Our officer’s next appointment appears to have been to the Theseus, of 74 guns, on the Mediterranean station. From that ship he removed into the Captain, of the same force, and returned to England. In 1798, we find him serving with the Channel Fleet. He was subsequently nominated to the superintendance of a district of Sea-Fencibles; and, previous to the treaty of Amiens, commanded the Dragon, a 74-gun ship, in the Mediterranean, where he was employed in a variety of services, under the immediate orders of Sir John B. Warren; and soon after the renewal of the war, captured la Colombe, French corvette, of 16 guns.
His promotions as a Flag-officer, bear date as follow; Rear-Admiral, April 23, 1804; Vice-Admiral, April 28, 1808; and Admiral, June 4, 1814. He married, in Nov. 1809, Frances, youngest daughter of the Rev. T. H. Pearson, of Queen’s Camel, Somersetshire.
JOHN CHILD PURVIS, Esq
Admiral of the Blue.
This officer is descended from a very respectable family in the county of Norfolk. His grandfather, George Purvis, was an old Post-Captain, and, at the time of his demise, one of the Commissioners of the Navy Board. Of the period of his birth, or of his entering the service, we are not in possession; but at the commencement of the war with France, in 1778[1], we find him serving on the American station, as a
- ↑ On the 6th Feb. 1778, the definitive articles of a treaty of alliance between France and the American colonists were signed at Paris, by which the absolute sovereignty and independence of the Thirteen United States of America were unequivocally recognized; and on the 13th March, the French Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s delivered in a declaration from his Cabinet, in which the independence proclaimed by the Americans in July 1776, was stated as a justification to France for beginning to form a connexion with the new Republic, and for consolidating it by a treaty of friendship and commerce. A desire was professed of cultivating a good understanding with Great Britain; but it was also intimated, that the French Monarch having determined to protect the lawful commerce of his
