A Naval Biographical Dictionary/Hutchinson, Joshua
HUTCHINSON. (Lieut., 1833. f-p., 14; h-p., 9.)
Joshua Hutchinson is son of a veteran naval officer, now deceased, who had been wounded in the service of his country; and only brother of Wm. Hutchinson, Esq., R.N., who died while employed under Capt. Wm. Fitzwilliam Owen in the survey of the coast of Africa. One of his uncles. Commander Joshua Kneeshaw, R.N. (1814), lost his right arm in the service, received a gold medal for the capture of Glückstadt, and died 1 Nov. 1843, aged 70; and another, the late Lieut. Sam. Kneeshaw, R.N., died while Agent of a Transport on the African coast.
This officer entered the Navy, 12 June, 1824, as Fst.-cl. Vol., on board the Prince Regent 120, Capt. Wm. Henry Webley Parry, guard-ship at Chatham, and in the following year proceeded to the West Indies as Midshipman of the Bustard 10, Capt. Williams Sandom. After having there served for a short time with Capt. Hugh Patton on board the Isis 50, he returned home in Jan. 1827, and rejoined the Prince Regent, then commanded by Capt. Constantine Rich. Moorsom. He was next, for upwards of three years, employed in the Espoir 10, Capt. Henry Fras. Greville, at the Cape of Good Hope; and in Feb. 1831, having passed his examination on 20 of the previous Oct., he was appointed Mate of the St. Vincent 120, flag-ship in the Mediterranean of Hon. Sir Henry Hotham. Removing, in Nov. of the same year, to the Philomel 10, Capt. Wm. Smith, Mr. Hutchinson, on 4 of the ensuing March, had the misfortune to be very severely wounded by two musket-balls passing through his left hand and arm while he was in the act of boarding, from a boat, a Spanish smuggler near Gibraltar. He continued in the Philomel until Nov. 1832; and, on 11 Feb. 1833, as a reward for the gallantry he had evinced in the above affair, he was presented with a Lieutenant’s commission. His subsequent appointments were – 6 June, 1834, to the Talbot 28, Capt. Follett Walrond Pennell, with whom he served on the South American and East India stations until June, 1837 – 26 Jan. 1839, as Senior, to the Zebra 16, Capt. Robt. Fanshawe Stopford, on the Mediterranean station – and, 5 Oct. 1839, to the Bellerophon 80, Capt. Chas. John Austen. During the operations of 1840 on the coast of Syria, Lieut. Hutchinson volunteered with another officer to guard a mountain pass of great importance, called the Dog River, a very arduous service, which imposed upon him the necessity of being on the alert from sun-set to sun-rise for the purpose of burning blue lights in the event of an attempt made by the Egyptian troops to pass the bridge. His zeal, attention, and abihty in this, and in every other instance throughout the campaign, including the bombardment of St. Jean d’Acre, gained him the warm plaudits of Capt. Austen, as did his seamanlike conduct on the occasion of the Bellerophon being caught, 2 Dec. 1840, in a dreadful tempest, on a lee shore and iron-bound coast. He was paid off in June, 1841, and has not since been employed.
Lieut. Hutchinson is Senior of 1833. He married, in Aug. 1837, Hannah, daughter of J. Lacy, Esq., of Upleatham, Yorkshire.