Sir Richard Goodwin Keats spent a naval career of extraordinary length and variety, serving his country from the age of thirteen through some of the most consequential naval conflicts Britain had ever fought. Born on January 16, 1757, at Chalton in Hampshire, he was the son of the Reverend Richard Keats, who would later serve as Rector of Bideford and King's Nympton in Devon and as Headmaster of Blundell's School in Tiverton. His formal schooling was brief and not particularly successful; he enrolled at New College School, Oxford in 1766 and was briefly admitted to Winchester College in 1768, but he lacked the scholarly disposition that classical education demanded. His calling lay elsewhere.
In 1770, at the age of thirteen, Keats entered the Royal Navy as a midshipman aboard the seventy-four-gun HMS Bellona under Captain John Montagu. When Montagu was promoted to rear admiral and given command of the North American Station at Halifax, Keats followed him, serving in a succession of vessels on the Newfoundland Station under both Montagu and Montagu's son, Captain James Montagu. These early years gave Keats practical experience in the waters and conditions of the North Atlantic, building the seamanship that would define his career.
In April 1777 he was promoted to lieutenant under Captain Robert Digby in HMS Ramillies, and he was aboard that ship when she took part in the First Battle of Ushant on July 27, 1778. Following Digby's transfer to the second-rate, ninety-gun HMS Prince George, Keats moved with him — a common arrangement in the eighteenth-century navy, where an officer's career was closely tied to the fortunes of his patron. Prince George carried a notably distinguished passenger during this period: Prince William Henry, the future King William IV, served aboard the vessel as a midshipman for nearly two years while Keats held first the position of second lieutenant and then first lieutenant of his watch. The two men formed a friendship that would last for the rest of their lives. The prince later credited Keats with everything he knew professionally about seamanship and naval command.
In 1780, Keats was present with Admiral Rodney's fleet at the Moonlight Battle when the Spanish vessel San Julien struck her colors and surrendered to Prince George. The fleet subsequently sailed to relieve the besieged garrison at Gibraltar, and Keats was with them again the following year when the fleet returned to lift a second siege of the Rock in 1781. In September of that year he accompanied Digby back to the North American station in HMS Lion.
On January 18, 1782, Keats was put in command of the store ship HMS Rhinoceros, which was subsequently fitted out as a floating battery for the defense of New York City — a reflection of the increasingly desperate measures required to hold the American coastline during the final phase of the Revolutionary War. By May 1782 he had been transferred to command the sloop HMS Bonetta. In an engagement on September 15, 1782, his squadron captured a French squadron that included the thirty-eight-gun frigate Aigle, which was purchased into British service. Keats's role in the action was particularly notable: when the pilot refused to navigate in shallow waters, Keats took personal responsibility for the ship, pursuing the French vessels up the Delaware River for two full days before they ran aground and were forced to surrender. It was the kind of tenacious seamanship that built reputations.
After Bonetta was paid off in 1785, Keats spent several years ashore, living for much of that time in France. On June 24, 1789 — just days before the storming of the Bastille — he was promoted to post-captain and given command of HMS Southampton, possibly at the personal instigation of the Duke of Clarence, as Prince William Henry had become. The two men served together in cruises of observation in the Channel approaches and on a voyage to Gibraltar conveying Prince Edward to his new command. Between 1790 and 1793 Keats commanded the frigate HMS Niger on the Channel Station, operating under the orders of Lord Hood out of Portsmouth. During this period he sat on the famous court martial of the Bounty mutineers — the men who had seized the ship from Lieutenant William Bligh in the Pacific in 1789.
The Algeciras campaign became the most celebrated episode of his career. In 1801 Keats commanded HMS Superb during operations off the Spanish coast, where his handling of his vessel and his conduct in close action against Spanish and French ships earned him the reputation for capability and steadiness that followed him thereafter. He was made a Knight of the Bath and advanced through the flag ranks.
Ill health forced Keats to retire from active sea service in 1812, but his career was far from finished. He was appointed Commodore-Governor of Newfoundland, serving in that capacity from 1813 to 1816. In 1821 he was made Governor of Greenwich Hospital, the great institution caring for veteran sailors on the south bank of the Thames, and he held that post until his death at Greenwich on April 5, 1834, having reached the rank of Admiral of the White. He was sixty-seven years old, and had spent nearly his entire conscious life in the service of the Royal Navy.
