A Naval Biographical Dictionary/Palmer, William
PALMER. (Lieut., 1813. f-p., 12; h-p., 31.)
William Palmer, born 9 April, 1789, at Monkwearmouth, co. Durham, is son of Mr. Wm. Palmer, shipowner, of that place.
This officer entered the Navy, 12 Nov. 1804, as A.B., on board the Inconstant 36, Capt. Edw. Stirling Dickson, flag-ship for some time of Sir Edm. Nagle and Sir Jas. Saumarez on the coast of France. On his removal, as Master’s Mate, in April, 1808, to the Belle Poule 38, Capt. Jas. Brisbane, he sailed for the Mediterranean, where he was for nearly two years very actively employed, and assisted, in the course of 1809, at the capture of Le Var of 26 guns, laden with corn for the relief of the French garrison at Corfu, and at the reduction of the islands of Zante, Cephalonia, and Cerigo. Returning in the spring of 1810 to England in the Excellent 74, Capt. Edw. Griffith, he joined the Victory 100; in which ship, besides being for a long time stationed in the Baltic under the flag of Sir Jas. Saumarez, he escorted a body of troops sent in 1811 to the coast of Portugal under Sir Joseph Sydney Yorke. After serving for a few months off Cherbourg in the Lacedaemonian 38, Capt. Sam. Jackson, and again in the Baltic on borad the Defiance 74, flag-ship of Rear-Admiral Geo. Hope, Mr. Palmer was promoted, 17 Aug. 1813, to a Lieutenancy in the Rolla 10, Capts. Wm. Hill and Robt. Julyan; under the former of whom we find him present, in Feb. 1814, at the celebrated passage of the flotilla under Rear-Admiral Chas. Vinicombe Penrose across the bar of the Adour; on which occasion he had the good fortune to save the lives of two persons, whose boat had capsized. His last appointment was, 17 Dec. 1814, to the Amelia 38, Capt. Hon. Granville Leveson Proby, with whom he served in the Mediterranean until the summer of 1816. On 15 July, 1815, while engaged in the Amelia’s pinnace in an attempt to capture a French vessel of very superior force at Campo, in the island of Elba, he was wounded by a musket-ball, which entered his right side above the hip-joint, and has never been extracted. He was at the same time made prisoner, hut shortly afterwards exchanged.
Lieut. Palmer married, in 1830, Elizabeth, third daughter of the late Mr. Kingswood Greenwell, shipowner, and grand-daughter of the late Dr. Greenwell, of Scot’s House. He was left a widower, with one daughter, in Jan. 1844.