(Updated, March 2023) Oval miniature in watercolour on card in an oval gilt presentation frame. The sitter is a fairly young man, shown head and shoulders turned to his right against a light sky background, but facing out to the viewer, with only the left shoulder visible. He has short fair/ greying hair with the ribbon of a queue visible, and hazel eyes, and wears a blue coat with black buttons and similarly dark braiding round the buttonholes, a frilled shirt and a black stock. This miniature was acquired as by Roch in October 1935 via Spink's, from a member of the Fellowes family. In April 1936 Sir James Caird bought an oil painting from him, also via Spink's, of Rear-Admiral Sir Thomas Fellowes (1778-1853) who was William Dorset's youngest brother: this is no. 584 in the Caird Catalogue (vol. 1, Supplement, p. 62) and now NMM BHC2687.

William Dorset was the second surviving son of five among the twelve children (of whom seven survived infancy) of Dr William Fellowes of Clevedon, Somerset (1738-1827). His father was originally a military surgeon and Physician-General to the Forces on Minorca, 1780-82, but from 1817, through the interest of the 1st Lord Gwydir, hereditary Lord Great Chamberlain, became Physician Extraordinary to the Prince Regent. His mother was Mary Butler (b. c. 1740, m. 1760, d. 1819), daughter of Peregrine Butler of Dungarvon, Waterford, Ireland, who, though acknowledged the younger son of Sir Walter Butler Bt., was almost certainly the illegitimate son of Peregrine Osborne, 2nd Duke of Leeds. Dr Fellowes' royal appointment, and presumably those of his children, were at least in part examples of the utility of Mary's aristocratic connections.

William Dorset was born on 19 February 1769, on the 70-gun two-decker 'Dorsetshire' (hence his name), on passage to Minorca. He served two years as a naval midshipman before moving into East India Company service, first as a seaman in the 'Contractor', 1783-84. He was 5th mate of the 'Woodcot', 1786-87, then nine months in the Smyrna (Turkey) trade before returning to her as 4th mate in 1789-90. In 1791-94 he was 3rd, then 2nd, mate of the 'Walpole' and in May 1796 was appointed captain of 'Royal Admiral' (919 tons, built 1777) for her eighth and last round voyage to Madras and Calcutta (August 1796 - January 1799). On the way out, on 21 November 1796, he married at the British forces chaplaincy, Cape Town, to Julia Loftie (b. 29 September 1773, Wingham, Kent) daughter of the Revd John Loftie. It is likely they met on the voyage on which she appears to have been sailing to India, where she already had family, including her father who went out there in 1788 for about ten years as an East India Company chaplain.

On return home he left East India service and on 16 December 1799 was appointed by Lord Auckland to the Post Office packet service based at Falmouth, as an additional captain for the Lisbon station. By July 1800 he was in command of a new Post Office transatlantic packet, the 'Lady Hobart' (179 tons) in which his wife was sailing with him when, on 26 June 1803, bound from Halifax (N.S.) for England, the 'Lady Hobart' was threatened with seizure off the Grand Banks by a well-manned French schooner, 'L' Aimable Julie', Captain Charles Rossé, who mistook her for an unarmed merchant brig. When Fellowes opened fire the French vessel quickly surrendered. He then sent her away as a prize under two Naval lieutenants whom he had on board as passengers (John Little and William Hughes) and put most of his prisoners into British schooners sighted soon afterwards.

Two days later, on 28 June, the 'Lady Hobart' hit a large iceberg at speed in fog and quickly sank. Fellowes, his wife, two other women passengers, and the other 24 men on board took to the cutter and jolly boat. Except for the French captain, who 'jumped overboard in a fit of delirium' partly induced by rum, they survived eight days in dire conditions until picked up on 4 July by a fishing schooner just off the Newfoundland coast. Fellowes, his wife, and a few others took early passage for home in a leaky vessel carrying salt fish to Oporto but on 26 July fell in with the American ship 'Bristol Trader', from New York, which took them into Bristol on 3 August. In Newfoundland Fellowes had already written a full report up to 9 July for the Postmaster-General, and published an updated version later in 1803 as 'A Narrative of the Loss of the... Lady Hobart'. He subsequently wrote three other books; first, a series of letters of observations from France in 1815 (published 1817); second, an account of an 1817 visit to the monastery of La Trappe in Belgium (1818), and in 1828 'Historical sketches of Charles the First, Cromwell, Charles the Second... [etc]' illustrated with 50 plates. Fellowes was a good amateur artist and his account of La Trappe is illustrated with aquatints after his own drawings.

For his conduct in the 'Lady Hobart' Fellowes was promoted to Post Office packet Superintendent of the Irish mails, based at Holyhead. When he retired in 1815 he became, in his own words, 'Private Secretary to my noble friend Lord Guydir [sic] , on whose sudden demise [in June 1820] I was appointed to act as Deputy Great Chamberlain, and, in that Capacity, I conducted and attended the Trial of Queen Caroline, and held the office, until the Coronation of H. M. George the IV' in June 1821. It was as Acting Deputy Great Chamberlain at the coronation that (though himself sympathetic to 'that much injured Lady' ) he personally barred the door of Westminster Hall against her entry. When his royal appointment ended is unclear but it was probably quickly from what he claimed was 'the ill will and dislike' of George IV and from 1826 until late 1829 he was involved in a complex legal case against the second Lord Gwydir (his former patron's son and successor as Lord Chamberlain) in relation to the sale of the coronation fittings in Westminster Hall: these were a perquisite of the Lord Chamberlain, which Fellowes bought from him but then ran into problems in their resale. Oddly, however, there is no trace of him in various indexes to members of the Royal Household held in the Royal Archives, its Georgian papers or any other area of its holdings: he also does not appear in the printed 'Royal Kalendars' for the period, or their lists of those employed in the Chamberlain's office. It may be that the 'ill will' of George IV saw his name expunged at the time.

In October 1825 Fellowes was noted as an investor in a new distilling venture headed by Jean-Jacques Saint Marc of the Belmont Distillery, Vauxhall ('Morning Post' advts. 12 and 20 October) and in 1827 he is also listed as a director of the Eagle Life Assurance Company. On 21 July 1830 both he and his naval brother were presented at an early levée to King William IV by the Duke of Sussex (to whose illegal and secret marriage, later annulled, their sister Anne had been a witness in Rome in 1793). He subsequently alienated his family by deserting his wife for a woman he had met in Paris in 1815 and whom he married after being widowed in summer 1850: their daughter Hélène, who was his only known child, was therefore probably illegitimate at birth but none the less married Alfred, Marquis de Bois-Thierry of Chateau Renault, near Tours, France. He himself died at Chateau Renault on 9 February 1852 ('Morning Chronicle' , 16 Feb.). The brief press notice of his first wife's death at Weston-super-Mare ('Bristol Mercury', 27 July 1850) calls him 'late captain in the Navy' which is also repeated in 'Burke's Landed Gentry' (e.g. 2001 edn.), but this is not correct for a packet captain, unless previously holding a Naval command commission, which he neither did nor claimed.

Whatever his other qualities 'Dorset Fellowes' , as he appears in court-related press reports, was clearly an able and experienced seaman, and one of a diversely talented family. His elder brother Peregrine Daniel (1763-1848) was a successful major in the Royal Marines; his younger brother was Sir James Fellowes (c.1771-1857), a notable military doctor, knighted by George III in 1809: his naval youngest brother, Sir Thomas, knighted as a captain, had a gallant naval fighting career including at the Battle of Navarino in 1827, where his ship 'Dartmouth' opened the action on the British side. Though not formal holder of the office, and already a solid 55, his elder sister Anne (1765-1844) took the role of Royal Herb Strewer at George IV's coronation - the last time this practice was observed. Another brother, the Revd Henry Fellowes (1774-1864), vicar of Sidbury, Devon, from 1813, was also Chaplain in Ordinary to the Prince Regent (see Burke’s). To avoid confusion it should be noted that the Revd Augustus William Dorset Fellowes (1810-57) vicar of Nether Wallop, Hants, from 1852, was Henry's son and the present sitter’s nephew.

Roch (or Roche, 1759-1847) was an Irish miniaturist of good family related to the Fellowes, and painted miniatures of a number of them. He was born deaf and dumb but became a successful artist from 1784, initially in Dublin and Cork. From 1792 he moved to Bath where his practice flourished, with patrons including members of the royal family, and he was reported to have been offered a knighthood but declined it on account of his disability. He only exhibited two works at the Royal Academy, both in 1817, and eventually retired to join relations at Waterford, Ireland, where he died.