Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 56.djvu/230

 shoal and stuck fast, helpless, but within long range of the Danish guns. She thus suffered severely, had eleven killed and sixty-three wounded; and among these latter was Thompson, who lost a leg. His pension was raised to 500l., and some years later to 700l. He was also appointed to the command of the Mary yacht. On 11 Dec. 1806 he was created a baronet. In 1806 he was appointed comptroller of the navy, an office which he held until 1816, when he was appointed treasurer of Greenwich Hospital and director of the chest. He became a rear-admiral on 25 Oct. 1809, vice-admiral on 4 June 1814, was nominated a K.C.B. on 2 Jan. 1815, and a G.C.B. on 14 Sept. 1822. He was member of parliament for Rochester from May 1807 to June 1818. He died at his house at Hartsbourne in Hertfordshire on 3 March 1828. He married, in February 1799, Anne, eldest daughter of [q. v.] of Gloucester, and left issue.

A miniature portrait by G. Engleheart, exhibited at the Royal Academy, belonged to Gertrude, lady Thompson.



THOMPSON, THOMAS PERRONET (1783–1869), general and politician, born at Hull on 15 March 1783, was eldest of three sons of Thomas Thompson, a merchant and banker of Hull, who represented Midhurst in the House of Commons from July 1807 to June 1818. His mother, Philothea Perronet Briggs, was a granddaughter of the Rev. [q. v.], and daughter of Elizabeth Perronet, who married William Briggs, one of John Wesley's ‘book-stewards.’ Commencing his education at Hull grammar school, which was then under the headmastership of [q. v.], the ecclesiastical historian, Thompson was sent in October 1798, at the early age of fifteen, to Queens' College, Cambridge. In his nineteenth year he graduated B.A., being placed seventh on the list of wranglers, and in 1803 he was appointed midshipman on board the Isis, of 50 guns, the flagship of Vice-admiral (afterwards Lord) Gambier, who was then in command on the Newfoundland station. On the voyage out several West Indiamen which had been taken by the French were recaptured at the mouth of the English Channel, and Thompson was placed in charge of one of them, and had the luck to take the vessel to Newfoundland in safety. In 1804 he was elected a fellow of Queens' College, ‘a sort of promotion,’ as he remarked, ‘which has not often gone along with the rank and dignity of a midshipman.’ After serving for the best part of four years in the navy, Thompson joined the sister service as a second lieutenant in the 95th rifles in 1806. His first experience of active military service was unlucky, as he was captured, with General Crawford, by the Spaniards in the attack made by General [q. v.] on Buenos Ayres on 5 July 1807. After a short imprisonment he was set free, and on his return to England he was appointed, in July 1808, governor of the infant colony of Sierra Leone, through the influence of Wilberforce, who had been an early friend of Thompson's father. The colony, which had been founded in 1787 by the Sierra Leone Company, had been transferred to the crown in 1807, and Thompson was the first governor appointed by the British government, Thomas Ludlam, his predecessor, having been appointed by the company in 1803. The slave trade had been declared illegal in 1806; but Thompson's efforts to suppress the evils of the apprenticeship system were ill received, and the government deemed it well to recall him in the second year of his governorship. Soon afterwards he again sought active service by joining in Spain the 14th light dragoons as lieutenant. He took part in some of the severest fighting in the Pyrenees, eventually receiving the Peninsular medal with four clasps for the battle of Nivelle (November 1813), Nive (December 1813), Orthes (February 1814), and Toulouse (April 1814). On the conclusion of peace he exchanged into the 17th light dragoons, who were then serving in India, and arrived at Bombay in 1815. In 1818 his regiment took part in the campaign under, first marquis of Hastings [q. v.], and Sir [q. v.], which resulted in the destruction of the Pindaris of Central India. He next took part in the expedition against the Wahabees of the Persian Gulf, and, upon peace being made, he was left in charge of Râs al Khyma, with a force of a few hundred sepoys and a small body of European artillerymen. In November 1820, at the head of some three hundred sepoys and a force of friendly Arabs, Thompson was defeated near Soor, on the Arabian coast, by a body of Arabs whom he had been directed by the Bombay government to chastise for alleged piracy. As a result of the court-martial which was held, Thompson was ‘honourably acquitted’ on the charges affecting his personal conduct, but was reprimanded for ‘rashly undertaking the expedition with so small a detachment’ (cf. supplement to the London Gazette, 15 and 18 May 1821). 