He did like alliterative names, didn’t he? – ‘John Johnson’ and ‘Dixon Dawson’
Given that his offence was one of deception, and that much of the evidence at his trial centred around the question of his sanity (including the story of him just being appointed as a captain), I do think we have to take his ‘service history’ with a pinch of salt! But at least we know that he was an in-pensioner at Greenwich hospital, so he had convinced them that he had at least some service history. The NA catalogue often gives dates of service against an admission document, but it is not so helpful this time:
Quote:
ADM 73/7/100 Dixon Dawson, dates served: Not Stated; when admitted to Greenwich Hospital: Not Stated.
His detail around the loss of the Minotaur is correct. Some of the survivors did spend nearly four years imprisoned in Valenciennes. But in the year of his trial (1850) William Gilly had published that detail in "Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849". See here for his account:
http://www.minotaur.org/minotaur-wreck.htm including the tragic tale of Lieutenant Salsford and his pet wolf, who drowned together, clutched in each other’s arms/paws.
Anna, the captain of the Minotaur at the time of her loss was Captain John Barrett, who was lost with the ship. Mansfield had been forced to quit his command through ill health immediately on return from the 1807 Copenhagen expedition.
Dixon Dawson describes men from the Minotaur in 1809 boarding Danish gun-boats. The action that I am aware of was a severely fought boat action against Russian gun-boats at Fredrickshamn, but they may well have also been in action against Danish gun-boats, or that may be the sort of detail he could have confused forty years later.
But then he could easily have ‘borrowed’ some convincing service details from fellow Greenwich in-pensioners.