Talavera Vernon Anson

Admiral Talavera Vernon Anson (26 November 1809 – 8 September 1895) was a Royal Navy officer who took part in the Greek War of Independence and the First Opium War.

Born in 1809, Anson was the second son of General Sir George Anson by his marriage to Frances Hamilton. A few months before his birth, his father had commanded a brigade at the Battle of Talavera. His uncles included Thomas Anson, 1st Viscount Anson, and General Sir William Anson. He had a sister, Mary Anne, who later married firstly Charles Gregory Okeover and secondly Robert Plumer Ward, a novelist. His younger brother Thomas Anchitel Anson (1818–1899) became a clergyman of the Church of England and a first class cricketer.

Anson joined the Royal Navy on 16 June 1824, when he went aboard HMS Britomart, then under the command of his second cousin Captain Octavius Venables Vernon. He stayed with Vernon in Primrose, and went on to serve as a junior officer in Rattlesnake and Belvidera on the West India and Mediterranean stations. In his book The Navy in Transition, 1814–1864, Michael Lewis mentions Talavera Vernon Anson as "a peculiarly well-placed young man" and comments "What a name for an ambitious young officer in the first half of the nineteenth century!"

From 1827 to 1829 Anson kept the log of Rattlesnake, which for most of that time was cruising off the coasts of Greece, under the command of Charles Orlando Bridgeman, during the Greek War of Independence.

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