Richard Smith (1735-1811)

Born to parents who were in the service of the royal family, Smith enjoyed a great deal of employment in American and West Indian waters through the Seven Years War and American Revolutionary War. However, he encountered little opportunity to distinguish himself, and he retired from the Navy at the relatively early age of 45.

He was the son of George Smith of Curzon Street, St. George, Hanover Square, who was a gardener at the royal palace, and of his wife Mary Jackson, who was a wet nurse to the future King George III, and also employed as a royal laundress.

After several years’ service in the Honourable East India Company, Smith served aboard the three-deckers Royal George, 100 and Namur 90 during the early years of the Seven Years War.  In the latter ship he was present at the capture of Louisbourg in 1758, and the battles of Lagos Bay and Quiberon Bay in 1759. Commissioned lieutenant in his 25th year on 12 June 1760, he served briefly aboard the Port Mahon 24, (Captain Thomas Lempriere) and Prince Frederick 64 (Captain Jervis Maplesden).

The most astonishing fact of Admiral Smith’s life was the fact that his mother was a wet nurse to the young George III, pictured on the right with his brother and a tutor.

He was further promoted commander in May 1761, joining the unrated sloop Hawk 10 in home waters, initially based at Milford Haven, and later at Liverpool. There in 1762 he married Ann Gordon, the daughter of a prosperous Cheshire family. They had a number of children; one daughter married naval officer George Palmer (later an admiral), and another (the youngest) married Alexander Wilmot Schomberg, who also reached that rank. One of Smith’s sons died in a lunatic asylum and a daughter suffered from mental illness. These unfortunate circumstances caused some contemporary physicians to ridiculously conclude that the ‘madness’ of King George was due to some infection he had received when as an infant he had been suckled by Mary Smith, the afflicted individuals’ grandmother.

Smith was posted captain on 1 November 1762 and briefly commanded the fifth rate Torrington 44, initially serving in the Downs, and then sailing from Portsmouth to Plymouth at the end of January 1763 with money to pay the dockyard workers. With the Seven Years War drawing to a close this vessel was paid off in the Thames on 27 February.

Although the country was at peace, Smith remained employed, and on 18 May 1763 he was appointed to the recommissioned sixth rate Squirrel 20 at Chatham. In August he sailed for North America and then at the end of the year to Jamaica. By the following April his ship was back at North America enforcing customs regulations. A few months later he condemned the authorities at Rhode Island for allowing the local defences to fire on the naval schooner St. John during a dispute over stolen livestock. (He did however order the alleged thieves, members of the vessel’s crew, to be delivered up to the local authorities to face the law.) After returning to England, the Squirrel was paid off in January 1767.

He next recommissioned the Montagu 60 at Plymouth in February 1769. In June his ship hoisted the broad pennant of the newly appointed commander-in-chief of the Leeward Islands, Commodore Robert Man, and transported him to his base at Antigua. The vessel remained on this station for the usual three years before returning home and being paid off in October 1772.

After four years of unemployment, and with the American Revolutionary War gathering pace, Smith recommissioned the frigate Lark 32 in February 1776 at Chatham, where she was being copper sheathed. He took her out to North America in the spring to join the growing naval force attempting to suppress the rebellion; by November the Lark was cruising off Rhode Island. During August 1777 his second lieutenant, William Albany Otway, was captured by the American rebels whilst hunting in the Potomac, although he had returned to his ship by the end of September. The Lark continued to serve in North America until she was beached and set on fire to prevent her capture by the French fleet during operations around Rhode Island in August 1778. Smith was highly regarded by the Americans for his humanity and decency, and when the prominent rebel Ethan Allen was briefly a prisoner aboard the Lark, he was a regular guest at Smith’s table.

Smith was placed on half-pay on 1 July 1779, and he did not see any further service. He became a superannuated captain in 1787, and a superannuated rear-admiral in 1793, reflecting his retirement from the navy. He died on 26 January 1811 in his 76th year, having been a widower for the previous 12 years.

In the early 1770’s he had purchased land and the equipment to run the Seacombe Ferry, crossing the Mersey from Liverpool to the Wirral. This service enabled punters to conveniently access a popular local horse-racing course at Wallasley on the Cheshire side. In 1778 Smith became lord of the manor in nearby Poulton-cum-Seacombe, an estate he had inherited from his father-in-law.