A Naval Biographical Dictionary/Crawford, Thomas
CRAWFORD. (Retired Commander, 1844. f-p., 15; h-p., 33.)
Thomas Crawford entered the Navy, 21 July, 1799, as a Boy, on board the Dortrecht, Capt. Robt. Honyman, with whom he continued uninterruptedly to serve, in the Garland, Topaze, and Leda frigates, until March, 1806. During that period he accompanied the expedition to Holland in 1799, received a wound in action with the Boulogne flotilla in 1804, and was present at the reduction of the Cape of Good Hope in Jan. 1806. He then successively became Acting-Lieutenant of the Diomede 50, Capts. Joseph Edmonds and Hugh Downman, and Ardent 64, Capts. Ross Donnelly and Edwin Henry Chamberlayne; in which ships we find him co-operating in the attacks on Buenos Ayres and Monte Video. On being confirmed by the Admiralty, 17 Dec. 1807, Mr. Crawford joined the Magnet brig, Capt. Geo. Morris, and in that vessel was wrecked on the ice, near Malmo, 11 Jan. 1809. His subsequent appointments afloat were – in May, 1809, and Feb. 1810, to the Saturn 74, Capt. Wm. Cumberland, and Woodlark 10, Capt. Geo. Edw. Watts, both in the Baltic – and, in Jan. 1812, to the Pylades sloop, Capt. Geo. Ferguson, stationed in the Mediterranean. When Senior of the Woodlark he commanded her boats at the destruction, 27 May, 1810, of a privateer, the Swan, of 6 24-pounders and 35 men, off the island of Lassoe;[1] and, on another occasion, he was sent into the port of Ronne, whence he brought out a new ship, the Success, laden with wheat and linen, amidst a heavy and incessant fire from the batteries and two privateers, the latter of which were driven back with the loss of 15 men killed and wounded. Commander Crawford, whose last official appointment appears to have been to the command of a Signal station in co. Cork, which he retained from March, 1813, to Dec. 1815, assumed the rank he now holds 21 Dec. 1844. He was presented, during the war, with a sum of money from the Patriotic Fund.
- ↑ Vide Gaz. 1810, p. 806.