A Naval Biographical Dictionary/Thompson, Thomas Sparke
THOMPSON. (Captain, 1846.)
Thomas Sparke Thompson, born 28 March, 1798, is son of the late Henry Thompson, Esq., a Captain in the Staff Corps, and subsequently Collector of H.M. Customs in the island of St. Thomas.
This officer entered the Navy, 25 Sept. 1810, as Sec.-cl. Vol., on board the Galatea 36, Capt. Woodley Losack; and on 20 May, 1811, was present off Madagascar in the frigate-action noticed in our memoir of Commander Thos. Bevis. After assisting at the blockade of Cherbourg he removed, as Midshipman, in 1813, to the Akbar 50, Capts. Sir Archibald Collingwood Dickson and Chas. Sullen; under whom he was for about four years employed on the Brazilian, North American, and Home stations. He served subsequently in the East Indies, again on the coast of North America, in the Channel and West Indies, and on the coast of Africa, as Midshipman and Master’s Mate, in the Phaeton 46, Capts. Wm. Henry Dillon, Wm. Augustus Montagu, and Henry Evelyn Bitfield Sturt, and Maidstone 42, Commodore Chas. Bullen. While on the African station (where he was promoted by the officer last mentioned to the post of First-Lieutenant in the Victor sloop, Capt. Geo. Woollcombe) he saw much boat-service up the different rivers. On one occasion he had an officer (an Assistant-Surgeon) and 10 men drowned among the rollers at the entrance of the Bonny. An attack of fever, caught in the Bight of Benin, led to his being sent home as unfit for further duty. Before he joined the Galatea, he held the appointment of Junior-Lieutenant in the Spartiate 76, Capt. Fred. Warren, at Portsmouth; and while attached to the Royal Charlotte, of which vessel he was for some time First-Lieutenant, he had command of her tenders the Tiger and Quail. During the period he served in the Comus, Capt. Thompson had charge of the blockade of Maldonado and other ports, and also of the Buenos Ayrean squadron. In Oct. 1845 he was ordered to act as Captain in the Curaçoa 24; in which ship we find him conducting the blockade of Buenos Ayres. On his return to the Comus he was employed as Senior officer in the Parana and Uruguay, and in co-operating in different ways with the French squadron. He brought away, we may add, the distressed English and Europeans from Mercedes, in the Rio Negro.
Capt. Thompson married, 26 Oct. 1830, Henrietta, second daughter of the late Geo. Norman, Esq., of Bromley Common, Kent, by whom he has issue four children.