A Naval Biographical Dictionary/Bayly, James
BAYLY. (Commander, 1828. f-p., 17; h-p., 31.)
James Bayly, born in 1785, at Nenagh, is son of the Rev. Henry Bayly, Rector of Nenagh and Nigh, co. Tipperary; grandson of John Bayly, Esq., of Debsborough; brother of Capt. Benj. Bayly, late 21st Fusileers, of Lieut. Peter Bayly, R.N., and of the late Capts. John Bayly, of the 2nd Bengal Light Cavalry, and Wm. Bayly, of the 92nd Highlanders; and brother-in-law of Sir Wm. Rowan Hamilton, Astronomer Royal of Ireland, and of Wm. Rathbone, Esq., late High Sheriff of Dublin.
This officer entered the Navy, 6 March, 1799, as a Volunteer, on hoard the Penelope 36, commanded by his relative Capt. Hon. Henry Blackwood; and on 31 March, 1800, while at the blockade of Malta, assisted at the hard-wrought capture of Le Guillaume Tell, of 84 guns and 1000 men, bearing the flag of Rear-Admiral Decrès. After attending, as Midshipman, the expedition to Egypt, he successively joined, between May, 1802, and Oct. 1805, the Donegal 74, bearing the broad pendant of Sir Rich. Strachan, Experiment 44, Capt. Geo. Chas. Mackenzie, Virginie 88, Capt. John Poo Beresford, and Euryalus 36, Capt. Hon. Henry Blackwood. For his conduct in the latter frigate at the battle of Trafalgar, on which occasion he had the honour of conveying Lord Collingwood on board, he was at once appointed Acting-Lieutenant of that nobleman’s flag-ship, the Royal Sovereign 100. He was officially promoted on 22 Dec. in the same year, 1805; and was afterwards appointed – 19 April, 1806, to the Ganges 74, Capt. Peter Halkett, in which ship he witnessed the capture, 27 Sept. 1806, of Le Président French frigate, and the subsequent reduction of Copenhagen – 11 March, 1808, to the Warspite 74, Capt. Hon. H. Blackwood, stationed in the Mediterranean – 22 Oct. 1810, as First (for his co-exertions in having rescued the Euryalus, and Shearwater brig, from six of the enemy’s line-of-battle ships in a gale off Toulon), to the Leonidas 38, Capt. Anselm John Griffiths, also in the Mediterranean – 1 Jan. 1811, to the Fame 74, Capt. Walter Bathurst, with whom he returned to England an invalid – 25 Oct. 1811, and 11 Oct. 1813, to the Trinculo 16, and Orontes 36, Capts. Alex. Renny and Nathaniel Day Cochrane, on the Cork and West India stations, the latter of which ships he left in May, 1815 – and, in 1827, to the Prince Regent 120, bearing the flag at the Nore of his old friend, Hon. H. Blackwood, at whose recommendation, on memorialising the Lord High Admiral, he was advanced to his present rank, 25 Aug. 1828.
Commander Bayly married, 12 Sept. 1831, Miss Tripe.