Naval General Service Medal 1793-1840
Naval General Service Medal 1793-1840
one clasp, St Domingo, WILLIAM KEATS, VOL r 1ST CLASS., good extremely fine and deeply toned; offered with copies of Certificates of Service and other documents taken from originals in the Keats family papers
(lot 3) the auction Sotheby's £2,500-3,500
WILLIAM ABRAHAM KEATS was probably born early in 1795 since he was said to have been eight years old when he arrived at Blundell’s School, Tiverton, on 15 August 1803 (Fisher, p 58, no. 875, where his father’s first name is wrongly recorded). His father was William Keats, the younger brother of Richard Goodwin Keats. William Keats (the elder) was born on 3 August 1759, commissioned 2nd lieutenant of Marines on 29 October 1780, promoted 1st lieutenant on 18 April 1793 but had died – as, it is said, a captain of Marines – by the time his son entered Blundell’s (Pitman, p 45).
William Abraham Keats remained at Blundell’s until the autumn of 1805, when his uncle took him aboard H.M.S. SUPERB as a 1st Class volunteer. The date of his entry into the service of the Royal Navy is variously recorded as both 27 and 30 September 1805; his lieutenant’s passing certificate (Keats family papers) gives the former date but the Memorandum of his services and O’Byrne give the latter (ADM 9/5/1617; O’Byrne p 599). By the end of 1805 Captain Richard Goodwin Keats was to have not one but two proteges on board SUPERB – his own nephew William, and Midshipman Charles Nelson, the distant cousin of Lord Nelson (see footnote to lot 1).
William Keats remained aboard H.M.S. SUPERB for nearly four years, progressing through various rates – volunteer 1st class, boy 2nd class, volunteer 1st class again, midshipman, ordinary seaman and midshipman again – until leaving the ship in either June or November 1809; as before, the records disagree. Throughout this period he was, of course, under the care and ultimate supervision of his uncle, either as captain or as rear admiral, seeing action at St Domingo on 6 February 1806 and in the subsequent operations in the Baltic.
Discharged in 1809 into H.M.S. PUISSANT (74) at Spithead, Keats served in her as a supernumerary until June 1810 before becoming midshipman in H.M.S. MENELAUS (38), which had recently been involved in the suppression of a mutiny in Plymouth by the ship’s company of H.M.S. AFRICAINE. In July 1810 he rejoined his uncle in the Mediterranean and followed him, generally in the rate of midshipman, as Admiral Keats moved his flag from H.M.S. IMPLACABLE (74) to H.M.S. MILFORD (74) and then to H.M.S. HIBERNIA (110) until September 1812, when William Keats transferred as a midshipman to the flagship of Admiral Sir Edward Pellew, H.M.S. CALEDONIA (120).
Passing his examination for lieutenant in August 1813, Keats was commissioned in the sloop H.M.S. PARTRIDGE (18) in the Mediterranean and served aboard her until October 1814 and the conclusion of the war with France. Once more the records disagree about the date of the commencement of his next commission, as flag lieutenant to his uncle aboard H.M.S. SALISBURY (50) on the Newfoundland station, but it was either in March or in May 1815; the commission ceased on 9 December 1815 (ADM 9/5/1617; O’Byrne, p 599). Keats’s next commission was aboard H.M.S. ALBION (74), the flagship at Sheerness, from 10 December 1815 until 16 April 1816. He was promoted commander on 17 April 1816 and was then unemployed for six-and-a-half years before being given command of the brig-sloop H.M.S. CHEROKEE (10), whose station varied between Leith and Cork, on 7 October 1822. Promoted post captain on 27 March 1826, he was not afterwards employed at sea, although he is thought to have held a coastguard appointment at Babbacombe, Devon, in 1833.
Keats married twice. His first wife, Catherine Jane Pitman, died only two months after they were married when she was drowned in a sailing accident off Babbacombe on 8 June 1833. He married his second wife Augusta Maria Lyford on 6 July 1835; their son Rochfort Keats predeceased his father, dying in 1872 aged 35 (Pitman, pp 41-42 & 45). William Abraham Keats lived until the age of 79 and, through his longevity, was promoted on seniority to rear admiral, 1854, vice admiral, 1860, and admiral, 1864. He died on 2 May 1874 at home at Porthill House, Bideford, Devon.