tive of the Action between the Northumberland and three French Men of War … By an Eye-Witness). ‘We bore down on them,’ says the eye-witness, ‘so precipitately that our small sails were not stowed nor top-gallant sails furled before the enemy began to fire on us, and at the same time had the cabins to clear away; the hammocks were not stowed as they should be; in short, we had nothing in order as we should before action.’ About five o'clock the Northumberland closed with the Content and received her fire, but, without replying to it, ran down to the Mars. The Content followed, so did the frigate. The Northumberland was a target for the three of them. The men at the wheel were killed, and nobody thought of sending others to take their place. The captain was mad-drunk, the master a shivering coward, and the lieutenants unable or unwilling to take the command. The captain was mortally wounded; and before the first lieutenant could get on deck, the master struck the colours, and the ship was taken possession of. Watson died in France on 4 June 1744. The master, tried by court-martial on 1 Feb. 1745, was sentenced to be imprisoned in the Marshalsea for life; he was spared the capital punishment on the ground that he had given good advice to his captain before the action.
[Charnock's Biogr. Nav. iv. 370; Gent. Mag. 1745, p. 106; True and Authentick Narrative, 1745; Commission and Warrant Books and Minutes of the Court-martial in the Public Record Office.]
WATSON, THOMAS (1743–1781), engraver, was born in London in 1743, and articled to an engraver on plate. He executed some good stipple prints, which include portraits of Mrs. Sheridan as St. Cecilia, and Elizabeth Beauclerk as Una, both after Reynolds, and portraits of Mrs. Crewe and Mrs. Wilbraham, after Daniel Gardner; but he specially excelled in mezzotint, working from pictures by Reynolds, Dance, West, Gardner, Willison, Rembrandt, Correggio, and others. His portraits, after Reynolds, of Lady Bampfylde, Lady Melbourne, Mrs. Crewe as St. Geneviève, Lady Townshend and her sisters, and the ‘Strawberry Girl,’ are brilliant examples of the art, and proofs of them are now greatly prized. He also executed a set of six fine plates of Lely's ‘Windsor Beauties,’ now at Hampton Court. Watson for a time carried on business as a printseller in New Bond Street, and in 1778 entered into partnership with William Dickinson (1746–1823) [q. v.] He died and was buried at Bristol in 1781.
[J. Chaloner Smith's British Mezzotinto Portraits; Le Blanc's Manuel de l'Amateur d'Estampes; Thomas Watson, James Watson, and Elizabeth Judkins, by Gordon Goodwin, 1904.]
WATSON, Sir THOMAS (1792–1882), first baronet, physician, eldest son of Joseph Watson of Thorpe-le-Soken, Essex, and his wife Mary, daughter of Thomas Catton, was born at Montrath, near Cullompton in Devonshire, on 7 March 1792. He was educated at the grammar school of Bury St. Edmunds, where Charles James Blomfield [q. v.], afterwards bishop of London, was his contemporary; they continued friends throughout life. Watson entered St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1811, and graduated B.A. as tenth wrangler in 1815. He was elected a fellow in 1816, and in 1818 graduated M.A. He studied medicine at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, where he attended the lectures of John Abernethy [q. v.], in 1819. After spending one session at Edinburgh, he again resided at Cambridge, obtained the university license in medicine in 1822, was junior proctor in 1823–4, and graduated M.D. in 1825 (Graduati Cantabr. p. 549). In the same year, on 15 Sept., he married Sarah, daughter of Edward Jones of Brackley, Northamptonshire, and took a house in London. He was elected a fellow of the College of Physicians in 1826, and in May 1827 physician to the Middlesex Hospital, which was then connected with University College. He was professor of clinical medicine, and lectured from 1828 to 1831. In 1831 he became lecturer on forensic medicine at King's College, London, and in 1835 professor of medicine, an office which he held till 1840. He continued to be physician to the Middlesex Hospital till 1843. In that year he published his famous ‘Lectures on the Principles and Practice of Physic,’ which had first been printed in the ‘Medical Times and Gazette.’ The author corrected five editions, and it continued for thirty years the chief English text-book of medicine. It contains no discoveries, but is based upon sound clinical observations, gives a complete view of English medicine of its period, and is remarkable for its good literary style. At the College of Physicians he gave the Gulstonian lectures in 1827, the Lumleian lectures on hæmorrhage in 1831, and was a censor in 1828, 1837, and 1838. In 1862 he was elected president, and was re-elected for five successive years. He was elected F.R.S. in 1859, and in 1864 was made an honorary LL.D. at Cambridge. In 1857 he became president of the Pathological Society, and in 1868 of the Clinical Society. His practice as a physician was large, and in 1859 he was appointed
