Nelson & His World

From the Dictionary of National Biography:

Staines, Sir Thomas (1776–1830), naval officer, was born at Dent de Lion, near Margate in Kent, and entered the navy as a midshipman in December 1789 on the Solebay, serving on the West Indian station until May 1792. In December 1792 he joined the brig Speedy, commanded by Captain Charles Cunningham, with whom he went to the Mediterranean, and whom he followed to the Impérieuse and Lowestoft. When Cunningham was sent home with dispatches Staines was moved to the Victory, Lord Hood's flagship, and was present at the engagement of 13 July 1795; he continued in the Victory under the flag of Sir John Jervis in 1796. As mate of the signals he came under Jervis's eye, and on 3 July 1796 he was promoted lieutenant of the sloop Petrel.

In the Petrel Staines had exciting service. In June 1797 with twenty officers and men in two boats he boarded and captured a French privateer of two long guns and forty-five men, engaging in personal combat with the French commander, who afterwards died of his wounds. The Petrel was captured near Majorca by four Spanish frigates on 12 October 1798. Though she was recaptured the next day Staines and the other officers and men had been removed to a Spanish frigate and were taken to Cartagena. By the end of the year they were exchanged and restored to the Petrel, and Staines continued in her until his exertions to reach Sicily with warning of the arrival of the French Brest fleet brought him to the attention of Nelson, who on 17 October 1799 moved him to his flagship the Foudroyant as third lieutenant. In her he was present at the capture in the following year of the Généreux and Guillaume Tell and, under the flag of Lord Keith, in the operations off the coast of Egypt, during which he acted as the admiral's flag lieutenant. For his services in this campaign he received the Turkish order of the Crescent.

On 15 May 1802 Staines was promoted by Keith to the command of the brig Cameleon (confirmed by the Admiralty on 26 July). Stationed at Malta during the peace, on the renewal of the war in 1803 the Cameleon joined the blockading squadron off Toulon, from which she was detached for cruises along the coast against the enemy's trade. Staines had marked success and captured or destroyed many French coasting vessels and gunboats. On 28 June 1803 Nelson marked his confidence in him by sending him on a spying mission to Barcelona. In September 1804 he was sent up the Adriatic to cruise for three months at his discretion, and was afterwards employed in the protection of the Levant trade until, in September 1805, the Cameleon was sent home and paid off at Portsmouth, where he dined with Nelson on the day before his final departure.

On 22 January 1806 Staines was advanced to post rank, but not until 28 March 1807 was he appointed to the frigate Cyane, which in the following summer was attached to the fleet under Admiral James Gambier during the operations at Copenhagen. In February 1808 the Cyane was sent to the Mediterranean, where she captured several merchant ships off the east coast of Spain, and on 22 May, off Majorca, took a Spanish privateer, the last Spanish warship taken before Spain broke from the French alliance and declared in favour of Ferdinand. For the next year Staines was constantly employed on the south coast of Spain, assisting the patriots and repeatedly engaging with the enemy's batteries and in boat actions.

In May 1809 Staines was sent to the coast of Naples, where on the 17th he captured two martello towers near Cape Circello. In June the Cyane was part of the squadron under Rear-Admiral George Martin which on the 25th captured the islands of Ischia and Procida; on the 26th she was detached, with the brig Espoir and several gunboats, to intercept a large flotilla of French gunboats escorting a convoy making for the Bay of Naples. After a brisk action eighteen gunboats were taken and four destroyed. In the afternoon Staines landed and destroyed a battery of 36-pounders on Cape Miseno. The next day, 27 May, he destroyed another battery at Pozzuoli, and in the evening engaged the French frigate Cérès (42 guns), which, with a corvette and twenty gunboats in company, was endeavouring to get to Naples, while the Espoir and the Sicilian gunboats were becalmed some distance off. The Cyane was much inferior to the Cérès, but the action was continued for more than an hour until, the Cyane's ammunition being exhausted, her rigging cut to pieces, and many men killed and wounded, the Cérès succeeded in getting away with her convoy. Staines himself was severely wounded both in the side and in the left arm, which had to be amputated at the shoulder. In reporting the action of 26 May Martin highly praised Staines's ‘gallantry, judgment, and good conduct’ (Marshall, 90) and on the further report of the action of 27 May Collingwood, the commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean, wrote of Staines's gallantry in a ‘succession of battles’ (ibid., 93). The Cyane was so battered she had to go to England to be refitted.

The Cyane arrived at Portsmouth in mid-October, and on 6 December 1809 Staines was knighted, also receiving permission to wear the order of Ferdinand and Merit conferred by the king of Sicily. Appointed to the Hamadryad (42 guns), for the next two years he was employed in convoy duty to Newfoundland and to St Helena. Early in 1812 he was appointed to the frigate Briton, in which during 1812–13 he cruised, with some success, in the channel and the Bay of Biscay.

On the last day of 1813 Staines sailed with several warships and a large convoy of East Indiamen, from which he parted at Madeira, being sent on to Rio de Janeiro. There he had orders to go on to Valparaíso to join Captain James Hillyar in pursuit of the American frigate Essex; but Hillyar had already captured her, and the Briton, with the Tagus in company, went on to Callao and thence cruised among the islands, looking for an American ship rumoured to have come round Cape Horn. On 28 August 1814 Staines struck the American colours at Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas Islands, and sailing thence for Valparaíso on 17 September accidentally came on Pitcairn Island, then marked on the chart nearly 3 degrees west of its position [see Adams, John (1768?–1829)]. To his surprise he found it inhabited by English-speaking people, descendants of the Bounty mutineers. The island had been previously visited by an American merchant ship, but the news does not seem to have reached England and the first information was sent home by Staines, who rightly judged that the lapse of years and the care given to the education of the young people there might be held as condoning Adams's original offence. The Briton remained at Valparaíso and the neighbourhood until April 1815, when she returned to Rio de Janeiro and England, and Staines learned that on 2 January 1815 he had been nominated KCB. He married, in May 1819, Sarah, youngest daughter of Robert Tournay Bargrave of Eastry Court, Kent.

From 1823 to 1825 Staines commanded the Superbe in the West Indies and at Lisbon, and from 1827 to 1830 the Isis in the Mediterranean. In the Greek crisis of 1827–8 he was sent by Sir Edward Codrington to suppress the pirate stronghold of Carabusa, which he achieved in February 1828.

For the loss of his arm Staines received a pension of £300. His statement of his services, dated at Margate on 10 January 1818, is accompanied by a medical certificate that ‘he is incapable, from wounds in his arm, of writing his name’. He had been barely a fortnight back in England after his return from the Mediterranean when he died at his residence, Dent de Lion, on 13 July 1830.

J. K. Laughton, rev. Michael Duffy

I shall add my two-pennyworth to the mystery word, this being 'excepcions'