Dressed to Kill, Dressed to Till
[WAR OF 1812]. British School. Portrait of Commander James Crichton, Royal Navy, c. 1816. Oil on canvas on original stretcher, 40 x 30 inches, within original 19th century gilt compo frame. The career of Royal Navy officer James Augustus Seymour Crichton (1770-1834) typified that of most of his peers. Competent and intelligent, he lacked the patronage and perhaps more important, that essential “luck” that ensured one promotion to post-captain and thence, to flag rank. Born in Tayside, Scotland, he went to sea at an early age and was made a lieutenant in 1799. While serving on the Atlantic station aboard the frigate MELAMPUS in 1807, he met Mary Creighton (1770-1819) of Halifax Nova Scotia, marrying her the following year. Crichton spent most of the War of 1812 on the North American station. Appointed the rank of commander on 12 August 1812, he was given the temporary command of AEOLUS (32 guns) on 10 August 1813, then appointed to command the BUSTARD on 3 September 1813 and finally, to the Sloop-of-war RINGDOVE on 15 November 1814. During Pellew’s naval attack on Algiers in 1816, he commanded a bomb vessel with great distinction. This last action of Crichton’s career is commemorated in the background of his c. 1816 portrait, in which he wears the full dress uniform of a “Master and Commander”, the same as worn by a Post-Captain but without crowns on the epaulettes. After the death of his wife in 1819, he left Nova Scotia and returned to Scotland in retirement, dying in his home town in 1834. Provenance: by descent in family to Oliver W. Crichton of Wilmington, Delaware (d. 2012); acquired in 2013.
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