Overall: 58cm (23in) 50x cm (20in)
Oil on canvas. Head and shoulders portrait identified as Captain Wood wearing the 1767 full dress pattern uniform for captains, with turn back lapels, gold lace, brass buttons and breeches. Canvas: 41cm x 33cm. Circle of Dominic Serres (1722-1793). Framed and glazed.
Captain Charles Wood RN (1731-1782) was the fourth and youngest son of a lord-lieutenant of Yorkshire, Francis Wood and of his wife, Mary Dorothy Palmer. He was commissioned lieutenant on 15 October 1756 but had to wait another twenty-three years for further advancement, being promoted Commander of the bomb vessel Terror on 4 June 1779. Serving initially in the Channel, he then joined Commodore George Johnstone’s squadron which departed in March 1781 in its unsuccessful expedition to capture the Cape. During the poorly managed Battle of Porto Praya on 16 April he distinguished himself by putting up a particularly determined defence to save his vessel from capture, and then he briefly commanded the storeship San Carlos, 22-guns in Johnstone’s squadron.
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In 1781 he was posted captain of the Hero, 74-guns, in succession to the sickly Captain James Hawker who returned home, and sailing on to the East Indies he fought at the Battles of Sadras on 17 February 1782 where his ship suffered casualties of nine men killed and seventeen wounded, and Providien on 12 April, where his ship received the Monmouth in tow and suffered casualties of two men killed and nineteen wounded. He then removed to the Worcester 64 in succession to Captain George Talbot who had been relieved of the command, and after commanding her at the Battle of Negapatam on 6 July where he lost one man killed and nine wounded he was mortally wounded at the Battle of Trincomalee on 3 September and died of wounds on 9 October.
In 1770 Wood married Caroline Barker of Otley in Yorkshire and had issue three daughters and two sons, one of whom, Henry, became a major, and the other, Francis, inherited an uncle’s baronetcy. His grandson, Sir Charles Wood, became Lord Halifax in 1866, having served as a Whig Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1846-52. Lord Halifax, onetime Viceroy of India and British Foreign Secretary in 1940, was thus his great great grandson. His residence was Bowling Hall, Bradford.