BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF THE LATE THOMAS MACKENZIE, ESQ. REAR-ADMIRAL OF THE BLUE

Summary

—— Your dishonour

Mangles true judgment, and bereaves the state

Of that integrity which should become it;

Not having the power to do the good it would,

For the ill which doth control it.”

——Shakspeare.

THE gentleman whose public services we are now to record, was an instance, among many others, to prove, that fortune does not always favour the brave–that from untoward accidents, or personal enmities, or official indifference to unpresuming merit, it does not always meet its due reward–and that the consciousness of desert in an ingenuous mind serves but to aggravate the mortification of disappointment, and render doubly poignant the sense of its undue neglect.

Mr. Mackenzie was the son of the late Admiral George Mackenzie, who was the much-esteemed friend of the late Admiral Barrington, and was made post captain in command of the Inverness frigate, on the 24th January, 1747. In the year 1752 he commanded the Fowey, of 24 guns. War being recommenced between Great Britain and France, he was, about the year 1757, appointed to command the Sunderland, of 60 guns; from which ship he was removed, in the year 1760, to the command of the Renown, on the West India station, and in the following year to that of the Glasgow, and thence promoted to the command of the Defiance, of 60 guns, in which he distinguished himself under Sir George Pococke, in the memorable expedition against the Havannah, which put into the possession of the captors, in silver and merchandise, three millions sterling, an immense quantity of arms, artillery, and military stores, nine ships of the line, and four frigates.