Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol II (1901).djvu/53

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Cole
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Cole

the 30th at Prince of Wales Island, where he conceived a project of extraordinary daring the capture of Neira, the chief of the Banda Islands. He had on board a hundred officers and men of the Madras European regiment, who were destined to relieve the Amboyna garrison, and he obtained from the Penang government twenty artillerymen, two field-pieces, and twenty scaling ladders. He arrived off Neira on 9 Aug., but owing to unfavourable weather he was compelled to make the attempt with less than two hundred men. The Dutch had a garrison of nearly seven hundred regular troops, besides militia; but, undeterred, Cole landed under cover of the tempest, stormed a ten-gun battery, and carried by escalade the citadel Belgica. which was considered impregnable. The town and the rest of the garrison surrendered on the following morning. On his return to India Cole received the thanks of the governor-general in council, the commander-in-chief, and the lords of the admiralty. He was awarded a medal by the admiralty, and his action was the subject of a public order from the governor-general to the three presidencies. In the House of Commons Spencer Perceval [q. v.] described the enterprise as ' an exploit to be classed with the boldest darings in the days of chivalry.'

In 1811 Cole joined Drury on the Malabar coast, where an expedition against Java was being prepared. On the death of Drury, Cole was left in command for some months until the arrival of Captain William Robert Broughton [q. v.] The expedition sailed in June, and on its arrival at Java Cole again distinguished himself by promptly landing troops on his own responsibility before the enemy was prepared to receive them, and thus avoiding considerable loss. In 1812 the Caroline was paid off, and on 29 May Cole was knighted and presented with a sword by his crew. On 10 June he received the honorary degree of D.C.L. from the university of Oxford, and subsequently was presented with a piece of plate of the value of three hundred guineas by the East India Company.

Early in 1813 he was appointed to the Rippon, a new vessel of 74 guns. He continued cruising in the Channel until the end of 1814, when he was put out of commission. On 2 Jan. 1815 he was nominated K.C.B., and on Dec. 1817 he was returned to parliament for Glamorganshire. He did not sit in the parliament which met in 1818, but he was again returned on 16 March 1820, and retained the seat until 1830. In 1828 he was appointed to command the yacht Royal Sovereign, and in 1830 he was nominated colonel of marines. He died at Killoy, near Cardiff, on 24 Aug. 1836. On 28 April 1815 he married Mary Lucy (d. 3 Feb. 1855), daughter of Henry Thomas Fox-Strangways, second earl of Ilchester, and widow of Thomas Mansel Talbot of Margam Park, Glamorganshire. He was a knight of the Austrian order of Maria Theresa, and of the Russian order of St. George.

[Marshall's Naval Biogr. 1824, ii. 501-17; Gent. Mag. 1811 ii. 165-6, 1836 ii. 543-4; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1715-1886; Osier's Life of Lord Exmouth, 1835, pp. 226, 230, 407-12; Kaye's Life of Malcolm, 1856, i. 417; James's Naval Biogr. 1886, pp. 194-202; Boase and Courtney's Bibliotheca Cornub.; Official Returns of Members of Parliament.]

E. I. C.

COLE, GEORGE VICAT (1833–1893), landscape painter, the eldest son of George Cole [q. v.] by his marriage with Eliza Vicat, was born at Portsmouth on 17 April 1833. He was taught by his father, and studied, as a boy, the works of Turner, Cox, and Constable. He exhibited his first pictures, views in Surrey and on the river Wye, at the British Institution and the Suffolk Street Galleries in 1852. In 1853, after a tour abroad with his father, he exhibited 'Marienburg on the Moselle' and 'Ranmore Common, Surrey,' at the Royal Academy. For a few years, after a temporary separation from his father, he lived in London and gave drawing-lessons. He gained little by his pictures, and was often in straits. He made his name in 1861 by 'A Surrey Cornfield,' a view near Leith Hill, Surrey, exhibited at the Suffolk Street Gallery, for which he obtained the silver medal of the Society of Arts. He continued for years to spend his summers at Abinger or Albury, and to exhibit pictures of meadows and cornfields among the Surrey hills, with such titles as 'Spring,' 'The Harvest' (a water-colour), and 'Summer Rain.' He was the most popular landscape painter of the time, though he ranked in the opinion of good judges, then as now, much below John Linnell [q. v.], with whom he has often been compared. From 1863 to 1867 he lived on Holmbury Hill, Surrey, but in 1868 he removed to 8 Victoria Road, Kensington, which was his home till 1874. In 1864 he withdrew from the Society of British Artists to become a candidate for academic honours. He was elected an associate of the Royal Academy on 25 Feb. 1870, and an academician on 16 June 1880. After 1870 he varied his Surrey views with pictures of the river Arun ('The Day's Decline,' 1876, 'Arundel,' 1877), and of the Thames valley, such as