A half-length portrait to the right showing Slade in a blue velvet coat and waistcoat, wearing a tie wig and a white stock. His right hand, with a lace cuff, is tucked into his waistcoat.
Thomas Slade was a shipbuilder and from a well-establish shipbuilding family based in Ipswich and Harwich. He probably began as an apprentice in the Deptford yard in 1718, where his uncle, Benjamin Slade, had just become foreman. He was sent to Harwich as naval overseer for the building of the ‘Harwich’, a fourth rate, in 1742. In 1744, Slade became assistant master shipwright at Woolwich. When his uncle died in 1750, Thomas replaced him at Plymouth, becoming a protégé of George Anson, a lord of the Admiralty. He then moved to Woolwich in 1752, Chatham a little more than a fortnight later and, finally, to Deptford in 1753, where he was ideally positioned to act as Anson’s unofficial adviser. In August 1755 he became joint surveyor of the Navy with William Bately; together they designed a number of ships, making improvements to the lines and training a new generation of shipwrights. Slade’s most famous ship was the 100-gun ‘Victory’, designed in 1758 and launched in 1765. He was knighted on 27 January 1768.