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Administrative / biographical background
Butt was born at Gloucester in 1844 and joined the training ship HMS ILLUSTRIOUS at Portsmouth in 1857. As a cadet and midshipman he served on HMS CENTURION (1844) in the Mediterranean and HMS SEVERN (1856) in the East Indies. In 1864 he was appointed to the troopship HMS ADVENTURE (1855), operating between Hong Kong and Japan. Butt then became a lieutenant on the new survey ship HMS SYLVIA (1866), employed around the coasts of Formosa, Japan, and China. After returning from the Far East in December 1870 he married Alice Maude Lovell at Clifton in Bristol. He then served on HMS INDUS (1839), guardship at Devonport, before retiring from the Navy with the reserve rank of commander in 1873. In 1894 he briefly served a summer commission for coaling duties. In retirement Butt was a church organist and watercolour artist. After raising a family in Bristol, he moved to Old Colwyn in Denbighshire and died there in 1936. His record of service can be found under the reference ADM 196/15/338 at The National Archives. His eldest son Alfred Lovell Butt died while serving as an engineer on the depot ship HMS VULCAN (1889) at Salonika in 1895.