Page:A Naval Biographical Dictionary.djvu/766

752 rocks to the eastward of Ushant. On 20 Nov. 1802, a few months previously to which period he had joined the 50, bearing the flag at Halifax of Sir Andrew Mitchell, Mr. Meade was there nominated Acting-Lieutenant of the  40, Capts. Jas. Bradley and John Poo Beresford; to which ship he was confirmed 19 April, 1803. After he had again, for fifteen months, served under Sir A. Mitchell in the, he obtained, 19 Aug. 1806, an appointment to the 50, Capt. Salusbury Pryce Humphreys, also on the Halifax station; where, on 22 June, 1807, he assisted in enforcing the surrender of the U.S. frigate Chesapeake, in consequence of a refusal on the part of the latter to allow the British to search her for deserters. He subsequently, from May, 1808, until advanced to his present rank, 4 Nov. 1812, officiated as Flag-Lieutenant to his uncle in the 80,  38, and. He assisted, in the, at the embarkation of the army after the battle of Corunna in Jan. 1809; and was employed in the other ships on the Brazilian station.

Cominander Meade married, 19 Sept. 1814, Miss Elizabeth Hutchinson Quin, and by that lady has issue ten children.

 MEADOWS. 

entered the Navy, 11 Oct. 1803, as A.B., on board the 98, Capts. Joseph Sydney Yorke and Geo. Losack. After a servitude of three years on the Channel station, latterly in the capacity of Midshipman, he sailed, towards the close of 1806, for South America in the 64, Capt. Henry Wm. Bayntun, under whom he shared in the operations connected with the unfortunate attempt made in 1807 to etfect the re-capture of Buenos Ayres. On leaving the latter ship he joined, in Feb. 1808, the 36, Capt. Walter Bathurst, employed at first in the Baltic, where, it appears, he assisted at the capture, 23 June, 1808, of the Russian cutter Apith, of 14 guns and 61 men, 4 of whom were killed and 8 wounded, with a loss to the British of 1 man killed. He afterwards accompanied the expedition to the Scheldt, and while there was actively employed in the gun-boat service. He was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant 1 March, 1810, while borne as a Supernumerary on the books of the 74, flagship at the Nore of Vice-Admiral Thos. Wells; and was subsequently appointed – 15 of the same month, to the sloop, Capt. Edw. O’Brien Drury – and, 1 May following, 18 Jan. 1811, and 8 Nov. 1812, to the 24, Capt. Brian Hodgson,  32, Capts. Chas. Felly and Joseph Drury, and 38, Capt. Hon. Edw. Rodney, all on the East India station; where, under Capt. Pelly, he assisted at the reduction of Java, and took part in a very long and gallant chase made by the alone after the two French 40-gun frigates Nymphe and Méduse. He has not been since afloat. Lieut. Meadows was Assistant-Astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope in 1834.

 MEDLEY. 

was born in Aug. 1789 or 90. This officer entered the Navy, in April, 1801, as Fst.-cl. Vol., on board the 74, Capt. Geo. Hopewell Stephens; and in Aug. 1802, on his return from a voyage to Jamaica, joined the gun-brig, Lieut.-Commander Wm. Peake. Between the following May and Nov. 1807, we find him employed on the Home station, chiefly in the capacity of Midshipman, in the 40, Capt. Hon. Chas.Elphinstone Fleeming,  cutter, Lieut.-Commanders Brown and Robt. Benj. Young, 44, Capt. Chas. Worsley Boys, 74, Capt. G. H. Stephens (part of the force under Admiral Hon. Wm. Cornwallis in his attack on the French fleet close in with Brest Harbour 22 Aug. 1805), and  32, Capts. Geo. McKinley and Viscount Falkland. In the latter ship he assisted at the capture of Heligoland 5 Sept. 1807; and in her boats he contributed to the cutting out of several vessels on the coast of Holland. He was confirmed a Lieutenant (after having acted for about a month as such) in the 18, Capt. Edw. Crofton, on the West India station, 22 Dec. 1807; and was next appointed – 23 Jan. 1809, to the 64, Capt. Thos. Harvey, lying at Chatham – 22 Feb. following, and 7 March, 1810, to the 10, Capt. Geo. Mouhray, and 32, Capt. Sam. Hood Inglefield, both on the Jamaica station – 25 Aug. 1810, and 15 March, 1811, to the 10, and  74, commanded in the Baltic by Capts. Hew Steuart and Chas. Dudley Pater – 15 Nov. 1811 (having invalided from the in the preceding June), to the  10, Capt. Rich. Spear – 18 Aug. 1812, to the 50, Capt. Chas. Montagu Fabian, under whom he was employed in the conveyance of troops to Spain and Portugal until April, 1813 – and, 16 Sept. 1815, for two months, to the schooner, Capts. David Boyd and Hugh Patton. In July, 1808, Mr. Medley, then in the, was severely wounded in the neck and taken prisoner while officiating as second in command of a party of 135 men, belonging to that sloop and to the and  schooner, in a gallant but sanguinary and unsuccessful attack made under the orders of Lieut. Geo. Augustus Spearing (who was killed) on the French island of St. Martin. On being exchanged he took a passage home on board a merchant-brig, the Mary Ann, carrying 10 guns in addition to her cargo, in which vessel, when off the Lizard, 1 Jan. 1809, he materially aided in beating off a French privateer of 16 guns. When First-Lieutenant, afterwards, of the, he appears to have been engaged in her boats in two cutting-out affairs; the result of the first being the capture of a vessel from Claysholm; and of the second, that of three row-boat privateers, carrying 1 gun each, with, in the whole, 50 or 60 men, by the gig and cutter manned with only 26 men under the command of Capt. Steuart and himself. His appointments, since he left the, have been – 8 Nov. 1823, to the Preventive Water-Guard Service on the coast of Cornwall, where he remained until 1826 – 6 July, 1827, to the command of the gun-brig, then on the eve of her departure for the coast of Africa, whence, on account of her defective condition, she was ordered home in Dec. 1828, with 40 persons on board under charge of piracy, and was paid off in March, 1829 – 22 April, 1831, to the Ordinary at Sheerness, during his stay at which place, a period of three years, he rendered himself conspicuous by his exertions in procuring the erection, for the first time, of a church and school, and also by his conduct in performing, at the time of the cholera, duties which a fear of infection had caused to be withholden from the very convicts – and, 26 Aug. 1834, to the Coast Guard. In that service, of which he is now an Inspecting-Lieutenant, Mr. Medley has been successively employed at Cromarty, at West Haven, on the banks of the Tay (where his judicious arrangements were to a great extent the means of preserving property and preventing shipwreck), and at Freswick and Staxigoe, N.B.

He married, in 1811, a daughter of Mr. Story, King’s Pilot, of Sheerness Yard, who had served in that capacity on borad the 74, in the action off Camperdown 11 Oct. 1797. By that lady he has surviving issue two sons and four daughters, one of whom is married to Lieut. W. H. Woodham, R.N., and another to Jas. Jeffery, Esq., Master R.N. (1841), now serving on board the steamer, Capt. Henry C. Otter. One of his sons, a Midshipman of the 26, Capt. Wm. Jones, died on board that ship in 1835. He had previously distinguished himself while surveying the coast of Africa under Capts. Edw. Belcher and Wm. Geo. Skyring; and had been on shore with the latter officer when killed by the natives at Cape Roxo; on which occasion, after carrying his Captain in his arms to a boat, he was under the necessity of making a precipitate flight in order to avoid sharing the same fate.

