Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall v2p1.djvu/453

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POST-CAPTAINS OF 1801.
441


TRISTRAM ROBERT RICKETTS, Esq
[Post-Captain of 1801.]

This officer was made a Post-Captain Oct. 9, 1801, and subsequently commanded the Ville de Paris, San Josef, and Hibernia, first rates, bearing the flags of the Hon. Admiral Cornwallis, Sir Charles Cotton, and Earl St. Vincent. In 1813 he was appointed to the Vengeur of 74 guns; and at the close of the following year we find him conveying Major-General Lambert, and a reinforcement of troops, to the army before New Orleans[1]. In Feb. 1815, he commanded the detachment of seamen landed at Mobile, to assist in the reduction of FortBoyer; and Sir Alexander Cochrane, in his official letter on that subject, acknowledges himself indebted to Captain Ricketts, “for his zeal and exertions in landing and transporting the cannon and supplies, by which the fort was so speedily reduced[2]”.

Captain Ricketts married in 1802, the daughter of the late R. Gumbleton, Esq. of Castle Richard, co. Waterford.

Agent.– Hugh Stanger, Esq.



GEORGE M‘KINLEY, ESQ. Esq
A Captain of the Royal Hospital at Greenwich, and Superintending Captain of the Royal Naval Asylum.
[Post-Captain of 1801.]

This officer was born at Plymouth Dock (now Devonport), and left an orphan at a very early age[3]. He entered the naval service under the patronage of the late Admirals Barrington and J. Leveson Gower, with the former of whom he proceeded to the West Indies as a Midshipman, on board the Prince of Wales, a third rate, in 1778. He subsequently joined the Ceres sloop of war, commanded by Captain James Richard Dacres, and in that vessel was captured, by the Iphigenie French frigate, off St. Lucia.

After his liberation, Mr. M‘Kinley served under Captain

  1. See Vol. I. p. 638.
  2. Fort Boyer surrendered to the British Feb. 11, 1815. It was found to be in a complete state of repair, with 22 guns mounted, and a garrison of about 366 men.
  3. Captain M‘Kinley’s father was a Lieutenant R.N.