Received from Mrs. Mary Roberts, Daughter of Canon R.W Howard, on 17th July 1990 and typed by Eardley W H Bryan.
 

MAJOR GENERAL SIR THOMAS BLOMEFIELD, Bt., R.A.

Copied from Sketch in "The National Biography."
for Sir Thomas Blomefield, Lichfield.


   Blomefield, Sir Thomas (1744 1822), Baronet, of Attleborough, Norfolk, General and Colonel  Commandant, Royal Artillery, to whose untiring labours as Inspector of Artillery and Superintendent of the Royal Foundries the progress of the British Artillery was largely due, was son of the Rev. Thomas Blomefield, M.A., Rector of Hartley and Chalk, Kent, and Chaplain to the Duke of Dorset, and was born on the 16th of June, 1744.

   He was destined for the Navy, and shipped in the Cambridge, 80 guns, when that vessel was commissioned by his father's intimate friend, Sir Piercy Brett, in September, 1755.  How long he remained afloat does not appear, but on the 9th of February, 1758, he entered as Cadet at Woolwich Royal Military Academy, where his abilities attracted the notice of Muller, then Professor of Fortification and Artillery, whose friendship he retained ever after.

   In the unusually short period of eleven months he passed out as a lieutenant fireworker; and soon after, when only fifteen, was appointed to command a Bomb Ketch, under orders of Admiral Rodney, at the bombardment of Havre, subsequently joining the fleet under Admiral Hawke, engaged in blockading M de Conflans at Quiberon. (The arduous nature of these blockading duties is strikingly brought out in Burrows Life of Admiral Hawke).

   He served next in the West Indies at the capture of Martinique; the Siege and Capture of the Havannah, and afterwards at Pensacola and Mobile.

   In 1771, while a first lieutenant, he became personal Aide de Camp to General Conway, then Master General of the Ordnance, a post in which he was continued by Conway's successor at the Ordnance, Lord Townshend.

     In 1771, Blomefield, who had become a Captain Lieutenant, resigned his appointment as Aide de Camp, and proceeded to America as Brigade Major to Brigadier Phillips, R.A.  Among his services at this period was the construction of floating batteries on the Canadian Lakes; he was also actively engaged with the army under General Burgoyne, until severely wounded by a musket ball in the head, in the action preceding the unfortunate Convention at Saratoga.

     In the spring of 1779 Blomefield resumed his duties of Aide de Camp to the Master General of the Ordnance, and, in the following year attained the rank of Captain, and was appointed Inspector of Artillery and Superintendent of the Royal Brass Foundry.

     Never was the need of military supervision over military manufactures more apparent.  It is recorded that when, in consequence of the complaints of Admiral Barrington, at a most critical period in 1799, the elder Congreve was sent down to inspect the powder on board the King's Ships, only four serviceable barrels were found in the whole Fleet.  The guns were not less inferior in quality; bursting, with attendant loss of life, was of frequent occurrence, and would doubtless have been more frequent but for the roguery of the Powder Contractors.  Attacking these abuses vigorously, Captain Blomefield, in the very first year of his office, condemned no fewer than 496 pieces of Ordnance in proof, and so fully were the advantages of the new rules recognized that, in 1783, a Royal Warrant was issued, reorganizing the whole Department, which was placed under his orders. From this period dates the high character of cast iron and brass guns. Blomefield continued Inspector of Artillery up to his death.  He became a Lieutenant Colonel in 1793, Colonel in 1800, Major General in 1803, and Colonel Commandant of a Battalion in 1806.  In 1807 he was selected to command the Artillery in the Expedition against Copenhagen, a service admitted to have been admirably carried out, although it is now generally lamented that some more justifiable means could not have been found by the Government of the day for attaining the end sought.

     For his share in this duty, Blomefield received the thanks of Parliament, and was created a Baronet.  It is remarked that this was the last occasion on which, in accordance with a long established custom, a claim was lodged by the Commander of the British Artillery on the Church bells of the captured city.  No reply appears to have been given to this application.

     Blomefield, who married a daughter of Chief Justice Eardley Wilmot, by whom he had one child, attained the rank of General in 1821.  He died at his residence on Shooter's Hill, on 24th August 1822.  His professional journals and papers were subsequently presented to the Royal Artillery Institution, Woolwich, by his son, the second Baronet.

     Blomefield was a good mathematician, an excellent chemist, and most laborious in experiments in gunnery.  His private character and the results of his labours were thus described by one who knew him intimately:

     "There was no display of his merit shown in his manner; all his duties and experiments were silently and unassumingly carried on, with a natural reserve and undeviating courtesy, so that it was only a close observer who could duly appreciate his value.  His being generally and greatly esteemed were as much from his being the perfect gentleman as from the ingenuous turn of his mind, for there was no glare or obtrusion seen, but rather a strong desire to improve the Service with as little show as possible.

     The recent Siege of Copenhagen and in the Peninsular, where the mode of battering assumed a rapidity unknown on former occasions, strongly marked the confidence his brother officers had in the weapons placed in their hands, and surprised the enemy, who were known to declare that they could not have put their own Ordnance of the same description to so severe a test.

     The complete success of these objects of his most serious and careful pursuit will be duly appreciated by those capable of judging of their merits.  To such as are not, it may be allowed to suggest that many gallant lives have been saved to their country and their families by the constant and most anxious endeavours he at all times pursued to put safe and perfect machines into the hands of the gallant defenders of His Majesty's Dominions" (Duncan, Hist. R.Art.ii. 159).