‘YOUR HEAD IS AS JUDICIOUS AS YOUR HEART IS BRAVE’

THE LIFE AND CAREER OF ADMIRAL SIR RICHARD GOODWIN KEATS G.C.B.

(1757-1834)

Richard Goodwin Keats was born in Chalton, Hampshire, on 16 January 1757. Like Nelson, he was the son of a parson, being the second child and eldest surviving son of The Reverend Richard Keats (1731-1812) and his wife Elizabeth, nee Brookes. At the time of his birth, his father was curate of the parish of Chalton, about ten miles north of Portsmouth.

Keats received what Ralfe has described as ‘the first rudiments of his education’ at the hands of his father but, in 1766, was sent to New College School in Oxford and then entered Winchester College in 1768.1 All his subsequent biographers have copied Ralfe’s comments on Keats’s feelings about what Winchester required of him and his resultant propensity for a naval life – comments which Ralfe had copied from a manuscript memoir written by Keats:

‘Being little addicted to study at that age [I] embraced an opportunity of going to Sea under the Patronage of the Earl of Halifax.’ 2

In 1770, when Keats embraced this opportunity, the Earl of Halifax was Lord Privy Seal in Lord North’s government and his kinsman, John Montagu, was captain of H.M.S. BELLONA (74), then serving as a guard-ship at Portsmouth. The ‘Patronage’ to which Keats referred was a means of providing for the worthy by the great that permeated the age and which was widely employed and accepted by all, Nelson and Keats included. The records disagree about the exact date of Keats’s entry on board BELLONA – it was either 21 October, 25 October or 25 November – but all agree that the year was 1770 and that the young Keats, possessed of the rudiments of education and able to write a legible hand, was aged thirteen: he was rated able and remained in that rate during the one month and four days that he spent at Portsmouth on board the guard-ship.3

N.A.M. Rodger has stated that, ‘It may be taken as axiomatic that a first-born son in the Navy must have come from an impoverished family.’ 4 Although not the first-born, Richard Goodwin Keats was the eldest surviving son of a family with pretensions to gentility but little money. When knighted in 1808, Keats was able to refer a genealogist to existing arms, of both the Keats and Goodwin families, to which his father claimed a right through his paternity. However, his younger brother, William, was unable to aim higher than a second-lieutenancy of Marines in 1780 and spent thirteen years in that rank before being promoted: William Keats’s lieutenancy of Marines may, itself, have been the result of patronage. If Richard Goodwin Keats was to make his way, it would be by talent, luck and, inevitably, a little patronage: in this, he was little different from his slightly younger contemporary, Horatio Nelson.

Keats’s first captain, John Montagu (1718/19-95) was well connected. Aside from his relationship to the Earl of Halifax, he was also cousin to another John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich (1718-92) – N.A.M. Rodger’s ‘Insatiable Earl’, a member of the Board of Admiralty 1744-51 and First Lord 1748-51, 1763 and 1771-82, in the last term of which office he worked with Captain Maurice Suckling (1725-78), Controller of the Navy and Head of the Navy Board 1775-78 and, perhaps more famously, uncle to Horatio Nelson: Suckling had taken the twelve-year old Nelson to sea in 1771. At a time when the careers of young naval officers were frequently influenced by the success of their patrons, and when senior naval officers usually had ‘families’ or ‘followers’ of young men whose careers they promoted, Keats’s early career was to owe a great deal to the Montagu family: he largely learned his trade under the Montagus, serving between 1770 and 1777 under John Montagu as he progressed from captain to admiral, as well as under his two naval-captain sons, George (1750-1829) and James (1752-94).

After a month on H.M.S. BELLONA, late in November 1770, Keats was transferred to another guard-ship, H.M.S. YARMOUTH (64) where he was rated midshipman. Early the following year, his ship was ordered to sail to Gibraltar with troops on board but found to be unfit for the passage and paid off at Plymouth, whereupon Keats was transferred to another guard-ship, H.M.S. CAMBRIDGE (80), based at Plymouth and in which he continued to be rated midshipman.5 He left CAMBRIDGE in April 1771 and was unemployed for two months until, in June 1771, he was swept up in the ‘family’ of John Montagu, by then a rear admiral and commander-in-chief on the North American station, rated able and appointed to H.M.S. CAPTAIN (74), Montagu’s flagship and the predecessor in that name of the ship from which Nelson leapt, literally, to fame at the Battle of Cape St Vincent in 1797.

For the next six years, until he passed for lieutenant in April 1777, Keats was employed in North American waters. He served on Montagu’s flagship until December 1772, then as an able seaman on the schooner H.M.S. HALIFAX (10) for five months before returning, and being rated midshipman, to the flagship for thirteen months and then, also as a midshipman, moving to the sloop H.M.S. KINGFISHER (14), Captain James Montagu, from May 1774 to February 1776. It was probably this service on comparatively small craft in his formative years that gave Keats his notable navigational skill and ship-handling ability in shallow waters; his first experience of active service – in the early years of the American War for Independence – gave him more useful experience, particularly in the area of combined operations. A midshipman aboard KINGFISHER on the outbreak of the American War in 1775, Keats was rated master’s mate and taken onboard H.M.S. MERCURY (20) by James Montagu in February 1776; Keats served in MERCURY for nearly a year until returning to the books of Admiral Montagu’s flagship, by then H.M.S. ROMNEY (50), Captain George Montagu, in the rate of able seaman, on 1 February 1777.6 In the twelve months from December 1775 to 1776, as he recorded in his memoir, he was active in operations against the American rebels:

‘[I] saw much boat service, was in several skirmishes On Shore, was present at the battle of Great Bridge in Virginia [9.12.1775], at the burning of Norfolk [1.1.1776], at the taking of New York [16.9.1776], Fort Washington [17.11.1776] and Rhode Island [December 1776].’ 7 Although on the books of H.M.S. ROMNEY, and not discharged until 9 April 1777, Keats was actually in London by the end of January 1777 since he was examined there for his suitability to hold the rank of lieutenant and passed on 5 February.8 His examiners, Captains John Campbell and Abraham North, were also to examine the slightly younger Horatio Nelson, and to pass him as lieutenant, on 9th April 1777. Although Keats passed his examination two months before Nelson, their first commissions as lieutenants were both dated 10 April 1777, Keats in H.M.S. RAMILLIES (74), Captain Robert Digby, and Nelson in H.M.S. LOWESTOFFE (32), Captain William Locker.9 Just as Locker influenced the young Nelson, so the well-connected and successful Robert Digby (1732-1814) was influential in the career of Keats. When Keats and Nelson came to know each other well, twentyfour years later, this common date of a first commission may have been one of the many things that cemented their friendship.

Keats joined RAMILLIES as her junior lieutenant on 10 April 1777, at which time the ship was part of the Channel Fleet. The entry of France into the American war in July 1778 resulted in the Royal Navy being ordered to attack French shipping and RAMILLIES, in consort with HMS TERRIBLE (74), had a successful cruise in the Bay of Biscay before joining Keppel’s fleet, in the division commanded by Palliser, at the battle of Ushant on 27 July 1778. Although most commentators concur in describing that battle as ‘indecisive’ or ‘inconclusive’, it was nevertheless Keats’s first experience of a fleet action and one in which his ship sustained casualties, although authorities disagree as to their number.10 It can safely be inferred that Keats impressed Digby while in RAMILLIES since, shortly after Digby was promoted rear admiral and hoisted his flag in H.M.S. PRINCE GEORGE (98), on 19 March 1779, Keats joined that ship as her 5th lieutenant. While Keats had impressed Digby sufficiently for him to be invited to join the flagship, Digby had impressed the King sufficiently for him to choose Digby as the man to take his third son aboard her in order to see if the life of a sailor would suit him: in November 1778, the King had described Digby as, ‘…a most excellent officer, sensible, prudent and discreet…’, all qualities that recommended him to the King as the governor of H.R.H. The Prince William Henry.11

Prince William Henry, later Duke of Clarence and H.M. King William IV (1765-1837), was to be one of the most significant strands in the rope of connections that wove Keats and Nelson together since he was a friend and admirer of them both: he wrote to both of them about the other and they wrote to each other about him, rarely in terms of anything but friendship, if occasionally touched with concern about wellbeing and health. According to the Muster for H.M.S. PRINCE GEORGE, Keats joined the ship on 13 May 1779 but his service record places the date as six days later; the same Muster records Prince William joining on 14 May, a date later modified to 14 June.12 It is clear that the naval tuition that the young prince received from the flagship’s 5th lieutenant, who was promoted 4th lieutenant on 15th December 1779, stayed with him all his life and provided a foundation for the later guidance that he was to receive from Nelson. Quoted in 1823, from remarks made during the period 1807-11, he said:

‘Excepting the naval tuition which I had received on board the Prince George, when the present Rear Admiral Keats was Lieutenant of her, and for whom both of us [The Duke of Clarence and Nelson] equally entertained a sincere regard, my mind took its first decided naval turn from this familiar intercourse with Nelson.’ 13

Although Nelson’s surviving letters make no mention of this, it is possible that it was from the young prince that the then Captain Horatio Nelson received his earliest impressions of the then Commander Richard Goodwin Keats when Nelson and Prince William first met in New York in November 1782.14 When writing to Keats’s father in November 1801, the prince said that he owed ‘all my professional knowledge to his son.’ 15

Keats did well during the two-and-a-half years that he served aboard H.M.S. PRINCE GEORGE: as well as gaining the respect and admiration of a prince, he commended himself to his seniors too and would have benefited from prize money. He experienced his second fleet action, on 16 January 1780, when Admiral Rodney’s fleet – en route to the relief of the siege of Gibraltar – overwhelmed a smaller Spanish fleet off Cape St Vincent and captured six prizes, although that which struck to PRINCE GEORGE was subsequently lost. On the way home with the remaining prize ships, Keats’s ship captured a French 64-gun ship and two French Indiamen. Returning to North American waters – where Digby had been appointed commander-in-chief – in August 1781, Keats distinguished himself the following winter in command of the naval forces in a combined operation to destroy some American vessels that had been preying upon the trade to and from New York. So successful was the operation that Keats received promotion to commander with effect from 18 January 1782 and command of the ship H.M.S. RHINOCEROS, which Keats described as having been ‘fitted as a floating battery at New York’ for the defence of that harbour.16 Keats’s first command lasted until the end of July 1782, by which time the American War was all but over, and on 1 August he was given command of the 16-gun sloop H.M.S. BONETTA.17 It was while in command of BONETTA that he participated in one of the last naval engagements of the war, in September 1782. In company with H.M.S.s LION (64) and VESTAL (28), he pursued two large French frigates into the estuary of the Delaware river and up-river for some distance, acting as pilot for the larger ships and demonstrating his talent for navigation in tricky waters; eventually the larger French frigate – L’AIGLE said, at 40 guns, to be the largest in the French navy at the time – grounded, struck her colours and was captured; the other frigate escaped. The ending of the American War resulted in a drastic reduction in size of the Royal Navy and although Keats remained in command of BONETTA, based in Nova Scotia, that commission came to an end in January 1785 and he was placed on half pay.

Half pay in peacetime was the lot of naval as well as military officers: it took no account of talent and little account of status. For officers of slender means, such as Keats, or those who aspired to learn a foreign language, such as Nelson, the European continent was the natural place of escape if one was placed on half pay. The continent offered a lower cost of living and if one chose to be based no further from London than Paris then communications with Britain were good enough to ensure that one could return rapidly, should the chance of a ship arise. Nelson, when on half pay from 3 July 1783 to 18 March 1784, chose to go to St Omer to learn French; when on half pay again, from 30 November 1787 to 6 January 1793, he remained at home.18 Keats, on half pay from 3 January 1785 to 22 October 1789, is said by most sources, who copy Ralfe, to have gone to live on the continent. However, it is unlikely that he was far from a postal service since it must be inferred that he kept in touch with Prince William, who had been created Duke of Clarence in May 1789, and possible that the next stage in his career was as a direct result of a letter of congratulations from Keats to the newly created Duke following publication of his new titles in The London Gazette – a publication that was required reading for all officers on half pay. In June 1789 at, it is said in most sources, ‘the pressing solicitation of the Duke of Clarence with the King’, he was promoted post captain: the date may be significant. If Keats was made post on 4 June, as Ralfe and those who have copied him say, then the significance of this date is simply explained and the Duke of Clarence’s influence obvious: this was the King’s birthday and his first since recovering from the first appearance of his illness. If the date of promotion was 24 June, as Sainsbury and Syrett/DiNardo would have it, then the date appears to have no particular significance. Whatever the date, the story of the Duke of Clarence’s influence in getting his shipmate made post, shortly after the outbreak of the French Revolution and at a time of geopolitical uncertainty, is too likely not to be believed; and, if it was on the occasion of the King’s birthday, that may have kept Keats’s name in the King’s mind when he next needed a frigate in a hurry.

Although made post in June 1789, Keats had to wait until October that year for a ship and, when she was found for him, she was far from ideal. His first captain’s command was the old frigate H.M.S. SOUTHAMPTON (32). Launched in 1757, she was as old as her new captain, had not been docked since 1786, had grounded or struck rocks on at least three occasions and her coppered bottom was foul. Keats’s representations to the Admiralty about the state of his ship met with merely a reprimand for not taking them through the proper channels and he was allotted Channel duty, based at Spithead, until January 1790 when – perhaps through the Duke of Clarence’s influence or the King remembering his name when given a choice of two frigates for the job – he was hurriedly required to take the recently disgraced Prince Edward to Gibraltar, to which garrison he was being banished.

Keats returned from Gibraltar in April 1790, with a long list of complaints about the state of his ship but, with the fleet in the throes of mobilisation during the ‘Nootka Sound’ crisis, it is unlikely that much was done. In the event, SOUTHAMPTON was paid off in February 1791 and, after a short wait, Keats was appointed to H.M.S. NIGER (32) on 29 August that year and retained command of her, employed in the Channel and North Sea against smugglers, until April 1793, by which time Britain was at war with France and its allies, full fleet mobilisation was in progress and there was employment for naval officers again: after a long period on half pay, Nelson had been appointed to command H.M.S. AGAMEMNON (64) in January 1793. On 10/11 April 1793, Keats exchanged command of his frigate for that of the line-of-battle ship H.M.S. LONDON (98) which he was ordered to prepare to receive the Duke of Clarence, who would fly his flag in her and participate in the naval war against France. Although LONDON joined the Channel Fleet under Lord Howe, Clarence was prevented from returning to sea so Keats had to pay the ship off in March 1794 and, on 24 May that year, was given command of H.M.S. GALATEA (36).

Keats spent most of the remainder of the war with Revolutionary France in the Channel and the Bay of Biscay. While Nelson was engaged in the Mediterranean and off Cadiz, Keats was active in the Channel Fleet. Once Lord Howe had won his famous victory over a French fleet on 1 June 1794 the French Atlantic fleet was largely confined to its ports and the role of the British fleet in those sectors was principally one of blockade. If the blockade of Brest and Rochefort was far from glamorous it was a necessary contribution to the naval war with France and Keats’s part in it, although it prevented him from serving with Nelson at that time, gained him his share of laurels. As a frigate captain with experience of combined operations and a sure touch for navigation in coastal waters, Keats came into his own with the Channel Fleet. In 1795 he participated in the ill-fated Quiberon expedition, landing and then re-embarking French royalist troops on the west coast of France; en route to Quiberon Keats spotted the French Channel fleet at sea, sent a report of its movements to Lord Bridport and then witnessed it being engaged on 23 June, as a result of which action three French ships-of-the line were captured.

In the summer of 1796, his navigational skills resulted in his ship being able to chase into shoal water and run ashore two French frigates, both of which were destroyed. In 1797, when in harbour in Plymouth, GALATEA’s ship’s company became infected by the mutinies that had spread west from The Nore and Spithead and Keats was forced to quit his ship, losing command of her at the end of May. In June 1797, though, he obtained command of another frigate, H.M.S. BOADICEA (38) and returned to the Channel Fleet, quelling a mutiny en route, where he was principally employed in the close blockade of Brest. Here, in 1798, he was successful in capturing prizes through remarkably daring feats of navigation and responsible for spotting an escaping French fleet, transporting troops for an invasion of Ireland, in time for it to be intercepted, brought to battle and deterred from its mission.

Keats and BOADICEA generally remained close inshore off Brest through 1799 and 1800, occasionally taking prizes and commending themselves to Lord St Vincent, who had taken command of the Channel Fleet in April 1800. Keats’s reward for his diligence in blockade, aggression in prize-taking and masterly ship handling came on 17 March 1801, when he was given command of H.M.S. SUPERB (74), and moved to a new station, off Cadiz, thus beginning a new chapter in his career.

H.M.S. SUPERB

From a contemporary sketch

H.M.S. SUPERB, with which Keats’s name will always be associated, was ordered with her sister H.M.S. ACHILLE on 10 June 1795 and was laid down in Thomas Pitcher’s Yard at Northfleet, near Gravesend, in August of the same year. Her lines were copied from those of the French POMPEE (taken in 1793) and she was measured at 1,916 tons, having an overall length of 182 feet and a 49 foot beam. Mounting thirty 32 pdrs. on her gundeck and thirty 18 pdrs. on her upper deck, she also carried an assortment of other smaller calibre weapons on her quarterdeck and forecastle. Almost three years on the stocks, she was launched on 19 March 1798 and, after fitting out, was commissioned with a crew of 640 officers, men and boys. Keats was to be her captain for six years and she was then to serve as his flagship for a further two-and-a-half years. In 1801, SUPERB was still new and had not been part of the Cadiz blockade for long: her resultant speed, combined with her captain’s initiative and aggression, were to bring them both to Lord Nelson’s attention before the year was out.

Although Keats had served on line-of-battle ships previously, SUPERB – apart from his brief period in H.M.S. LONDON in 1793/94 – was his first command of one of these heavy yet versatile workhorses of the Royal Navy and he immediately set to work to train her ship’s company in his own ideas of seamanship and gunnery. Through a failure in communication, Keats missed Saumarez’s defeat in the Bay of Algeciras on 6 July 1801 and although he was characteristically mortified by this, no blame was attached to him. When combined Spanish and French squadrons sailed south from Algeciras into the Mediterranean, en route to Cadiz, on 12 July 1801, Saumarez’s ships gave chase from Gibraltar. Saumarez ordered Keats to forge ahead to try and delay the enemy so that the rest of the squadron could come up and engage them. SUPERB, being clean-bottomed and undamaged and with a captain and ship’s company eager both to revenge the defeat of a week before and expiate any lingering feelings of guilt at their absence from it, set her fore-sail and top-gallants and rapidly accelerated into the darkening western sky, her speed soon being reckoned at 11Ѕ knots as she was pushed westward by a strengthening easterly gale.19

By 11.20pm, SUPERB was up with the rear of the enemy fleet and, although apparently sighted by the rearmost ships, not engaged by them. Her lookout’s reports to Keats persuaded him that the rearmost ships were Spanish three-deckers and that they were sailing abreast of each other. Remaining un-attacked, Keats reduced sail, brought SUPERB up onto the starboard quarter of the REAL CARLOS (112) and poured a broadside into her from his port guns; this broadside, says White, killed or wounded all the ship’s officers, who were at dinner in her cabin, and so left her without leadership.20 This broadside was followed by two others in rapid succession before the Spanish ship responded: such was the gunnery training that Keats had introduced to his new ship. After ten minutes’ action the REAL CARLOS was on fire and out of control; like other ships in the Spanish division of the fleet, she was also firing wildly in the smoke and darkness, heedless of any particular target and this lack of fire-discipline spread to other Spanish ships, with the result that they began to engage each other. As chaos reigned, Keats set more sail and SUPERB surged forward into the darkness in search of other prey. As she did so, the SAN HERMENEGILDO (112), which had been firing into the REAL CARLOS, collided with her and caught fire, both ships soon blowing up. Leaving this carnage and devastation behind, Keats soon caught up with his next target, the SAN ANTOINE (74), which was sailing erratically and which SUPERB engaged with her port guns, bringing her to a standstill and causing her to surrender after about thirty minutes of action, at about 12.30 in the early morning of 13 July 1801.

For his services on this occasion, Keats received the thanks of Parliament, while Saumarez joined Lord Nelson in the ranks of Knights Companion of the Order of the Bath. For all the pleasure that Keats must have felt at such public recognition of his action, he would probably have been even more pleased had he known of a letter written by Lord Nelson to the Duke of Clarence on 5 August 1801. Nelson’s letter was inspired by the report of the action and Keats’s account of SUPERB’’s part in it published in The London Gazette:

‘[H.M.S. MEDUSA, off Boulogne; 5th August 1801].

…Most cordially do I congratulate your Royal Highness on the distinguished merits of Captain Keats, your opinion of him was truly formed…’ 21

This is the first known letter in which Nelson refers to Keats but it is clear that Clarence had sung Keats’s praises to Nelson before this date. Thus, when Keats and Nelson finally met, in 1803, Nelson was not only primed by Clarence but also impressed by Keats’s actions of July 1801.

The short-lived ‘Peace of Amiens’ of October 1801-May 1803 provided no respite for Keats and he remained with H.M.S. SUPERB, stationed in the Mediterranean. By July 1803, when Nelson came out to take command of the Mediterranean Fleet, Keats was engaged in the blockade of Toulon and Nelson lost no time, either in meeting him or in writing to their mutual friend Clarence, about his impressions:

‘July 9th 1803.

I joined the Fleet yesterday, and it was with much sorrow that I saw your Royal Highness’s friend, Captain Keats, looking so very ill; but he says he is recovering. I have such a high respect for his character, that I should be happy in doing all in my power to promote it. He is too valuable an officer for the King’s service to lose.’ 22

As White says, this letter to Clarence, ‘…is the first hint of the ill health that was to stalk Keats for the rest of his career and, eventually, brought it to a premature close.’ 23 It is also, as was a private letter written two days later to Hugh Elliot (1752-1813), Minister in Naples 1803-06, an indication of Nelson’s capacity not only to form instant opinions about people but also, once having formed them, only very rarely to change his mind: he was not to change his mind about Keats. In his private letter to Elliot, having in his official letter of the same date described Keats as, ‘…one of the very best Officers in his Majesty’s Navy’, Nelson wrote:

‘July 11th 1803.

Give me leave to introduce Captain Keats to your particular notice. His health has not been very good, but I hope that he will soon recover; for his loss would, I assure you, be a serious one to our Navy, and particularly to me; for I esteem his person alone as equal to one French 74, and the Superb and her Captain equal to two 74- gun Ships…’24

This was praise indeed and Nelson clearly so enjoyed his earliest assessments of Keats – as ‘one of the very best Officers’ and the comparison between Keats and a 74 – that, never one to suppress ringing phrases, he used both again in letters to Clarence on 6 September 1803 and 15 August 1804.25 At first, despite Nelson’s approval of Keats, the letters between the two men were formal, as befitted letters between an admiral and a captain under his command and as far as can be assessed from the survival of the printed record. By January 1804, Keats had proved his worth to Nelson through not only reducing his fourteen days’ sick leave to nine but also in conducting surveying missions throughout the western Mediterranean and detailed, complicated and patiencetesting negotiations with the Dey of Algiers over the expulsion of the British consul and the enslavement of Christian ships’ crews: by that time, Nelson was addressing Keats as ‘My dear Sir’.26 Keats was to spend an inordinate amount of time in 1804 and early 1805 representing Nelson in protracted negotiations with the Dey and much of Keats’s correspondence with Nelson that survives in the British Library is connected with this. By January 1804, Keats clearly felt sufficiently at ease in his private letters to Nelson to address him as ‘my dear Lord’ and in a private letter from SUPERB, then at anchor in the Bay of Algiers, dated 17 January 1804, Keats wrote:

‘Your approbation will never cease to afford me comfort and, when successful, happiness...’ 27

Nelson had written to Clarence in December 1803 bringing the duke up-to-date with his assessment of their mutual friend, as Keats had clearly become by that time:

‘Off Toulon, December 7th 1803.

…I hope now to be allowed to call Keats my friend. He is very much recovered, and cheerful; he is a treasure to the Service…’ 28

Nelson repeated the reference to friendship when writing again to Clarence in August 1804, as well as recommending Keats to Clarence as an adviser, should Clarence ever entertain hopes of being appointed to the Admiralty in some capacity:

‘15th August 1804.

…Our friend Keats is quite well; in his own person he is equal in my estimation to an additional Seventy-four; his life is a valuable one to the State, and it is impossible that your Royal Highness could ever have a better choice of Sea friend, or Counsellor, if you go to the Admiralty. Keats will never give that counsel which would not be good for the Service.’ 29

The earliest surviving invitation to dine from Nelson to Keats dates from 10 July 1804 and, aside from providing evidence of convivial friendship between the two men by that time, is significant for two other reasons. Firstly it provides evidence that, by that time, Nelson was willing to do Keats a favour – in this case to arrange a passage home for Lieutenant Richard Buck, R.N., who was Keats’s nephew. Secondly it demonstrates that the original, together with similar letters of a personal nature from Nelson to Keats (many of which are quoted below), survived into the 1840s in the possession of another nephew, The Rev. Richard Keats B.A., where they were clearly preserved for their importance to the original recipient and his heirs and in due course were available for transcription by Nicolas.30 When it seemed likely that Nelson’s health would necessitate a return to England, late in 1804, it was to Keats and the SUPERB that he turned for assistance and transport:

‘Victory, December 3rd 1804.

…I may very soon be your troublesome guest; therefore that I may not hurry your Ship too much, I shall, with your leave, send some of my wine to the Superb this morning – fourteen casks, and about eleven or twelve cases; but, my dear Sir, there are so many things that I have to intrude upon your goodness for, that I hardly see how to make you any amends for the trouble I shall give.’ 31

Later that month, as Nelson’s chances of being able to return home receded, he wrote again to Keats asking for the return of ‘…a few cases, which are wanted to keep me from starving…’ and saying that he ‘… should be glad to see you for five minutes on board the Victory.’ 32 By January 1805, when H.M.S. VICTORY was moored in Agincourt Sound, Corsica, Nelson was addressing Keats, who was on his way back from yet another trip to Algiers as ‘My dear Keats’, suggesting to him ways in which to avoid being quarantined by the Governor of Corsica, offering him the negotiating skills of The Reverend Alexander Scott, Nelson’s confidential secretary (in arguing the case with the Governor for not quarantining SUPERB) and offering him dinner, quarantined or not, as soon as possible.33 It is clear that by this time the relationship between the two men was one of warm, comradely friendship, allowing banter and jocularity. This tenor was maintained for the remainder of Nelson’s life, even when – on 30 March 1805 – he had to reprimand Keats for undue sharpness with Rear Admiral George Murray, captain of the fleet, over the matter of the issue of hammocks: the letter was a private one, not an official reprimand, couched in the most diplomatic of terms and written more in sorrow than in anger.34

Keats’s devotion professionally to the service and personally to Nelson was never in doubt and never so well demonstrated as in 1805 when, despite H.M.S. SUPERB being in poor condition and badly in need of docking and repair, he was determined that she should remain with Nelson as he chased the reported movements of the French fleet across the Mediterranean and back and then across the Atlantic to the West Indies and back. It was this latter chase, with SUPERB ‘old and foul and slow’, ‘barnacled and green as grass below’ with ‘nothing save the guns aboard her bright’ that was remembered a century later by Sir Henry Newbolt (1862-1938) in ‘The Old Superb’ and also set to music by Sir Charles Stanford. While Newbolt exaggerated the sorry state of the ship and the morale of the ship’s midshipmen, his pen-portrait of Keats would have been one of which Nelson would have approved:

‘…Captain Keats he knew the game, and swore to share the sport, for he never yet came in too late to fight…’35

Nelson recognised this devotion and told Clarence about it:

‘Victory, March 13th 1805.

‘…I hope to meet them [the French fleet] soon for which reason I have deferr’d my departure in the Superb and for the same reason Keats wishes to stay, although his ship ought long time since to have been in England.’ 36

By May Keats had clearly assured Nelson of his determination to remain in the Mediterranean Fleet while there was a chance of an engagement with the French, since Nelson wrote to him early that month as follows:

‘Victory, May 8th 1805.

My dear Keats,

I am very much pleased with the cheerfulness with which you are determined to share the fate of the Fleet. Perhaps none of us would wish for exactly a West India trip; but the call of our Country is far superior to any consideration of self. I will take care that Superb shall have neighbour’s fare in everything. I wrote to the Admiralty that Superb would be sent home before the hurricane months….’ 37

Anxious to let their Royal mutual friend know of Keats’s determination, Nelson wrote to Clarence two days later:

‘Victory off Cape St Vincents May 10th 1805. …Keats has begged that His Superb may share our fate going to the West Indies, his ship is not quite fit for such a long voyage…’38

En route to the West Indies, with H.M.S. SUPERB clearly finding the journey trying, Nelson wrote one of the most touching letters sent by him to his friend:

‘Victory, May 19th 1805.

My dear Keats,

I am fearful that you may think that the Superb does not go fast as I could wish. However that may be, (for if we all went ten knots, I should not think it fast enough,) yet I would have you be assured that I know and feel that the Superb does all which is possible for a Ship to accomplish; and I desire you will not fret upon the occasion. I hope, and indeed feel confident, that very soon you will help me to secure the Majesteux. I think we have been from Cape St Vincent very fortunate, and shall be in the West Indies time enough to secure Jamaica, which I think is their object. Whatever may happen, believe me, my dear Keats, you most obliged and sincere friend …’

As the world knows, Nelson did not catch the French fleet in the Caribbean and so returned to Gibraltar, where the fleet anchored late in July. From VICTORY, while at anchor in Rosia Bay, Nelson wrote to Keats:

‘Victory, July 21st 1805.

The Superb will be the first Line-of-Battle Ship, which proceeds to England; but that may not take place for one month, and it may take place in a few days…’ 40

H.M.S.s VICTORY and SUPERB sailed from Gibraltar for England less than a month later and arrived off the Isle of Wight on 17 August; Nelson and Keats dined together that evening and their ships moored at Spithead on 18 August. On arrival, they saluted the C. in C. Portsmouth, Admiral George Montagu, who probably remembered Keats as the protege of his father and younger brother of thirty years before.41 While waiting to clear the quarantine restrictions on 18 August, Nelson wrote to Clarence, letting him know that they had arrived, that neither ship had any man sick and that ‘Keats is very well...’.42

The close friendship between Keats and Nelson, of which Nelson’s Bath Star is such impressively tangible evidence, had little more than two months to run by the time their ships moored at Spithead. While both men remained in England, they also remained in touch, although Keats was busy overseeing the refitting of SUPERB in Portsmouth Dockyard and Nelson busy between political matters in London and domesticity at Merton. On 22 August 1805, with SUPERB still at anchor at Spithead, Keats wrote Nelson a letter that is indicative of the feelings that he – and his ship’s company – had for Nelson:

‘My dear Lord,

In obedience to your Commands I embrace an early opportunity of Informing your Lordship that the Superb is ordered to dock and refit at Portsmouth. I apprehend the fate of the Ship’s Company will be determined by the State in which they find the Ship when taken into Dock. Should it be mine to take her again to Sea, I am sure no circumstance could afford me more pleasure than that of finding myself once more under your Lordship’s command.

Permit me to assure you that we all feel much pleasure in finding that all classes write in the sentiments of admiration of your Lordship’s judicious and persevering endeavours and that I have the honor to remain.

With great respect and obligation, your Lordship’s faithfull and Obdt. Humble Servt., R.G. Keats.’ 43

Nelson’s reply to this letter is the last known extant letter from him to Keats. In it, Nelson used a phrase which has been used as part of the title of this essay and which neatly sums up Nelson’s opinion of Keats; he also said much that reinforces our knowledge of the immense mutual regard and friendship of the two men and the potential influence of Clarence on Keats’s career and prospects:

‘Merton, August 24th 1805.

My dear Keats,

Many thanks for your kind letter. Nothing, I do assure you, could give me more pleasure than to have you at all times near me, for without compliment, I believe your head is as judicious as your heart is brave, and neither, I believe, can be exceeded...The Royal Duke wrote you from Merton about yourself, I believe, but when I can see Lord Castlereagh I shall know positively what they mean to do; perhaps you may pass by Merton in your way to London; if you come by Epsom it is the nearest road to pass my door. Ever, my dear Keats, your most faithful and obliged friend.

Nelson and Bronte’

We know that Keats did go to Merton, probably early in September 1805 according to White, because of a ‘Memorandum of a conversation between Lord Nelson and Admiral Sir Richard Keats, the last time he was in England, before the Battle of Trafalgar.’44 This memorandum, which Nicolas reproduced in 1846, was copied in 1829 from an account, by Keats, of a conversation that took place between the two men while, ‘...walking with Lord Nelson in the grounds at Merton, talking on naval matters...’.45 In the conversation, as recounted by Keats, Nelson outlined what his battle plan would be when, finally, he met the French fleet; having told Keats of his plan, Nelson asked Keats for his opinion and then, while Keats was considering it, told him his:

...I’ll tell you what I think of it. I think it will surprise and confound the Enemy. They won’t know what I am about. It will bring forward a pell-mell Battle, and that is what I want.’ 46

Nelson’s rough sketch of his battle plan, as outlined to Keats during their meeting at Merton in 1805.

For a detailed analysis, see White, 2001.

It may be inferred from Keats’s account of the conversation that Nelson assumed that H.M.S. SUPERB would be with him at this projected ‘pell-mell Battle’ but it was not to be. H.M.S. VICTORY and Nelson left Spithead on 14 September 1805. SUPERB was released from the dock in Portsmouth on 25 September and when Keats wrote one of his last letters to Nelson, dated from Portsmouth on 1 October 1805, he had been told that she would remain in the hands of the dockyard until 15 October; thereafter, as Keats wrote:

‘...no time shall be lost on our parts to join your Lordship with all possible expedition. This thrusting her out of Dock before she was ready for our work answers no good purpose to any of us, and an ill one indeed to me as it had bro’t me unnecessarily early from my old Father’s and thereby abridged one’s short comforts, which I shd. not have begrudged if I could have been a day sooner with your Lordship by it.’ 47

SUPERB was selected by the Admiralty to be the flagship of Vice Admiral Sir John Duckworth K.B. (1748-1817), who was to become third-in-command to Nelson but was delayed in Plymouth from sailing. By the time she, Duckworth and Keats reached Cadiz, on 15 November, the Battle of Trafalgar had been fought and Nelson was dead. It would have been small consolation to Keats to receive the news that he had been made a colonel of Royal Marines – a largely honorary post that was accompanied by a useful salary – on 9 November 1805.

Relations between Keats and Duckworth were barely cordial but the admiral was still flying his flag in SUPERB when, on 6 February 1806, Duckworth’s squadron fought a short, controlled and decisive action against the French squadron of five ships-of-the-line off St Domingo. Elsewhere in this catalogue is recounted the story of how Keats came to have Nelson’s cousin aboard his ship at this time. SUPERB led the squadron into action, with a portrait of Nelson hung on the mizzen stay by Keats and with her band playing ‘Nelson of the Nile’; by the end of the battle three of the French ships had been taken and the two others destroyed by being run on shore.48 Duckworth gave full praise to Keats in his Dispatch; Keats was again thanked by Parliament, awarded a Captain’s gold medal by the King and also presented with a silver vase of one hundred pounds’ value by the Patriotic Fund at Lloyd’s.49

After St Domingo, Keats and SUPERB returned to the Cadiz blockade and then took Duckworth to England, where he hauled down his flag and SUPERB was redeployed to the blockade of Brest. Keats was given command of a small flying squadron off Rochefort and in March 1807 the significance of this new command was recognised by Keats being made a commodore. Keeping the French in port remained a priority for the Royal Navy and doing so, close inshore and in bad weather, was not a task easily performed: as Lord St Vincent wrote, ‘It is very hazardous and under the orders of almost any other man than Captain Keats who professes so much knowledge of that Sea I should judge it improper to be continued during the winter months.’ 50 Fortunately for Keats’s health, which was becoming increasingly precarious, he was relieved of that duty in April 1807 and ordered to take his commodore’s broad pendant to the Baltic in the fleet being assembled there to restrict the movements of the Danish fleet – Denmark then being sympathetic to Napoleonic France. Keats hoisted his pendant in H.M.S. GANGES (74) until SUPERB arrived, when he transferred it to her, and commanded his squadron successfully in its mission to cut off Copenhagen from reinforcement by Danish troops during the British siege of the Danish capital. The success of the mission was reflected in Keats’s promotion to rear admiral of the blue on 2 October 1807 and he hoisted his flag in SUPERB before returning home to take some well-earned leave.

Late in April 1808, Keats was ordered to return to the Baltic as second-in-command to Sir James Saumarez, on whose orders he had forged ahead after the French and Spanish squadrons escaping out of Algeciras on 12 July 1801. H.M.S. SUPERB was still in the Baltic and so he sailed to join her on H.M.S. MARS (74). As an admiral, he was now ideally suited to begin to dispense some of the patronage from which he had benefited as a young man: one recorded instance of this must serve to indicate how the system worked, albeit at the highest level. Shortly after Keats had been promoted rear admiral, sometime early in November 1807, the Duke of Clarence wrote to him:

‘I am anxious to send Henry to sea and ultimately he shall go... Both as an Englishman and as a father I am truly anxious to put my second son into the Navy; he will I think turn out all I can wish and particularly if under your kind care and protection...I truly hope you will shortly be employed so as to gain both honours and riches, but not too far off so that Henry may join you in the spring. The boy himself is delighted with the idea and talks of you and the Navy with rapture.’ 51

‘Henry’ was Henry Fitzclarence, second son of the duke by Mrs Jordan, and – aged eleven and accompanied by his father to see him off – he joined H.M.S. MARS in the Downs on 20 April 1808 and was rated 1st Class Volunteer; two months later, by which time Keats had shifted his flag back to H.M.S. SUPERB in the Baltic, Clarence wrote to Keats, ‘he cannot be in better hands than yours.’ 52 Mrs Jordan clearly shared Clarence’s opinion of Keats, writing in December 1808 that, ‘...the attention and kindness of Admiral Keats to all the boys [in the flagship] is more like the affectionate care of a father than a master.’ 53 Henry Fitzclarence’s naval career did not prosper, probably because he was unable to spend all his formative years under Keats’s care, and he was discharged in May 1811, transferring to the Army and joining his brother in his uncle’s regiment, 10th Hussars. Recognising that Keats had done all he could for Henry, Clarence wrote to him in September 1811:

‘I wish Henry had remained with you, but that being now over the less I say on that subject the better. I must however be sincerely interested in your welfare after an uninterrupted friendship has subsisted between us for more than three and thirty years... believe me, Dear Keats, yours most unalterably, William.’ 54

Keats’s role in the Baltic in 1808 reflected the rapidly changing balance of power in Europe after 1807, when Napoleon signed an alliance with Russia but – a year later – made the ultimately fatal mistake of alienating Spain by making his brother Joseph that nation’s king. On 2 May 1808, Spain rose in revolt against France, after eleven years of alliance, and became an ally of Britain; suddenly, a Spanish army of 12,000 men deployed in Denmark became allies and not enemies and Britain was asked to help return them to Spain so that they could be redeployed against the common enemy. Only the Royal Navy could do this and Keats, with his long experience of embarking and disembarking troops, was the ideal man for the job. On 23 July 1808 Admiralty orders were sent to Keats in the Baltic, where he was commanding the division of Saumarez’s fleet stationed in the Great Belt, between the islands of Funen and Zealand, to secure British trade routes from attack. By early August, Keats had been closely involved in intelligence operations aimed at apprising the Spaniards of the position without, at the same time, allowing the French to find out. The Spanish commander, the Marquйs de la Romana, captured the port of Nyborg on 9 August, in which were sufficient small craft to allow the troops to be embarked once the Danish defences had been neutralised; Keats shifted his flag to a sloop in order to be able closely to supervise the operation and, in two days, six thousand Spanish soldiers were embarked into the British men-of-war and smaller craft and into the Danish vessels requisitioned in Nyborg. This was all done with a minimum of fuss, extraordinary attention to detail and planning by Keats and was almost wholly successful in evacuating the Spanish forces in Denmark: as Davey says, ‘this was an exemplary example of seamanship, organizational expertise and diplomacy.’ 55 In writing to Keats to congratulate him, Saumarez said:

‘In the Important service you have rendered to the country in extricating the Spanish Troops from being any longer in the claws of the Enemy I cannot too highly applaud the Skill and judgment you have displayed, and the Perseverance and Zeal of the Captains, Officers and Men under your command.’ 56

In all, sixty ships, of various sizes, took the Spanish soldiers to Gothenburg, where they arrived on 27 August 1808; on 6 September a fleet of transports arrived from Britain, which left Gothenburg for Spain on 9 September and arrived at Santander on 9 October. Romana’s soldiers went on to play a significant part in the Peninsular War, which Napoleon famously described as the ‘Ulcer’ that finally destroyed his ambitions. Predictably, Clarence wrote to Keats to congratulate him on 26 August:

‘...the Spanish spoke in the highest terms of you...Romana’s dispatches were full of gratitude towards to you for your conduct to him and his countrymen in public and in the manner they are treated by you; indeed they drank your health...I was immediately informed of the success of your well planned expedition in favour of the gallant Spaniards... and believe me the most important service yet performed in any war is the exploit since executed by you: the advantages are incalculable and I rejoice most sincerely that it has fallen to my friend’s lot to achieve this important and glorious event...exclusive of the advantage to the country... I have also seen the King, and the Queen has assured me he thinks as highly of the event as I do.’ 57

Tangible evidence of the King’s approval came in October, when The London Gazette announced that Keats was to be created a Knight Companion of the Order of the Bath.58 The insignia were delivered to Keats’s colleague, Rear Admiral Thomas Bertie, who knighted Keats on the King’s behalf in the great cabin of H.M.S. SUPERB. 59 As a result of his knighthood, Keats was approached by George Nayler, genealogist of the Order of the Bath, asked about his family’s arms and asked what supporters and motto he would like to be granted (see lot 2). Initially selecting ‘Restituit’ (‘Restored’) as a motto – of which his father approved, perhaps feeling that his son had restored the family’s fortunes and status – Keats subsequently changed it to ‘Mi Patria Es Mi Norte’ (‘My Country Is My North’ – using ‘North’ in the sense of the compass point). The legend was included on a Spanish medal struck to commemorate the successful repatriation of their soldiers. 60 As well as a knighthood from his King, Keats was given a cased pair of silver-mounted French pistols, from the Versailles manufacture of Nicolas-Nцel Boutet, by the Marques de la Romana. 61

Frozen into the Baltic during the winter of 1808-09, Keats came home in H.M.S. SUPERB in July 1809, escorting a convoy of 400 ships, and was almost immediately ordered to the Scheldt as second-in-command to Rear Admiral Sir Richard Strachan, Bart., K.B. (1760-1828) as the naval part of an expedition against the Dutch coast. The expedition proving largely abortive, Keats came home in September 1809 and paid off SUPERB on 5th November, leaving a ship that had been home to him, and participated in three of the great events of his career, after more than eight-and-a-half years of almost uninterrupted association. On 25 October 1809, during an extended period of sick leave, he was advanced to rear admiral of the white, but his ill health forced him to decline the offer of the governorship of Malta. On 11 July 1810 he returned from sick leave to hoist his flag in H.M.S. IMPLACABLE (74) and on 31st July was advanced to rear admiral of the red. In IMPLACABLE he commanded a fleet based off Cadiz and worked closely with the Army in hit-and-run attacks on those parts of the Spanish coast held by the French; as a naval commander who knew his business, was a master of detail and was anxious to co-operate for the common good, Keats soon established a good working relationship with the Army’s battlefield commanders. During his time off Cadiz, he had shifted his flag from IMPLACABLE to H.M.S. MILFORD (78) and then to H.M.S. HIBERNIA (110). On 1 August 1811, he was promoted to vice admiral of the blue and given the choice of remaining off Cadiz or becoming second-in-command in the Mediterranean: he chose the latter option, remaining initially in HIBERNIA but subsequently shifting his flag to H.M.S. CENTAUR (74) until his health broke down again and he was forced to return home in September 1812.

In February 1813 he was offered and accepted the post of governor of Newfoundland and commander-in-chief of that station. Hoisting his flag in H.M.S. BELLEROPHON (74), a ship that later gained fame by conveying the defeated Napoleon to Plymouth after the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815, he remained in Newfoundland, shifting his flag to the new H.M.S. SALISBURY (58) in 1814, until returning home in April 1816. While in Newfoundland, he was advanced to vice admiral of the white on 4 June 1814 and occasionally came home to consult with the admiralty. On one of these visits home, in March 1814, he met Earl Nelson and was presented with the magnificent Star of the Order of the Bath that had belonged to his late friend, Vice Admiral Horatio, Viscount Nelson: he may even have chosen to wear the Star on occasion between March 1814 and January 1815. In January 1815, the Order of the Bath was substantially modified, changing from a single-class order to one with three classes and two divisions: Keats’s status thus changed from that of a Knight Companion of the Order of the Bath (K.B.) to a Knight Grand Cross of the Military Division of the Order of the Bath (G.C.B.), and it would have been shortly after January 1815 that he obtained from the Royal jewellers the G.C.B. Star, offered in this catalogue together with Keats’s K.B. Grant of Arms (see lot 2).

On his return to England in April 1816, Keats retired to Devon but he was neither to be forgotten nor unrewarded. He was appointed a major general of Royal Marines on 7 May 1818 and advanced to vice admiral of the red on 12 August 1819. A bachelor all his life, married to the Service and the sea, he altered this state on 27 June 1820 when he married Miss Mary Hurt.

The following year, he was appointed Governor of Greenwich Hospital, the retirement home for naval pensioners, and at once set to work to institute long overdue changes in the welfare of the pensioners and administration of the hospital. Promoted admiral of the blue on 27 May 1825, he was advanced to admiral of the white on 22 July 1830 and died at Greenwich on 5 April 1834.

By the time of Keats’s death, his Royal friend and patron had become King William IV and the King ensured that Keats’s funeral and memorials were as reflective of their long friendship and of his estimation of Keats’s qualities as possible. As The Times reported:

‘His Majesty, who was an old shipmate of Sir Richard’s, and who had a warm regard for him, gave orders to have his funeral conducted with all the honours due to his high station in the British service. Orders were, in consequence, issued to the naval officers of His Majesty’s household to attend the funeral in full uniform. The Lords of the Admiralty, including the First Lord (Sir James Graham), were also in attendance.’ 62

Keats’s coffin was borne by pensioners who had served with him in H.M.S. SUPERB and the pall was carried by six admirals. He was buried in a mausoleum in the grounds of the hospital and King William commissioned a memorial to him in the hospital’s chapel that recorded the King’s ‘esteem for the exemplary character of a friend, and his grateful sense of the valuable services rendered to his country by a highly distinguished and gallant officer.’ 63

Since his death there have been many assessments of the achievements and qualities of Admiral Sir Richard Keats G.C.B.. Few have apportioned to Keats the level of praise given to him and about him by Lord Nelson, his superior officer and then his friend for two years and two months, but, perhaps, none knew his strengths and weaknesses as intimately as did Nelson. The most modern, accurate and succinct assessment is probably that of Professor Roger Knight, in his 2005 biography of Nelson:

‘Keats was one of the most talented sea officers of his generation.’ 64

Stephen Wood MA FSA

With thanks to Professor Roger Knight

The revised Keats Arms, as prepared for Admiral William Keats (see lot 3) in 1838,

including the motto adopted by his uncle after 1808 (Keats family papers).

For Sir Richard’s Grant of Arms with Bath and supporters, see lot 2.

1 Ralfe, p 487.

2 Quoted in White, ‘Keats’, p 348.

3 ADM 9/1, f.46 gives 25 October 1770; ADM 107/6, p 376, suggests 21 October; all the printed records copy Ralfe in giving 25 November 1770.

4 Rodger, 1988, p 259.

5 ADM 9/1, f. 46.

6 ADM 9/1, f. 46.

7 Quoted in White, ‘Keats’, p 348.

8 ADM 107/6, p 376.

9 ADM 9/1, f. 46; Knight, p 41.

10 Ralfe, p 489, says 18; White, ‘Keats’, p 349, says 28.

11 Fortescue, IV, letter 225. The King’s opinion of Digby may have been influenced by the occasion when, in May 1758, Digby had put glory before profit in chasing a French warship rather than capturing the prizes she had abandoned: Rodger, 1988, p 316.

12 ADM 36/8969; ADM 9/1, f. 46. Keats’s muster number was 615, Prince William’s was 641.

13 Marshall, I, p 8.

14 Knight, p 107.

15 White, ‘Keats’, p 349, n. 9.

16 Ralfe, p 490; quoted in White, ‘Keats’, p 349.

17 ADM 9/1, f. 46. Most sources copy Ralfe in giving the ‘May 1782’ as the date when Keats assumed command of BONETTA but his record of service gives 1 August 1782.

18 Knight, pp 564-570.

19 Ralfe, p 496.

20 White, ‘Keats’, p 355.

21 Nicolas, IV, p 441. The London Gazette extraordinary, 15392, 3.8.1801, pp 945-946; Keats’s letter is on p 946.

22 Nicolas, V, p 125.

23 White, ‘Keats’, p 357.

24 Nicolas, V, p 130.

25 Nicolas, V, p 197 & VI, p 156.

26 Nicolas, V, p 376.

27 BL Add. Mss. 34922, f.68.

28 Nicolas, V, p 302.

29 Nicolas, V, p 156.

30 Nicolas, VI, p 106. Lieutenant Richard Buck died a post captain in 1830. For The Rev. Richard Keats B.A., see the entry for the Indian Mutiny Medal 1857-58 awarded to his son, Captain W. McG. Keats, in this catalogue.

31 Nicolas, VI, pp 283-284.

32 Nicolas, VI, p 306; 29.12.1804.

33 Nicolas, VI, pp 321-322; 15.1.1805.

34 Nicolas, VI, pp 386-387.

35 Newbolt, Sir H., ‘The Old Superb’ in The Island Race (London, 1898).

36 White, ‘New Letters’, p 417.

37 Nicolas, VI, p 429.

38 White, ‘New Letters’, p 428.

39 Nicolas, VI, p 442.

40 Nicolas, VI, p 482.

41 Knight, p 496; Nicolas, VII, pp 7-8.

42 White, ‘New Letters’, p 438.

43 BL Add. Mss. 34930, f. 190.

44 White, ‘Keats’, p 361.

45 Nicolas, VII, p 241.

46 Nicolas, ibid.

47 BL Add. Mss. 34931, ff. 245-246.

48 Knight, p 539.

49 Many sources state that the Patriotic Fund awarded Keats a sword of Ј100 value but, as with the other captains of ships at St Domingo, the award was of a Ј100 vase: Southwick, p 44.

50 White, ‘Keats’, p 362.

51 Owen, p 42.

52 Owen, ibid.

53 Owen, ibid.

54 Owen, p 45.

55 Davey, p 702.

56 Davey, ibid.

57 Davey, p 705.

58 The London Gazette, 16191, 11.10.1808, p 1401; the date of the announcement was 15 October 1808.

59 White, ‘Keats’, p 364.

60 Keats family papers; Ralfe, p 508.

61 Sold Sotheby’s Olympia, 26.6.2003; lot 289.

62 The Times, 14 April 1834.

63 Sainsbury.

64 Knight, p 648.