BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE ADAM DUNCAN, LORD VISCOUNT DUNCAN, KNIGHT OF THE IMPERIAL RUSSIAN ORDER OF ST. ALEXANDER NEWSKI, AND ADMIRAL OF THE BLUE SQUADRON

Summary

See what a grace was seated on this brow!

Hyperion's curls, the front of Jove himself;

An eye like Mars, to threaten or command;

A station like the herald Mercury,

New lighted on a Heaven-kissing hill;

A combination and a form indeed,

Where every God did seem to set his seal,

To give the world assurance of a Man.

Hamlet.

The family of Lundie, from whence the noble and gallant subject of the present memoirs is sprung, and of which he is at this time the representative, is of very high antiquity: it was originally styled Duncan of Sea-side, and there is a well authenticated heraldic tradition relative to it, which accounts particularly for its crest–a dismasted Ship, now borne over the Arms of Camperdown. A person belonging to the family, who lived about two hundred years since, being supercargo on board a vessel bound from Norway to his native place, Dundee, was overtaken by a tremendous storm, in which the Ship was reduced almost to a complete wreck, and the crew experienced, in consequence of that misfortune, the greatest extremity of hardship and distress. Contrary, however, to all human expectation, the crew were providentially enabled to navigate their crazy crippled vessel safe into port, and the parents of their fortunately rescued son, who, having considered him as lost to them, were in the most disconsolate desponding state, immediately adopted the crest alluded to, in commemoration of the dangers which their heir had escaped from, as well as in grateful acknowledg ment to that Providence which had preserved him.