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A Naval Biographical Dictionary/Sparrow, Meyrick Bodychan

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1951276A Naval Biographical Dictionary — Sparrow, Meyrick BodychanWilliam Richard O'Byrne

SPARROW. (Lieutenant, 1813.)

Meyrick Bodychan Sparrow was born in 1791, and died about the commencement of 1848. He was eldest son of the late Bodychan Sparrow, Esq., by Martha, second daughter of Owen Meyrick, Esq., of Badorgan; and brother of Henry Wm. Sparrow, Esq., a Lieutenant in the Army, who died on his passage from India in 1826. Another of his brothers married the only daughter of Colonel Carey, R.A.; and his youngest sister married her first-cousin, the present Wm. Wynne Sparrow, Esq., of Red Hill, a Magistrate and Deputy-Lieutenant, who served as High Sheriff of Anglesey in 1822, and is a Commissioner of Assessed Taxes. His uncle, John Bodychan Sparrow, Esq., father of the latter gentleman, and High Sheriff of Anglesey in 1781, was at one time Major of the Royal Anglesey Regiment of Militia, and subsequently Lieutenant-Colonel Commandant of the Anglesey Local Militia.

This officer entered the Navy, 20 Jan. 1804, as Fst.-cl. Vol., on board the Endymion 40, Capts. Hon. Chas. Paget and Hon. Thos. Bladen Capel in which frigate he assisted as Midshipman at the capture, 18 June, 1805, of La Colombe French corvette of 16 guns, and was present, in 1807, at the passage of the Dardanells. He continued employed in the Mediterranean until 1810; he next, in July of that year, joined the Royal William, Capt. Robt. Hall, lying at Spithead; and on subsequently proceeding in the Satellite sloop, Capt. John Porteous, to the Brazils, he was made Lieutenant, 21 April, 1813, into the Montagu 74, bearing the flag of Rear-Admiral Manley Dixon. He was placed on half-pay in the following Nov.; and served afterwards, from Feb. to June, 1815, in the Phoebe 36, Capt. Jas. Hillyar, in the Channel. Agents – Hallett and Robinson.