A three-quarter-length portrait to the left, wearing the robes and Grand Cross of the Order of Bath. He stands in front of a column and in the background to the left a ship denoting his naval career is shown. Keith was born at Stirling and first served in the Navy during the Seven Years War, though only commissioned in 1770. Thereafter he fought with distinction, gaining several important victories both in Europe and elsewhere. He made his name by capturing Charleston, South Carolina, in the spring of 1780 and, still a captain, helped take Toulon in 1793 at the start of the French Revolutionary War. He became a rear-admiral in 1794, took the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch in 1795, Ceylon in 1796 and received a barony in 1797. Keith took part in the British campaigns that drove Napoleon's French forces out of Egypt and was an often disapproving commander-in-chief over Nelson in the Mediterranean at the time of the latter's Neapolitan involvements, after the Battle of the Nile.