Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall v4p1.djvu/419

 continent. Having arrived off Cadiz in the night time, the schooner fell in with a Spanish frigate, which ran her on board, notwithstanding that satisfactory answers had been given to all the questions put by an officer previously sent to examine her. While thus entangled, the frigate most disgracefully fired a great gun, and Mr. Walker, being near the muzzle, was shattered to pieces, the explosion also wounding one of his servants and a seaman. A kind of enquiry was subsequently instituted into the conduct of the Spanish captain; but our Government, particularly Lord Castlereagh, was much blamed, and very deservedly so, for their truckling conduct in this most lamentable affair. Mr. Walker was a man of transcendant abilities; his genius might be said to have been universal; but he was not a supporter of the then existing ministry. 



a lieutenant’s commission in Nov. 1806; and served during the last two years of the French war in the Gloucester 74, Captain Robert Williams, on the Baltic station. In 1814, he went in the same ship to the Leeward Islands and Quebec. On the 26th Aug. 1815, he was promoted to the rank of commander. 



made a lieutenant in Nov. 1790; and commander on the 28th Aug. 1815. 



badly wounded in four places, while acting as lieutenant, and commanding the boats of the Circe frigate. Captain (now Sir Francis A.) Collier, in an unsuccessful attack upon the French national brig Cygne, near St. Pierre, 