A Naval Biographical Dictionary/Paynter, James Aylmer Dorset
PAYNTER. (Commander, 1846.)
James Aylmer Dorset Paynter entered the Navy 1 Jan. 1826; passed his examination 11 Feb. 1833; and at the period of his promotion to the rank of Lieutenant, 23 Nov. 1841, was serving in the Mediterranean, as Mate, on board the Vernon 50, Capt. Wm. Walpole. His succeeding appointments were – 5 Feb. 1842, to the Agincourt 72, fitting for the flag of Sir Thos. John Cochrane, Commander-in-Chief in the East Indies – and, 6 July, 1846, to the command, on that station, of the Royalist brig. On 19 Aug. 1845, assuming charge ot the Agincourt’s barge, he served with the boats of a squadron, carrying altogether 530 officers, seamen, and marines, at the destruction, under Capt. Chas. Talbot, of the piratical settlement of Malloodoo, on the north end of the island of Borneo, where the British encountered an earnest opposition, and sustained a loss of 6 men killed and 15 wounded.[1] In July, 1846, during an expedition conducted by Sir Thos. Cochrane against the Sultan of Borneo, he contributed, as officer in command of the field-piece and rocket brigade, to the capture and destruction, on 8 of that month, of the enemy’s forts and batteries on the river Brune. While ascending that stream he appears to have been lent to the Phlegethon steamer, and to have so astonished and dismayed the enemy assembled on the banks by the admirable nature of the fire he kept up that they precipitately fled.[2] As a reward for his meritorious conduct he was advanced to his present rank by a commission bearing date 8 July, 1846. He was in consequence superseded in the command of the Royalist, to which he had been appointed as above, and is now on half-pay. Agents – Messrs. Halford and Co.