Captain Sir Alexander John Ball (1757-1809)<br><p>Ball was one of Nelson's captains at the Battle of the Nile, 1 August 1798, in command of the 'Alexander', in which he had previously earned Nelson's lifelong friendship by rescuing his flagship 'Vanguard' by taking her in tow after she was dismasted in the Gulf of Lyons in May. He afterwards played a key two-year role in the blockade of Malta, previously captured by Napoleon, but when the French capitulated in 1800 it was not to him but newly arrived officers. Aggrieved at not being appointed governor, he left the Island in April 1801 but returned in June 1802 as the minister-plenipotentiary to the order of St John. From 1803 to his death there in 1809 he was the island's civil commissioner and de facto governor. A man of wide humanity and culture, he showed great diplomatic skills in the role, and made significant improvements to the island's infrastructure and governance in various areas. He was widely admired, including by his secretary for a time there, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. On his death there (as a rear-admiral from 1805) he was buried at Fort St Elmo, overlooking the entrance to Grand Harbour and the Maltese willing subscribed to the imposing classical-temple public monument to him which still stands in the Lower Barracca Gardens, Valletta. This portrait shows him in captain's full dress of the 1795 pattern wearing the Neapolitan order of St Ferdinand and of Merit  round his neck and his captain's gold medal for the Nile on his left lapel. The portrait was purchased as by an unidentified Maltese artist from a Major R.W. Bonavia of Harrow, Middlesex, in 1973, but some time apparently shortly afterwards attributed specifically Gaetano Calleja, probably from enquiry on Malta though the evidence for this is not noted on the previous paper record, though the Museum has now (June 2014) heard of another longer version there on which details remain to be clarified. [PvdM 6/14]<br></p>
Captain Sir Alexander John Ball (1757-1809)
<bdi><a href="https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21461628" class="extiw" title="d:Q21461628">Gaetano Calleja</a>
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