A Naval Biographical Dictionary/Laye, Henry Thomas
LAYE. (Lieutenant, 1836.)
Henry Thomas Laye entered the Navy, 26 April, 1823, as Fst.-cl. Vol., on board the Trinculo 18, Capt. Rodney Shannon, on the Irish station; and was afterwards, until 1829, employed, as Midshipman, in the Jasper 10, Capt. Henry Martin Blackwood, Jupiter 60, flag-ship at Halifax of Rear-Admiral Willoughby Thos. Lake, and Wellesley 74, Capt. Fred. Lewis Maitland – which latter ship, when in company with a French 74, enforced the evacuation of two places in the Mediterranean. During the period which elapsed between the date last mentioned and that of his promotion to the rank of Lieutenant, 10 Sept. 1836, we find him serving in the Mediterranean, North Sea, and East Indies, as Mate, on board the Donegal 78, Capts. John Dick and Arthur Fanshawe, and Jupiter again, employed at first as a troop-ship, under Master-Commander Richmond Easto, and then in escorting, under Capt. Hon. Fred Wm. Grey, the Earl of Auckland as Governor-General to India. The Donegal, we may add, bore the flag of Sir Pulteney Malcolm during the siege of Antwerp. As Lieutenant, Mr. Laye’s only appointments appear to have been – 12 Jan. 1837, to the Stag 46, bearing the broad pendant of Commodore Thos. Ball Sulivan in South America, where he was superseded in the early part of the following year – and 4 Nov. 1840, to the Endymion 44, commanded by his former Captain, Hon. F. W. Grey, with whom he continued until paid off at the close of 1843. During that period he visited the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and China, and was in the Yang-tse-Kiang previously to the pacification of Nanking. While there he commanded a detached force that escaladed the walls of Chin-Kiang-Foo, and, owing to the illness of the commanding officer, brought the Rattlesnake 28 down the river.