MEN OF THE DAY. No. 217.

VICE-ADMIRAL SIR REGINALD JOHN MACDONALD, K.C.S.I.

BLUE blood has flowed for sixty years in the veins of Rim. He is the son of Reginald George Macdonald of Clanranald, is descended in a direct line from the King of the Isles, and is himself the nineteenth chief of Clanranald. His mother was a daughter of Lord Mount-Edgcumbe, and he went into the Navy at thirteen. He was soon found to be a discreet yet daring officer, a correct yet self-respecting subordinate, who might always be counted on to do his duty valiantly against an enemy and to hold his own even against an Admiral.

In 1852 Rim got up an Ashanti war of his own, and for three years he was fighting on the West Coast of Africa with a diminished squadron and such allies as he could muster among the natives. His difficulties were enormous, for he had to face not only the enemy, but the fevers, the swamps, and the climate of the country; yet his deeds were of the most valiant and brilliant kind. But this was before African warfare had become fashionable, and from that day to this he and his sailors have gone without even the meanest of those rewards which were subsequently so plentifully showered upon the soldiers who had the next brush on the same coast. In 1875, having then become a Rear-Admiral, he was appointed commander-in-chief on the East Indian station, and in 1877 he was invested with the Star of India and the handle to his name thereto appertaining, and was made a Vice-Admiral and commander-in-chief at Sheerness.

It is sometimes supposed that Rim is identical with Sir Reginald John Macdonald; but nobody knows this of a certainty, for nobody knows him otherwise than as Rim. As Rim he has long been one of the most popular men in all England. He is cheery and full of fun and good stories, yet he is a great stickler for the precise performance of duties; he is much admired and liked at Court, yet he is no courtier; he is an excellent sailor-man, yet there is no landsman or woman to whom he is not sympathetic or to whom he does not appear as the model of what a proper man should be.

MEN OF THE DAY. No. 217.

BLUE blood has flowed for sixty years in the veins of Rim. He is the son of Reginald George Macdonald of Clanranald, is descended in a direct line from the King of the Isles, and is himself the nineteenth chief of Clanranald. His mother was a daughter of Lord Mount-Edgecumbe, and he went into the Navy at thirteen. He was soon found to be a discreet yet daring officer, a correct yet self-respecting subordinate, who might always be counted on to do his duty valiantly against an enemy and to hold his own even against an Admiral,

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(These charts are for monitor calibration only)

Yale Center for British Art, 2013