Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 27.djvu/409

 superiority of the enemy and the decisive result, the action off Lissa was considered one of the most brilliant naval achievements during the war. Hoste and his colleagues received the gold medal, and the several first lieutenants were promoted (, v. 233–245;, pp. 387–90). The four frigates with their prizes arrived at Malta on 31 March, when the garrison spontaneously turned out to cheer them.

The Amphion was now found in such a bad state that she was ordered to England, which she reached in June; and on reporting himself at the admiralty Hoste was desired to choose his ship and station. He was at once appointed to the Bacchante, a 38-gun frigate, but it was a full year before she was ready for sea. In June 1812 she sailed for the Mediterranean, where, on joining the commander-in-chief, Hoste was again sent into the Adriatic to carry on the same desultory warfare as formerly in the Amphion, but now on a larger scale, and under the orders of Rear-admiral Fremantle [see ], who had with him three sail of the line and six or seven frigates. The Bacchante was fortunate in being frequently detached on independent cruises; in one of which (18 Sept. 1812) she captured eight gunboats, with their convoy of eighteen trading vessels, on the coast of Apulia; in another (11 June 1813), at Giulia Nova, near Ancona, she captured a similar flotilla of seven gunboats with seventeen vessels in convoy; and these are only two instances out of many similar. In December 1813 she was sent to assist the Austrians and Montenegrins in the attack on Cattaro, which surrendered on 5 Jan. 1814, as soon as Hoste had, in what was denounced as ‘a very unmilitary manner,’ established a battery of heavy guns and mortars on the top of a rugged hill which dominated the enemy's position. From Cattaro Hoste immediately crossed over to Ragusa, which also surrendered on the completion of a battery on the top of a hill supposed to be inaccessible.

The labour of these sieges, the hardships and the exposure to wet and cold, undermined Hoste's health, already feeble, and he was obliged to return to England invalided. In July 1814 he was made a baronet, and at the same time was granted the augmentation to his arms: In chief, a naval crown with the gold medal pendent therefrom and the word ‘Lissa;’ and as a crest, Out of a naval crown, an arm holding a flag, on which the word ‘Cattaro.’ On the reorganisation of the order of the Bath in 1815 Hoste was nominated a K.C.B. After his return to England Hoste's health continued delicate, and for many years he had no service. In 1822 he accepted the command of the Albion guardship at Portsmouth, and in 1825 was appointed to the Royal Sovereign yacht. A cold, caught in January 1828, settled on his lungs; he fell into a decline, and died in London on 6 Dec. 1828.

Hoste's long and successful command in the Adriatic, his brilliant victory at Lissa, and his reduction of Cattaro have given him a naval reputation far beyond that achieved by any other officer of his age and rank. His constant endeavour was to act as became a pupil of Nelson, to whose memory he formally appealed at Lissa, as the two squadrons approached each other, in making the signal ‘Remember Nelson.’ In private life his letters, happily printed, show him to have been of a gentle, affectionate nature, tenderly attached to his family, and sacrificing opportunities of enriching himself to relieve the embarrassments of his father, to which, it is said, he applied 50,000l. out of 60,000l. which he gained while in the Adriatic (Service Afloat, p. 68 n.) In April 1817 Hoste married the Lady Harriet Walpole, daughter of the third Earl of Orford, by whom he had issue three sons and three daughters. The eldest son, William Legge George, who succeeded to the baronetcy, died a rear-admiral in 1868.

[Memoirs and Letters of Captain Sir William Hoste, Bart., by his widow, the Lady Harriet Hoste (2 vols. 8vo, 1833), with an engraved portrait from a picture in the possession of the family. An abridgment of this, with some supplemental matter, was published in 1887 under the title of Service Afloat, or the Naval Career of Sir William Hoste. See also Marshall's Roy. Nav. Biog. iii. (vol. iii.) 470; James's Naval History (edit. of 1860); Chevalier's Histoire de la Marine française sous le Consulat et l'Empire; Mrs. Herbert Jones's Sandringham, Past and Present; Foster's Baronetage.]  HOTHAM, BEAUMONT, second (1737–1814), the fourth son of Sir Beaumont Hotham, bt., by his wife Frances, daughter of the Rev. William Thompson of Welton, was born on 5 Aug. 1737. He was educated at Westminster School, and on 20 Jan. 1753 was admitted a student of the Middle Temple. He was called to the bar in May 1758, and practised in the chancery courts, though with little success. At the general election in March 1768 he was returned to the House of Commons for the borough of Wigan, and sat for that constituency until May 1775, when he was appointed a baron of the exchequer in the place of Sir George Perrot. Hotham was made a serjeant-at-law on 17 May, and 