A three-quarter-length portrait to the left showing Pell in his rear-admiral's full dress uniform of the 1847-56 pattern, holding a telescope in the crook of his left arm with his right hand resting on a rocky outcrop; he wears the General Service Medal. A figate, presumably the 'Forte', is in the left background; it flies the standard of the Duchess of Kent, who, with Princess Victoria, visited Eddystone lighthouse in 1833, the year of the ship's commission. The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1850.
Watkin Owen Pell entered the Navy in April 1799 in the ‘Loire’. He lost his left leg on 6 February 1800 during the capture of the French frigate ‘Pallas’. Pell spent two years ashore before returning to the ‘Loire’. After service on a number of ships in home waters and in the West Indies, he was promoted lieutenant in the frigate ‘Mercury’ on 11 November 1806. He distinguished himself in capturing gunboats and small vessels while commanding the boats of the ‘Mercury’ off Spain and Italy. On 1 April 1809 he was badly wounded in the right arm. In August that year the Patriotic Society presented him with £80 to purchase a sword. On 29 October 1810, Pell was promoted commander and was appointed to the bomb-vessel ‘Thunder’ in October 1811, defending Cadiz. On 9 October 1813, while returning to Britain, he engaged and captured the larger privateer ‘Neptune’. He was advanced to post rank on 1 November 1813. Pell commanded the frigate ‘Menai’ between 1814 and 1817, serving off the North American coast. He commissioned the ‘Forte’, 40 guns, in May 1833 and served in her as senior officer on the Jamaica station until March 1837.
He was knighted upon his return home. In 1840 he was appointed to the ‘Howe’. In August 1841 he was appointed superintendent of the Deptford victualling yard, he was then moved to be superintendent of Sheerness Dockyard before, in December of the same year, being moved again to become superintendent of Pembroke Dockyard, where he stayed until February 1845. He was made commissioner at Greenwich Hospital in 1846. Pell became a rear-admiral on 5 September 1848. He declined an active command in 1849 and became vice-admiral on 28 December 1855 and admiral on 11 February 1861. He died in the Queen’s House at Greenwich on 29 December 1869.