A Naval Biographical Dictionary/Nugent, John

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NUGENT. (Commander, 1841. f-p., 48; h-p., 6.)

John Nugent, born in March, 1782, is second son of the late Jas. Nugent, of Ballynacorr, co. Westmeath, a Count of the Germanic or Holy Roman Empire, by his second wife, Matilda, daughter of Con O’Donel, Esq., of Larkfield, co. Leitrim, and neice, maternally, of Sir Neale O’Donnel, Bart. One of his brothers, Constantine, a Lieutenant in the 64th Regt. of Foot, was wounded at the capture of the Virgin Islands in 1801, and died soon afterwards at St. Christopher’s; and another, Thos. D’Alton, entering the Austrian service in 1819, under the auspices of his kinsman, Field-Marshal Prince Nugent, as Lieutenant in the 4th Imperial Guards, became a Captain in Prince Nugent’s own Regiment of Foot. The eminent family to which Commander Nugent belongs is closely connected with most of the chief houses in Ireland, and in its history is identified with the principal events in tlio annals of that country. His father’s first wife was a niece of the Marchioness of Buckingham and of Robt. Nugent Lord Clare; and he had inherited his title in right of his mother, a sister of Christopher, Count D’Alton, Field-Marshal in the service of Austria. Commander Nugent is uncle of the present Count Nugent.

This officer entered the Navy, 25 April, 1793, as Captain’s Servant, on board the Raisonnable 64, Capt. Lord Cranstoun; and in the following month joined the Invincible 74, commanded at first by his patron, Capt. Hon. Thos. Pakenham, and next by Capt. Lawrence Wm. Halsted. In the course of the same year he assisted at the destruction of a convoy under the batteries at Barfleur; he was present, in 1794, in Lord Howe’s actions of 28 and 29 May and 1 June; and, in 1795, after participating in Lord Bridport’s action, he accompanied an expedition sent to co-operate with the Royalists in Quiberon Bay. Between Oct. in the latter year and Oct. 1799 he became in succession attached, chiefly in the capacity of Midshipman, to the Juste 80, Capts. Hon. T. Pakenham, John Lawford, and Wm. Hancock Kelly, Latona 38, Capt. Hon. Arthur Kaye Legge, Princess Royal 98, flag-ship of Rear-Admirals Sir John Orde and Thos. Lennox Frederick, and Ville de Paris 110 and Queen Charlotte 100, bearing the flags of Earl St. Vincent and Lord Keith. In the boats of the Princess Royal we find him frequently engaged with the enemy’s gun-boats off Cadiz; and in the Ville de Paris present as Signal-Midshipman at the capture, 19 June, 1799, of Rear-Admiral Perrée’s squadron of three frigates and two brigs. We may here observe that he had been appointed Signal-Midshipman of the latter ship on promotion by Lord St. Vincent as a reward for the promptitude with which on a certain occasion he had repeated that nobleman’s signals in the Princess Royal. During the term of his servitude in the Queen Charlotte Mr. Nugent was often employed in the boats under Lord Cochrane in action with Spanish gun-vessels; and he was in her when the combined fleets of France and Spain were pursued into Brest. Towards the close of 1799 he was invested with the rank of Acting-Lieutenant and the command of the Welkin gun-boat. In that vessel he succeeded soon afterwards in recapturing a Danish brig from two French privateers, under the batteries of Ceuta, and behaved in a manner so extremely gallant that his conduct was reported to Lord Keith in the most flattering manner by Capt. Jas. Newman Newman of the Loire frigate, an eyewitness of the exploit, in which, it must be added, Mr. Nugent was slightly wounded. Being confirmed in the rank of Lieutenant by commission dated 15 Jan. 1800, he was successively appointed in that capacity – 14 Sept. following, for two years, to the Phoenix 36, Capt. Lawrence Wm. Halsted – between Aug. 1803 and March, 1805, to the command of the Trial, Stag, Industry, Fox, and Nile cutters – on 1 of the month last mentioned, to the Agincourt 64, Capt. Thos. Briggs – 13 July, 1805, to the command, which he retained for nine years, of the Strenuous brig of 14 guns – and 4 Nov. 1814, as First, to the Cornwallis 74. In the Phoenix besides commanding her boats, in conjunction with the present Admiral Christian, at the cutting out of several vessels under a battery near Piombino, he accompanied the expedition of 1801 to Egypt, and assisted at the capture, 3 Aug. and 2 Sept. in that year, of the French frigates Carrère, Succès and Bravoure. During his command of the Fox and Nile he effected several recaptures, drove on shore and destroyed three lugger privateers, and was slightly wounded while cutting out a richlyladen vessel from under the batteries at Dieppe. In the Strenuous Lieut. Nugent performed many dashing services. On 12 Oct. 1806 he took part in an action of an hour and a quarter, fought in the Bay of Erqui, between a British squadron, consisting, with the Strenuous, of the Constance 22, Sheldrake 16, and Britannia cutter, on the one hand, and, on the other, of the Salamandre of 26 guns and 80 men, a 2-gun battery planted on a hill, and one or two field-pieces, together with a few troops on the beach; the result whereof was the surrender of the enemy’s ship, after a loss to herself of about 29 men killed, independently of several wounded, and to the British of 10 killed and 23 wounded. The letter which apprized the Admiralty of the achievement we have here detailed also bore testimony to the zeal and bravery of Lieut. Nugent, declaring him, on the present, as well as on former occasions, to have shown himself a gallant and anxious officer.^[1] In the following year he retook the Lord Middleton, a rich West Indiaman, and another vessel, the Fame, of Dublin, and, after a long chase, drove on shore, on the Ile de Bas, the French schooner privateer Étoile, by whom the two former had been originally captured. In 1808 the Lieutenant performed a very neat exploit. A French frigate being in the act of fitting out at St. Maloes, he disguised his brig and stood into that harbour. Shortly after he had entered it he was approached by a cutter, rowing 12 oars, under the orders of the First-Lieutenant. Of this boat, and of all who were in her, he took instant possession; he then poured three broadsides into the frigate; and before either she or the batteries could bring a gun to bear upon him he was off and again at sea. In 1809 he brought out a vessel laden with oak timber from under the batteries at Cherbourg. On the next night, while engaged in a similar affair, he had several men killed and wounded in his boats; and on the following morning he captured a valuable American brig. In Sept. of the same year he made prize, off the Naze, of the Dorothea Catharina Danish privateer, of 6 guns and 35 men. He subsequently, in 1810, chased the French brig-of-war Le Cygne into Cherbourg, seizing, simultaneously, one of her boats, commanded by a Lieutenant; and, on 10 Aug. in that year, he attacked and drove on the rocks, on the coast of Norway, although under the protection of a three-masted schooner and another armed vessel, a convoy of 10 sail, two of which his boats succeeded in bringing off.^[2] A few weeks afterwards he chased on shore and destroyed, on different occasions, the Danish privateers Aelbergh of 8 guns and 30 men, and Popham, of 3 guns and 10 men, together with the Troforte, a brig laden with rye and barley.^[3] Independently of many other affairs equally creditable to his zeal and activity, we find him, in 1813, capturing another privateer (the Dansbergh of 4 guns and 24 men^[4]), driving three gun-boats on shore, and recapturing and destroying a Swedish galliot frozen up at Carlscrona. We are informed that he also assisted in reducing the Danish island of Udsire. On becoming, as above, First-Lieutenant of the Cornwallis, Mr. Nugent fitted that ship for the flag of Sir Geo. Burlton; finding then, however, that the Admiral intended taking a follower and an officer junior to him in rank as his First-Lieutenant, he resigned his appointment, but had the satisfaction, in doing so, of receiving very high testimonials as well from Sir Geo. Burlton himself as from the Flag-Captain. He next, 22 Nov. 1816, obtained command of the Greyhound Revenue-cruizer; in which vessel, during the three years and upwards that he continued in her, he made an unprecedented number of seizures. Since 11 Oct. 1823 he has been employed under the Treasury as an Inspecting-Commander of the Coast Guard in the North-West district of Ireland. Notwithstanding the long train of valuable services we have above recorded, added to others performed in the situation he at present fills, he was not advanced to the rank of Commander until 23 Nov. 1841!

We may add that, when in the Strenuous in 1807, Commander Nugent jumped overboard in the Race of Alderney and saved the life of a Gunner’s Mate, Mr. Jas. Sinnott. In 1818 he rescued the lives of a Coast Guard crew and also of two excisemen; and in 1827 he saved, in co. Mayo, the lives of the crew of the Maria of Galway. On two occasions, when in the Greyhound, it fell to his lot to be desperately assaulted and beaten by smugglers – once at Hastings in Sussex, and once at Portland in Dorset. Although reduced in each instance to the necessity of being long under medical treatment, he never received the least compensation. His humane exertions in the cause of others, however, have been acknowledged by the presentation to him of a medal and several small pieces of plate. A sword, during the war, was voted to him by the Patriotic Society in consideration of his wounds. Agents – Burnett and Holmes.

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1. Vide Gaz. 1806, p. 1364. – In the preceding month he had assisted, in company with the Constance and Abeona gun-brig, in driving the Salamandre on shore, and by his exertions had excited (Vide Gaz. 1806, p. 1235) the highest approbation of Sir James Saumarez.
2. Vide Gaz. 1810, p. 1285.
3. Vide Gaz. 1810, p. 1582.
4. Vide Gaz. 1813, p. 2406.