Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall sp4.djvu/465

 Captain Clavell’s last appointment was, in April 1825, to command the Ordinary at Portsmouth, where the Diamond frigate was accidentally destroyed by fire during his absence from that port on public leave. Although actually in London at the time of that disaster, he was superseded immediately after it happened, as were also the whole of the commissioned officers under his command.

Agents.– Messrs. Cooke, Halford, and Son. 

 officer was a native of Linlithgowshire, N.B. He first went to sea in the Baltic trade; next embarked in the Greenland fishery; and was ultimately impressed on his return to London from the West Indies, early in Jan. 1795, at which time he was in expectation of obtaining the command of a merchant vessel. From this period he served as able seaman on board the Scipio 64, successively commanded by Captains Robert M‘Douall, Francis Laforey, and Charles Sydney Davers, until Sept. 19, 1797. In that ship he was present at the capture of Demerara, Essequibo, and Berbice, in April and May, 1796; also at the reduction of Trinidad, Feb. 17, 1797. We subsequently find him serving as a petty officer under Captains Thomas Revell Shivers, and John Griffin Saville, in the Standard 64, and Experiment 44, armed en flûte, on the North Sea, Channel, Irish, and Baltic stations, for a period of two years. In Sept. 1798, he was discharged from the latter ship at the Helder, by order of Vice-Admiral Andrew Mitchell, to serve in the flotilla on the Dutch canals, commanded by Sir Home Popham, to whom he had been recommended as “a person very well worthy of protection and notice.”

After Sir Home Popham’s departure from Holland with H.R.H. the Duke of York, Mr, Bartholomew remained there in the command of a detachment of hired seamen, under the orders of Captain John Lawford of the Romney 50; and 