Smyth, Sir James Carmichael

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Smyth, Sir James Carmichael

1779-1838

Smyth, Sir James Carmichael-, first baronet (1779–1838), army officer and colonial governor, eldest son of Dr James Carmichael Smyth (1742–1821), and his wife, Mary, daughter of Thomas Holyland of Bromley, was born in London on 22 February 1779. He was educated at Charterhouse School and entered the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, on 1 March 1793.

In the spring of 1825 Wellington, then master-general of the ordnance, selected Carmichael-Smyth to go to Canada. He embarked on 16 April, returned on 7 October, and wrote an able report on the defence of the Canadian frontier, dated 31 March 1826. Meanwhile, on 27 May 1825, he had been promoted major-general, and on 29 July he had become a regimental colonel. On 8 May 1829 Carmichael-Smyth was appointed governor and commander-in-chief of the Bahamas, and before his departure George IV made him a KCH in recognition of his having been placed in command of the Hanoverian engineers in the last campaign in the Netherlands. Carmichael-Smyth died suddenly at Camp House, Georgetown, Demerara, of ‘brain fever’, after four days' illness, on 4 March 1838; he was widely esteemed and his death much regretted.

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