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Rh  of the late Sir James Patey, late of Reading, in Berkshire, Knt.; and has several children. His only surviving brother, James, was knighted for his gallantry at Algiers, in 1816, on which occasion he commanded the flag-ship of Lord Exmouth. His three elder brothers, John Douglas, Thomas Stewart, and William Henry, died in the service of their country; the former, a Captain R.N., was drowned in 1782; the second, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the army, fell at St. Domingo, in 1795; and the latter, a naval Captain, died in the following year.

A portrait of the subject of this memoir, executed by J. Northcote, representing his attack on Curacoa, was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1809.



 officer’s ancestor, John Talbot, served under the Earl of Salisbury at the siege of Orleans, in the reign of Henry VI. There is a tradition in the family, that twelve Talbots were engaged in the battle of the Boyne; six on the side of King James, and the like number attached to the army under William, of glorious memory.

Sir John Talbot is a son of the late Colonel Talbot, of Malahide Castle, near Dublin, and brother of Richard Wogan Talbot, Esq., M.P. for that county. In 1784, we find him serving as a Midshipman on board the Boreas frigate, commanded by the late Lord Nelson, at the Leeward Islands. He was made a Lieutenant in 1790; and appointed to the command of the Helena sloop, about the month of April, 1795. His post commission bears date Aug. 27, 1796.

Captain Talbot was promoted to the latter rank in the Eurydice, of 24 guns, on the North Sea station, where he captured several of the enemy’s privateers. His next appointment was to the Ambuscade frigate, in which he remained but a few months, and then removed into the Glenmore, employed on the coast of Ireland. In July, 1801, he recaptured four West Indiamen which had been recently cut off from their convoy by a French privateer.

