Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall v4p2.djvu/556

 and a ball followed – altogether one of the best things of the kind ever witnessed. He arrived at Plymouth, and paid off the Malabar, in July 1834. 

 born in Mar. 1786, at Highworth, co. Wilts, where his father practised for many years as a solicitor, and realized a considerable fortune.

This officer entered the royal navy, in Sept. 1799, as midshipman on board la Decade frigate. Captain James Wallace, fitting out for the Jamaica station, from whence he returned home in the Brunswick 74. He next joined the Ganges 74, Captain (afterwards Sir Thomas F.) Fremantle, to whom he served as aide-de-camp at the battle of Copenhagen, April 2d, 1801.

During the peace of Amiens, Mr. Crowdy again visited the West Indies, where he remained until the renewal of hostilities with France, in 1803. On the Ganges being paid off, in 1805, he was received on board the Urania frigate. Captain the Hon. Charles Herbert, from which ship he was removed into the Hibernia, first rate, bearing the flag of Earl St. Vincent, commander-in-chief of the Channel fleet, early in 1806. He passed his examination for lieutenant on the 1st Jan. in the latter year, and was promoted into the Hazard sloop, Captain Charles Dilkes, on the 17th Mar. following. During a service of nearly two years under that active officer, he was frequently employed in boats cutting out French merchant vessels from the vicinities of Rochfort and Bourdeaux. In the last affair of this kind, he was shot through the right arm, below the elbow joint, for which wound the Patriotic Society voted him a gratuity of £50.

Lieutenant Crowdy subsequently served in the Pilot sloop, Cornelia frigate, and Diomede 50, the former on the Mediterranean, the two latter ships on the East India station,