Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 59.djvu/106

 writing a refutation of the tenets of popery’ (, Fasti, III. i. 375).

(fl. 1684–1724), son of the preceding, was M.D. and F.R.S. (though he does not appear in Thomson's list of fellows), and edited his father's ‘Description’ in 1693 and 1700. In 1700 he contributed to the ‘Transactions’ of the Royal Society ‘A Part of a Journal kept from Scotland to New Caledonia in Darien, with a short Account of that Country’ (Phil. Trans. 1700, pp. 536–43). From a passage in this paper he seems to have been in the East India Company's service. He visited Darien, and gave plants from there to Petiver and Sloane. In the same number of the ‘Transactions’ (pp. 543–6) is given an abstract of the 1700 edition of his father's work. Wallace was also the author of a ‘History of Scotland from Fergus I to the Commencement of the Union,’ Dublin, 1724, 8vo.

[Preface to original edition of Description; introduction to reprint of Description; Peterkin's Rentals; Scott's Fasti; Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. v. 89, vi. 533. For the son, see Notes and Queries, 30 Jan. 1858; introduction to reprint; Phil. Trans. 1700; Britten and Boulger's British and Irish Botanists; Pulteney's Sketches of Progress of Botany; Pritzel's Thesaurus Lit. Botan.; Jackson's Guide to Lit. of Botany.]  WALLACE, JAMES (1731–1803), admiral, born in 1731, entered the navy as a scholar in the Royal Academy at Portsmouth in 1746. He afterwards served in the Syren, Vigilant, and Intrepid, and passed his examination on 3 Jan. 1753, when he was described on his certificate as ‘appearing to be 21.’ As he had been a scholar in the academy, the age was probably something like correct. On 11 March 1755 he was promoted to be lieutenant of the Greenwich (captured in the West Indies 16 March 1757), under Captain Robert Roddam [q. v.] In April 1758 he was appointed to the Ripon, one of the squadron under Sir John Moore (1718–1779) [q. v.] at the reduction of Guadeloupe in April 1759. In January 1760 he was appointed to the Neptune, going out to the Mediterranean as flagship of Sir Charles Saunders [q. v.] On 3 Nov. 1762 he was promoted to the rank of commander, and in the following April was appointed to the Trial sloop for the North American station. He afterwards commanded the Dolphin in the East Indies and the Bonetta in the Channel; and on 10 Jan. 1771 was promoted to be captain of the Unicorn. In November he was appointed to the Rose, a 20-gun frigate, which in 1774 he took out to the North American station, where during 1775 and the first part of 1776 he was actively engaged in those desultory operations against the coast towns which were calculated to produce the greatest possible irritation with the least possible advantage. In July 1776 he succeeded to the command of the 50-gun ship Experiment, in which in January 1777 he was sent to England with despatches—a service for which he was knighted on 13 Feb.

In July he returned to the North American station, and after several months' active cruising was, in July 1778, one of the small squadron with Howe for the defence of the Channel past Sandy Hook against the imposing fleet under D'Estaing [see ]. The Experiment continued with the squadron when Howe followed the French to Rhode Island, and in the manœuvres on 10–11 Aug. After that she was left cruising, and on the 20th was off Newport when the French were standing in towards it. Wallace drew back to the westward, ran down Long Island Sound, and reached New York by passing through Hell Gate, a piece of bold navigation previously supposed to be impossible for a ship of that size. On the 25th he joined Howe at Sandy Hook. In the following December, while cruising on the coast of Virginia, the ship in a violent westerly gale was blown off the land; and Wallace, finding her in need of new masts and new rigging, for which there were no stores at New York, even if in her distressed condition it had been possible to get there, bore away for England. When the ship was refitted he joined the squadron which sailed from St. Helens under Arbuthnot on 1 May, and with him turned aside for the relief of Jersey, then threatened by the French under the prince of Nassau. Hearing, however, that Nassau had been repulsed and that some frigates had been sent from Portsmouth, Arbuthnot pursued his voyage, leaving the Experiment to strengthen the force at Jersey. When he was joined by the frigates, Wallace concerted an attack on the French squadron which had gone over to the mainland; and, finding them endeavouring to make St. Malo, he drove them into Cancale Bay, followed them in, despite the protestations of the pilot, silenced a six-gun battery under which they had sheltered, and burnt two of the frigates and a small cutter that were fast on shore. The third frigate, the Danaë of 34 guns, and two smaller vessels were brought off and sent to England.

Wallace then rejoined Arbuthnot, who had been forced by foul winds to wait in Torbay, and sailed with him for New York.