DUNDAS, Sir David, a British officer, who was born near Edinburgh about the year 1735. He belonged to the family of Dundas of Dundas, the head of the name in Scotland. He was at first intended for the medical profession; but in 1752 he entered the army under the auspices of his uncle, General Watson. He was appointed a lieutenant in 1756. Three years later, he acted as aid-de-camp in Germany to Colonel Elliot, afterwards Lord Heathfield; and in 1762 he accompanied that gallant officer in the expedition against the Spanish colonies in the West Indies. In 1770 Dundas was promoted to the majority of the fifteenth dragoons. He was soon after appointed lieutenant-colonel of the second regiment of horse and quarter-master-general in Ireland. In 1781 he obtained the rank of colonel. He attended the grand review of the whole military force of Prussia, held at Potsdam in 1783 by Frederick the Great, and there laid the foundation of that system of tactics which he afterwards embodied in his work published in 1788, and entitled "Principles of Military Movements chiefly applicable to Infantry." George III., to whom this work was dedicated, expressed his approbation of it, and in June, 1792, ordered its regulations to be adopted by the army. "The Rules and Regulations for the Cavalry" were also drawn up by General Dundas. This system of military tactics had considerable reputation in its day, but has long ago been exploded. Sir Walter Scott terms it a "confused hash of regulations, which, for the matter of principle, might be reduced to a dozen," and relates old Sir William Erskine's speech to General Dundas, when all was in utter confusion at the retreat from before Dunkirk, and Sir William came down to protect the rear. In passing Sir David, the tough old veteran exclaimed, "Davie, ye donnert idiot, where's a' your peevioys (pivots) the day." In 1793 General Dundas commanded a body of troops at Toulon. Soon after his return to England, he was sent to Holland to serve under the duke of York, and greatly distinguished himself in the brilliant action of the 10th of May at Tournay, and at the capture of Tuyt. When the British army were obliged to evacuate Holland, the command devolved upon him, on the return of General Harcourt to England; and after wintering at Bremen he brought home the remnant of the forces in the spring of 1795. Sir David took part in the still more unfortunate expedition to Holland in 1799 under the duke of York, and distinguished himself in various actions, particularly at Bergen and Alkmaar. He was successively governor of Languard Fort, and of Forts George and Augustus, and was for some time quarter-master-general of the British army. In 1803 he received the order of the bath, and in 1804 was appointed governor of Chelsea hospital. In 1809 he succeeded the duke of York as commander-in-chief, and was made a privy councillor. He held in succession the colonelcy of several regiments, the last of these being the first dragoon guards. Sir David died in 1820.—J. T.
DUNDAS, Sir James Whitley Deans, G.C.B., English admiral, was a son of the late James Deans, Esq., M.D., of Calcutta; his mother was a daughter of T. Dundas, Esq., M.P., of Fingask, whose name he eventually assumed. He was born in Scotland in 1785, and was educated at the high school of Edinburgh. He entered the royal navy in 1799, on board the Kent, 74, Captain W. J. Hope, bearing the flags, in succession, of Lord Duncan and Sir R. Bickerton. He took part in the expedition to Holland in that year, and in that to Egypt and Alexandria in 1800. Having seen some active service in the Mediterranean, he became lieutenant in 1805, and served on the North American station. In 1806-7 we find him in attendance on the ambassador to the king of Sweden, pending the siege of Stralsund, and injured on that occasion by the bursting of a shell at Copenhagen, just after the surrender of that city to Lords Cathcart and Gambier. Having obtained post rank in 1807, and after passing through the immediate grades of promotion and serving on various stations, he went on half-pay in November, 1841, immediately on obtaining his promotion to flag-rank. He was one of the naval aides-de-camp to King William IV., and acted as one of the lords of the admiralty under the whig administration in 1841, and from 1846 to 1852, when he was appointed to the command of the Mediterranean fleet. His services there and before Sebastopol were ably seconded by the late Lord Lyons; but ill health forced him to give up his command, and on his retirement at the beginning of 1855 he was created a grand cross of the bath: he also received the grand cross of the legion of honour from the emperor of the French in 1857, and in the same year became a full admiral. Sir J. W. Deans Dundas sat as M.P. for Devizes, in the liberal interest, from 1836 to 1837, and for Greenwich from 1832 to the close of 1834, and from 1841 to 1852. He was a magistrate and deputy-lieutenant for Berkshire. He married firstly, in 1708, his cousin, the only daughter and heir of Charles, late Lord Amesbury; and secondly, in 1847, a daughter of the late Earl Ducie. He died on the 3rd of October, 1862.—E. W.
DUNDAS, The Hon. Sir Richard Saunders, K.C.B., is the second son of the late Viscount Melville, many years first lord of the admiralty, by Anne, daughter and coheir of R. H. Saunders, Esq., M.D. He was born in 1802, and, having received his education at Harrow, and at the royal naval college, he embarked in 1817 as a volunteer on board the Ganymede, in which ship he served in the Mediterranean and South American stations. He became lieutenant in 1821, and two years later was advanced to the command of the Sparrowhawk, and was posted in July, 1824. In 1827 he circumnavigated the globe in the Warspite, 76, the first vessel of that class which ever accomplished that feat. He first saw active service in China in 1841, where he obtained the thanks of Sir Gordon Bremer for his conduct at the capture of Ty-cock-tow, and subsequently bore a gallant part in the action which preceded the capture of the forts at the Boca Tigris. He was nominated a C.B. for his services in China. From January, 1845, to January, 1846, he was private secretary to the late earl of Haddington, then first lord of the admiralty. In 1851-52 he acted as superintendent of the dockyard at Deptford, and as a lord of the admiralty from December, 1852, to February, 1855, when he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Baltic fleet, in which capacity he was intrusted with the superintendence of the operations off Sveaborg, at Bomarsund, &c. He was made a K.C.B. at the close of the Russian war in 1856 for his Baltic services, and, at the same time, created an honorary D.C.L. of Oxford. In 1857 he was again appointed a lord of the admiralty. He became a rear-admiral of the red in 1857. Sir Richard is unmarried, and is heir-presumptive to his elder brother's title.—E. W.
DUNDAS. See Melville.
DUNDONALD, Thomas Cochrane, tenth earl of, better known as Lord Cochrane, eldest son of Archibald Cochrane, was born 14th December, 1775. At an early age he entered the naval service under the auspices of his uncle. Admiral Cochrane, and acquired a world-wide celebrity by his gallant naval exploits, only a few of which our space will permit us to enumerate. In 1801, in the sloop Speedy, of fourteen guns and fifty-four men, he carried by boarding, off Barcelona, the Spanish frigate El Gamo, of thirty-two guns and three hundred and nineteen men, fitted out expressly and avowedly for his capture. In 1808, with only fifty seamen, thirty marines, and eighty Spaniards, he held out for a fortnight Fort Trinidad against a combined French and Italian force amounting to several thousand men, inflicting upon them a very severe loss, while only three of his own men were killed and seven wounded. Again in 1809 he attacked the French fleet in the Basque Roads, bursting the boom with which they were defended by help of a fire-ship which he piloted himself, at the imminent risk of his life, and driving them ashore in helpless confusion—one of the most daring and successful exploits in the naval history of Great Britain, and effected, like all his lordship's other successes, with exceedingly trifling loss of life; for with all his spirit of adventure, no officer was ever more chary than Lord Cochrane of the lives of his men.
Lord Cochrane had previously been elected member of parliament for Westminster, and on his return to England after these brilliant exploits, he took an active part in opposition to Lord Castlereagh and the government of the day, and made himself prominent as a naval reformer, though he must have been well aware that such a position at that time involved professional martyrdom. He unfortunately became involved in some speculations in the funds, and, along with two persons named Beranger and Butt, was brought to trial on a charge of conspiracy to defraud the members of the stock exchange by circulating a false report of the death of Napoleon. They were all found guilty, and Lord Cochrane was sentenced to imprisonment, a heavy fine, and exposure in the pillory. The trial was very unfairly conducted by Lord Ellenborough, the presiding judge, and a violent political partisan. Public opinion ran strongly in
