A half-length portrait, very slightly to the left, showing Dixon in his vice-admiral’s uniform, 1812–25 pattern, wearing the star and neck decoration of a KCB. Manley Dixon saw active service in the Royal Navy during the American War of Independence and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. He was promoted lieutenant on 7 September 1777 and commander on 15 August 1780. He gained his first independent command in the sloop ‘Jamaica’ in 1782. He saw little service during the decade of peace between 1783 and 1793, but was promoted captain on 22 November 1790. Upon the outbreak of war with France, he took command of the sixth rate ‘Porcupine’ off the coast of Ireland and then, in 1795, the frigate ‘Espion’ in the Channel Fleet. In 1798, he was advanced to the 64-gun ‘Lion’, part of St Vincent’s fleet based in the Tagus. Dixon was involved in the blockade of Cartagena and, in an action on 15 July that year, he captured the Spanish frigate ‘Santa Dorothea’. Still in the ‘Lion’, he then took part in the blockade of Malta, capturing the French ship of the line ‘Guillaume Tell’ in March 1800. He left the Mediterranean with the Peace of Amiens in August 1802. The resumption of war in 1803 saw Dixon in command of the 74-gun ‘Sceptre’ and then the ‘Queen’. On 28 April 1808 he was promoted rear-admiral with his flag in the ‘Temeraire’ in the Baltic. In 1812, he was transferred to the Brazilian station in the ‘Montagu’, being promoted vice-admiral on 4 December 1813. At the end of hostilities he returned home in the ‘Valiant’. He was made a KCB in August 1819 and appointed admiral on 27 May 1825. He saw no further service at sea, but was commander-in-chief at Plymouth from 1830 until 1833. Dixon was joint owner in right of his deceased wife, Christiana Sophia Dixon (née Hall), of the Hall’s Prospect estate on Jamaica and the enslaved people on it. In 1834, he (or conceivably his son Manley Hall Dixon) and his sister-in-law Elizabeth Mary Hall were awarded £543 8s 3d as compensation from the UK government's Slave Compensation Commission (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/46332).