A Naval Biographical Dictionary/Wood, James Monypenny
WOOD. (Lieutenant, 1815. f-p., 11; h-p., 32.)
James Monypenny Wood entered the Navy, 12 Jan. 1804, as Fst.-cl. Vol., on board the Mosquito 18. While in that vessel under the command of Capt. Sam. Jackson be assisted at the capture, 13 April, 1805, of the French privateers Orestes and Pylades of 1 gun, 6 swivels, and 33 men each, escorted, towards the close of the same year, a fleet of transports with 5000 troops, &c., for Lord Cathcart’s army in Hanover, was engaged in several warm affairs with the Boulogne flotilla, and accompanied the expedition against Copenhagen. In Jan. 1808 (he had attained the rating of Midshipman in May, 1805) he removed to the Superb 74, also commanded by Capt. Sam. Jackson. After pursuing to the Mediterranean a French squadron which had effected its escape from Rochefort, he proceeded to the Baltic; where we find him present, in Aug. 1808, at the embarkation from Nyeborg of the Spanish army under the Marquis de la Romana. In the following winter the Superb was frozen up at Gottenborg, and was only extricated by a canal being cut by her crew through four miles of ice. In the summer of 1809 she formed part of the force employed in the attack upon Walcheren. On leaving her Mr. Wood became Master’s Mate, in Nov. of the same year, of the Désirée 36, Capt. Arthur Farquhar. In her he served for nearly three years in the North Sea and assisted at the capture of several of the enemy’s armed and other vessels. In Sept. 1812 he joined the Impregnable 98, Capt. Mackenzie, lying at Portsmouth; he was next, from March until Dec. 1813, employed, again with Capt. Jackson, as Master’s Mate, in the Lacedaemonian 38, on the coast of North America; and on 23 Feb. 1815 he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant. His last appointment was, for a short time in 1824, to the Dover 28, flag-ship of Sir John Poo Beresford at Leith. Agents – Messrs. Ommanney.