Frederick Thackeray

General Frederick Rennell Thackeray (1775 – 19 September 1860) was a senior British Army officer. Early life Thackeray was born in Windsor, Berkshire, a younger son of physician Dr Frederick Thackeray, and a grandson of Thomas Thackeray, headmaster of Harrow School. His first cousin once removed was the writer William Makepeace Thackeray. Military career He entered the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich and became a second lieutenant in the Royal Artillery in 1793 but transferred to the Royal Engineers the following year. He served from 1793 at Gibraltar, where he was promoted first lieutenant in 1796, and then transferred to the West Indies in 1797. He took part, on 20 August 1799, in the capture of Surinam under Sir Thomas Trigge. In 1801 he was aide-de-camp to Trigge at the capture of the Swedish West India island of St. Bartholomew, the Dutch island of St. Martin and the Danish islands of St. Thomas and St. John. In 1807, now a captain, he was sent to Sicily, from where he proceeded to Egypt with the expedition under Major-General Alexander Mackenzie Fraser, returning to Sicily in September. In 1809 Thackeray was the commanding Royal Engineer with a force under Lieutenant-Colonel Haviland Smith, and was detached by Lieutenant-General Sir John Stuart to make an attack on the castle of Scylla, which Thackeray directed with such skill that although his siege was raised by a superior French force, the castle had by then become untenable and had to be blown up.