Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall v4p1.djvu/374

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354
commanders.


BARTHOLOMEW KENT, Esq.
[Commander.]

Eldest son of the late John Kent, Esq., many years a purser in the royal navy, who, in consideration of his loyal services, was, in 1803, appointed by Earl St. Vincent to the civil situation of steward of the royal naval hospital at Plymouth, where he died in 1827.

This officer’s paternal grandfather married the eldest sister of the late Vice-Admiral John Hunter, many years governor of New South Wales; and grand-niece of the Lord Provost Drummond, of Edinburgh. His father’s brothers were, William, captain of the Union 98, who died on board that ship, off the mouth of the Rhone, in Aug. 1812; and Henry, commander of the Dover 44, armed en flûte, who died on the coast of Egypt, in 1801. His maternal uncles were all brought up in the military service, viz. Robert Wright, a colonel of the royal regiment of artillery, who commanded that corps in Scotland, and served as aid-de-camp to the late Duke of Kent, in Nova Scotia and at Gibraltar, died in 1823 or 1824; Peter a captain in the Hon.E.I.C. infantry, died of wounds received in battle at Ceylon; and George, now; colonel of the royal engineers. His surviving brothers, William George Carlile and Henry, are commanders in the royal navy[1]; another, John, late first lieutenant of the Thais frigate, died at Stonehouse, after a lingering illness of fourteen months, occasioned by over-exertion in his professional duties, Jan. 27th, 1816[2]. One of his cousins, Bartholomew Kent, first lieutenant of the Goliath 74, Captain (afterwards Sir Charles) Brisbane, was killed in a boat affair, under the batteries of Sable d’Ollone, in 1803; and another, Lieutenant Mark Kent, R.N., died at sea in 1828.

Mr. Bartholemew Kent, the subject of this memoir, commenced his naval career, at the age of thirteen years, under the auspices of the late Vice-Admiral Sir William Mitchell, and served with that officer and Captains the Hon.

  1. See p. 161.
  2. See Nav. Chron. v. 35, p. 176.