Royal Naval Biography/Dundas, Richard Saunders
HON. RICHARD SAUNDERS DUNDAS.
[Post-Captain of 1824.]
This officer is the second son of Viscount Melville, K.T. &c. &c. &c. by Miss Saunders, grand-niece and co-heiress of Admiral Sir Charles Saunders, K.B. who died December 3d, 1775. He was born April 11th, 1802; made lieutenant June 18th, 1821; appointed to the Active 46, Captain Andrew King, Dec. 24th, 1821; to the Owen Glendower 42, Captain the Hon. Robert C. Spencer, Feb. 25th, 1822; and to the Sparrowhawk 18, Captain Edward Boxer, Sept. 9th, 1822; promoted to the command of the same sloop, on the Halifax station, June 23d, 1823; and advanced to the rank of captain, while serving in the Mediterranean, July 17th, 1824. His next appointment was, Sept. 13th, 1825, to the Volage 28, in which ship he visited Madeira, Teneriffe, the Cape of Good Hope, Trincomalee, Madras, Pondicherry, and New South Wales, where he assumed the command of the Warspite 76, on the demise of Commodore Sir James Brisbane, in Dec. 1826.
From Sidney Cove, Captain Dundas proceeded with the Volage in company, through Cook’s Straits, to Valparaiso, where he arrived on the 19th Feb. 1827. After a short stay on the west coast of South America, he rounded Cape Horn, touched at Rio Janeiro, and then returned to England, making the passage from the latter place to Spithead in 49 days. He subsequently visited Lisbon, and appears to have retained the command of the Warspite, (the first British ship of her class that ever circumnavigated the globe) until Oct. 1827. In the following year, he was appointed private secretary to his father, then presiding at the Board of Admiralty; and on the 30th of Nov. 1830, we find him commissioning the Belvidera 42, at Portsmouth.