A Naval Biographical Dictionary/Young, Matthew
YOUNG. (Retired Commander, 1839. f-p., 15 h-p., 34.)
Matthew Young was born in 1786.
This officer entered the Navy, 23 June, 1798 as a Supernumerary, on board the Tromp troop-ship Capt. Rich. Hill, employed on the coast of Ireland. After serving for a few months, part of the time as Midshipman, in the Prince 98, bearing the flag of Sir Chas. Cotton in the Channel and Mediterranean he joined the Loire 38, Capt. Jas. Newman Newman, and was in her present, in company with the Danaé 20, and Fairy, Harpy, and Railleur sloops, at the capture, 6 Feb. 1800, of the French 38-gun frigate Pallas under the fire of a battery on one of the Seven Islands. In March, 1801, having removed to the Scout 18, Capts. Geo. Ormsby and Henry Duncan, he was in that vessel wrecked, on the shingles, at the west end of the Isle of Wight. During the remainder of the war he served, in the Channel and Mediterranean, in the Brunswick 74, Capt. Geo. Hopewell Stephens. He next, in the course of 1803-4, joined, at Cork, at Portsmouth, and in the Channel, the Dryad 36, Capt. Wm. Domett, Windsor Castle 98, Capt. Albemarle Bertie, and Ville de Paris 110, bearing the flag of Hon. Wm. Cornwallis. In the ship last mentioned, of which he was created a Lieutenant 13 Feb. 1806, he was engaged in an attack made by the Admiral on the French fleet, close in with Brest Harbour, 22 Aug. 1805. His last appointment was, in Dec. 1806, to the Thames 32, Capt. Bridges Watkinson Taylor, stationed in the Downs and West Indies. On 20 Oct. 1807, while in charge of a prize Indiaman, he was captured by the enemy and taken to France, where he was detained a prisoner until May, 1814. He accepted the rank he now holds 15 July, 1839.
Commander Young has a son, Alfred, a Lieutenant R.N.