Richard Darton Thomas

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 74-gun ship , under the command of Captain John McBride, and late in the year sailed to the West Indies as part of a squadron under Rear-Admiral Samuel Pitchford Cornish. On arrival in the Caribbean he transferred to the 32-gun frigate under the command of Captain Robert Murray, and was rated able. Blanche was paid off in June 1792, and in December he joined the sloop 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 Lord Henry Paulet, James Carpenter, Henry William Bayntun, and 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 .