Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall v4p2.djvu/445

  of the Fleet, Vice-Admiral of England, and a Lord of the Admiralty, who died on the 1st Jan. 1768.

The subject of this memoir was made a lieutenant in 1789; and appointed acting captain of the Hussar frigate in the summer of 1794. He subsequently commanded the Lynx sloop, and captured numerous French merchant vessels, on the North American station. In Mar. 1796, being then acting captain of the Cleopatra frigate, he captured l’Aurore, French privateer, of ten guns. He afterwards resumed the command of the Hussar, at Halifax, and continued in that ship until paid off, about the end of the same year. His advancement to post rank took place on the 1st Aug. 1795.

We next find Captain Rowley commanding l’Unité 36, and displaying great firmness during the general mutiny in 1797. He subsequently captured the French 18-gun corvette Decouverte, the brig-privateer Brunette, of ten guns and eighty men, and several other armed vessels, on the Channel station. Captain Rowley left l’Unité, in consequence of bursting a blood-vessel; but after the lapse of a few months, he was appointed to the Prince George 98, flag-ship of his brother-in-law, the late Admiral Sir Charles Cotton, Bart. In the spring of 1801, he was removed into the Boadicea frigate, and entrusted with the command of a light squadron, employed in Quiberon Bay, where he greatly molested the enemy. On the 20th Aug. following, his boats, in company with those of the Fisgard and Boadicea frigates, cut out from the harbour of Coruna, a new Spanish national ship. El Neptuna, pierced for twenty guns, a gun-boat mounting one long 32-pounder, and a merchant vessel.

In 1804, Captain Rowley commanded the Ruby 64, successively employed in the North Sea and off Cadiz, on which latter station, whilst under the orders of Sir John Orde, he destroyed two of the enemy’s privateers. Subsequently to his return from thence, we find him stationed off the Scheldt; and in Nov. 1805, appointed to the Eagle 74, destined to the Mediterranean, which ship he joined at Spithead. The Eagle formed part of the squadron under Sir W. Sidney Smith, employed in disarming the coasts of Naples and Calabria, in the summer of 1806. The following are 