on the 20th of August, 1759, and to commander, the 15th of August, 1803.
The subject of our memoir being designed for a sea-life, was sent, in the spring of the year 1788, to the Naval Academy at Chelsea, supposed, at that period, to have been one of the best institutions for a maritime education.
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