Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall v4p1.djvu/95

 a descendant of Walderness Compte de Saint Clare, the head of an ancient French family, cousin-german of William the Conqueror (with whom he came over to England, in 1066), and the common ancestor of Baron Sinclair, the Earl of Rosslyn, and the Earl of Caithness.

Mr. was born at Chichester, co. Sussex, in May, 1786; and appears to have first embarked, as midshipman, on board the Royal Sovereign 110, bearing the flag of Sir Alan (afterwards Lord) Gardner, in May, 1798. Towards the close of the same year, we find him removed to the Scorpion sloop, commanded by his maternal uncle. Captain Charles Tinling, under whom he served in the expedition against the Helder, in 1799. He next joined la Nymphe 36, Captain Percy Fraser; and whilst in that frigate, was very badly wounded by the bursting of a gun, which rendered it necessary for him to become an inmate of Plymouth Hospital for a period of three months. On a subsequent occasion, he was thrown overboard by the breaking of her spanker-boom, on which he happened to be standing when it caught the main-stay of a smuggling vessel, in her endeavour to escape to leeward. On the 22d Nov. 1802, being then only in his seventeenth year, he received a lieutenant’s commission, appointing him to the Caroline 36, Captain (now Vice-Admiral) B. W. Page; in which ship he assisted at the capture of several armed vessels, and many valuable merchantmen, on the East India station, where he lost the use of his left thumb, by a sabre cut, when in the act of boarding a privateer; and twice narrowly escaped drowning – first, by the upsetting of a boat, on which occasion his life was saved by a Newfoundland dog; secondly, by the swamping of another, in which he was returning, with Captain Peter Rainier, from a shooting excursion up the Vizagapatam river. In Feb. 1806, he was obliged to invalid at Bombay, in consequence of ill-health, occasioned by extreme fatigue when docking and refitting the Caroline, of which ship he was then the senior lieutenant. His necessary expenses 