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  of Captain James Shirley, who obtained post rank on the 16th Feb. 1772, and perished in command of the Vestal frigate (together with all his officers and crew) on the banks of Newfoundland, in 1777; and grandson of Captain James Shirley, (seniority April 27th, 1762), who died in command of the Dolphin 20, on the East India station, in 1774.

This officer entered into the royal navy in the beginning of 1779; and served without a day’s intermission from that period until advanced to the command of the Mars 74, by post commission dated April 26th, 1798. The flag-officers and captains under whom he passed the first eighteen years of his professional life, always in most active employment, were the late Lords Bridport and Hood, Sir Samuel Hood, Alexander Hood, Sir William Domett, and Sir Charles Morice Pole, the present Sir Philip C. H. Durham, and the late John Woodley. As midshipman and lieutenant, he was in many general and partial actions, particularly in the early part of the French revolutionary war. He has been several times wounded; and on one occasion would have lost an arm, by amputation, had not the attention of the surgeon been directed to an officer of higher rank just as he was about to commence the operation, having already applied a tourniquet to the broken limb. Fortunately for Mr. Shirley, before that gentleman could return to him, his assistant had set the arm, placed it in splints, and saved him from the intended mutilation.

After the mutiny at Spithead, Mr. Shirley was promoted from the Royal George, first rate, to the command of the