For his bravery under Rodney in the action near Cape St Vincent in January 1780, Sidney Smith was, on 25 September, appointed lieutenant of the 74-gun third-rate Alcide,[3] despite being under the required age of nineteen.

During the peace, Smith chose to travel to France and first became involved with intelligence matters while observing the construction of the new naval port at Cherbourg.

By Smith's arrival in December 1793, the Revolutionary forces, including a colonel of artillery, Napoleon Bonaparte, had surrounded the port and were attacking it.

On his return to London, Smith was given command of the fifth-rate HMS Diamond and in 1795 joined the Western Squadron under Sir John Borlase Warren.

In July 1795, Captain Smith, commanding the western frigate squadron in HMS Diamond, occupied the Îles Saint-Marcouf off the coast of Normandy.

Smith specialised in inshore operations, and on 19 April 1796, he and his secretary John Wesley Wright were captured while attempting to cut out a French ship in Le Havre.

Whilst in the Temple prison he commissioned a drawing of himself and his secretary John Wesley Wright from the French artist Philippe-Auguste Hennequin, which is now in the British Museum.

[5] Smith was held in Paris for two years, despite a number of efforts to exchange him and frequent contacts with both French Royalists and British agents.

Notably Captain Jacques Bergeret, captured in April 1796 with the frigate Virginie,[6] was sent from England to Paris to negotiate his own exchange; when the Directoire refused, he returned to London.

[7] The royalists brought the two Englishmen to Le Havre, where they boarded an open fishing boat and were picked up on 5 May by HMS Argo on patrol in the English Channel, arriving in London on 8 May 1798.

[6] Following Nelson's overwhelming victory at the Battle of the Nile, Smith was sent to the Mediterranean as captain of HMS Tigre,[3] a captured 80-gun French ship of the line which had been bought into the Royal Navy.

The mission's task was to strengthen Turkish opposition to Napoleon and to assist the Turks in destroying the French army stranded in Egypt.

This dual appointment caused Nelson, who was the senior officer under St Vincent in the Mediterranean, to resent Smith's apparent superseding of his authority in the Levant.

Here he took control of much of the southern part of the province, representing modern-day Israel and Palestine, and of a single town in today's Lebanon, Tyre.

Smith sailed to Acre and helped the Turkish commander Jezzar Pasha reinforce the defences and old walls and supplied him with additional cannon manned by sailors and Marines from his ships.

Shortly after this, Napoleon abandoned his army in Egypt and sailed back to France evading the British ships patrolling the Mediterranean.

Smith attempted to negotiate the surrender and repatriation of the remaining French forces under General Kléber and signed the Convention of El-Arish.

However, because of the influence of Nelson's view that the French forces in Egypt should be annihilated rather than allowed to return to France, the treaty was abrogated by Lord Keith who had succeeded St Vincent as commander-in-chief.

Smith and Tigre were involved in the training and transport of the landing forces and as liaison with the Turks, but his unpopularity resulted in the loss of his diplomatic credentials and his naval position as Commodore in the eastern Mediterranean.

Following this Smith then supported the army under Abercromby's successor John Hely-Hutchinson, which besieged and captured Cairo and finally took the last French stronghold of Alexandria.

On his return to England in 1801, Smith received some honours and a pension of £1,000 for his services, but he was overshadowed again by Nelson who was being acclaimed as the victor of the Battle of Copenhagen.

With the resumption of war with France in 1803, Smith was employed in the southern North Sea off the coast between Ostend and Flushing part of the forces gathered to prevent Napoleon's threatened invasion.

Smith planned a campaign using Calabrian irregular troops with a force of 5,000 British officers and men to march north on Naples.

In the Royal Navy of the time, promotion from Post Captain to Admiral was automatic and based on seniority, not a specific reward for good service.

Upon safe arrival to Brazil escorting the Portuguese Royal Family, Admiral Smith was awarded by the Prince-Regent John, the Grand Cross of the newly restored Order of the Tower and Sword.

Smith, his wife and stepdaughter attended the Duchess of Richmond's ball on night 15/16 June,[11] and three days later, hearing the gunfire of a great battle, he rode out of Brussels and went to meet the Duke of Wellington.

He was then asked to take the surrender of the French garrisons at Arras and Amiens and to ensure that the Allied armies could enter Paris without a fight and that it would be safe for King Louis XVIII to return to his capital.

Now it is the site of Bustan Ha-Galil in northern Israel, where on 14 July 1941 the French forces in Syria and Lebanon signed their surrender to the British.