page_title: Charles Adam
section_title: Naval career
hierarchical_section_title: Charles Adam / Naval career
caption_attribution_description: English: Capture of HMS Sybille capturing the Chiffone
context_page_description: Admiral Sir Charles Adam, FRSE KCB was a British naval officer who served during the Napoleonic Wars. He later commanded the royal yacht, Royal Sovereign, and was the Member of Parliament for Clackmannanshire and Kinross-shire. He held the office of First Naval Lord three times. In that capacity he dealt ably with the economies of a peacetime budget, provided naval support for the expulsion of Muhammad Ali's forces from Syria in 1840 and ensured technological progress continued. He was also the father of William Patrick Adam, a colonial administrator and Liberal politician.
context_section_description: Born the second son of William Adam (of Blair Adam) and Eleanora Adam (the daughter of Charles Elphinstone, 10th Lord Elphinstone), Adam joined the Royal Navy in 1790. He served under his uncle, Admiral Lord Keith, in the Mediterranean Fleet and during the capture of the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch. He was made acting lieutenant by Keith in the third-rate HMS Victorious on the East Indies Station in 1795. Promoted to the substantive rank of lieutenant on 8 February 1798, to commander on 16 May 1798 and to captain on 12 June 1799, Adam was given command of the frigate Sybille. While commanding Sybille, he captured the French Chiffonne under difficult circumstances at Mahé in the Seychelles.
  Adam returned from the East Indies in 1802, and on 23 May 1803, was given command of the captured Chiffonne, which operated in the North Sea under Lord Keith until 1805. He commanded the fifth-rate Resistance from 27 August 1805 until 6 April 1810, and from 1811 until 1813, operated off the coast of Spain in command of the third-rate Invincible. He briefly commanded the second-rate Impregnable from 16 May 1814 to 29 June 1814, ending his active service.
caption: The frigate Sybille which Adam commanded
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