Charles Bethune

Charles Ramsay Drinkwater Bethune CB (27 December 1802 – 14 February 1884) was a British officer of the Royal Navy. He rose to the rank of Admiral during his career.



Early life
Born at Little Ealing, Middlesex, the son of Colonel John Drinkwater and Eleanor Congalton, he assumed the name of Bethune in 1837, when his mother inherited the estates of her brother, George Congalton-Bethune.

Military career
Bethune served with the Royal Navy from the age of 13 and commanded HMS Conway (1832) in Australasia and the Far East from 1836-42. He reported the Conway Reef in 1838. He served in the First Opium War and was appointed a Companion of the Bath in 1841, for his services.

In 1845 he was sent to Borneo by the Admiralty to report on the best location for a British base against piracy. In the course of this mission he painted a number of watercolour views in Sarawak which were published in 1847 in James Augustus St. John's Views in the Eastern Archipelago.

In 1846, he married Frances Cecelia, only child of Henry E. Stables of Park Hill, Clapham, Surrey. In the same year, he joined the Council of the newly formed Hakluyt Society, for which he subsequently edited two volumes. He is buried in Brompton Cemetery, London.