A Naval Biographical Dictionary/Gilchrist, William
GILCHRIST. (Retired Commander, 1843. f-p., 26; h-p., 37.)
William Gilchrist was born 5 May, 1775. His father was also in the Service.
This officer entered the Nayy, 2 May, 1784, as Captain’s Servant, on board the Flirt 14, Capts. Wm. Luke and Percy Brett, on the Home station, where, until 1791, he continued to serve, in the same vessel, and in the Fame 74 and Impregnable 98, flag-ships of Rear-Admiral Philip Cosby. He re-embarked, 30 June, 1793, on board the Sceptre 64, Capts. Jas. Rich. Dacres, Wm. Essington, Thos. Alexander, and Valentine Edwards; under the two first of whom he witnessed the attack on Cape Tiburon and Port au Prince, St. Domingo, in 1794, and the capture of the Dutch squadron in Saldanha Bay, 17 Aug. 1796. While detached, on one occasion, in a captured Indiaman, he had the misfortune to be wrecked; on another, he discovered a conspiracy which but for him would have resulted in the surrender to the French of a British Squadron of seven sail by their own crews; and for his subsequent exertions in securing the Sceptre’s guns during a hurricane, he was received, 16 Jan. 1798, on board the Tremendous 74, bearing the flag at the Cape of Rear-Admiral Thos. Pringle – by whose successor. Sir Hugh Cloberry Christian, he was appointed, as a reward for his presence of mind in saving that ship from being driven on a bed of rocks, to a Lieutenancy, 1 Aug. following, in thd Hope sloop, Capt. Augustus Brine. When next in L’Oiseau 36, Capt. Sam. Hood Linzee, to which ship he was confirmed by commission dated 22 June, 1799, Lieut. Gilchrist, in command of three boats, cut out a privateer and a laden brig from under a battery at St. Denis, Bourbon; and on another occasion, in only a six-oared cutter, he took two boats with 12 men under a desperate fire from numerous batteries and field-pieces in a harbour of the Isle of France. In the course of the same year he also bore part in an engagement of several hours with two French frigates; some time after the close of which he contrived by his owa personal exertions to prevent L’Oiseau, whose masts and rigging had been greatly damaged, from being lost on the Bellair’s Rock. His subsequent appointments were, on the East India and Home stations, frequently as First-Lieutenant, to the Rattlesnake 16, Capt. Roger Curtis, Diomede 50, Capt. Sam. Stottley, Lancaster 64, bearing the flag of Sir Roger Curtis, La Concorde 36, Capts. John Wood and John Cramer, Weymouth 36, Capt. John Draper, to the command of the El Corso receiving-ship, Maida 74, Capt. S. H. Linzee, and to the command of the Irresistible prison-ship, and Utile 16 – of these ships he had the good fortune of also preserving from destruction the Rattlesnake, Concorde, and Weymouth, as he likewise did, on her passage home, the Kron Prindtz Frederick, one of the Danish 74’s taken in 1807 at Copenhagen, at the siege of which place he had assisted as First of the Maida. Having been on half-pay since 1813, he at length became a Retired Commander on the Junior List, 26 Nov. 1830, from which he was promoted to the Senior, 1 Aug. 1843.
Commander Gilchrist, when in the Impregnable, fell from the mizen-top, fractured his skuU, tore the calf of his left leg, and greatly injured his arm; and in consideration of his sufferings he obtained a pension from the chest of Chatham. The injuries he experienced on other occasions have been numerous and extreme.