In Oct. 1798, a vacancy occurring on board the flagship[1], Lieutenant Hancock was removed into her, agreeably to a promise which Sir Hyde had made immediately after the brilliant exploit at Jean Rabel; but it unluckily happened that that officer was recalled from the Jamaica station without having an opportunity of promoting him according to his expressed intention.
Mr. Hancock had not been long in the Queen before he became first Lieutenant; and it was principally through his exertions that she was brought to Port Royal in safety, after grounding on a shoal called the Three Fathom Bank, where she remained beating with great violence for 72 hours. It is scarcely necessary to add, that the preservation of such a ship from destruction must ever be considered a service of the highest importance, and as such it was viewed by Sir Hyde Parker and his Captain, both of whom expressed the most perfect approbation of Mr. Hancock’s meritorious conduct on this trying occasion.
Sir Hyde Parker was relieved by Lord Hugh Seymour, in August 1800; and from that period we find Mr. Hancock serving as his first Lieutenant in the Trent, Royal George, and London, until promoted to the rank of Commander, April 2, 1801. We should here remark, that those ships were severally commanded by the present Sir Robert Waller Otway, than whom no officer was ever more capable of rightly appreciating professional merit, and that he was pleased to bestow the warmest encomiums upon Lieutenant Hancock for the expeditious manner in which the London was got ready to act against the Northern Confederacy, he himself being absent on Admiralty leave during the greater part of the time that she was in the course of equipment.
At the celebrated battle of Copenhagen, Lieutenant Hancock was honored with the command of more than one hundred and fifty flat-bottomed and other boats, containing nearly 2000 seamen and troops, who were intended to storm the Trekroner battery the instant that the cannonade from
- ↑ The Queen, of 98 guns, Captain (now Rear-Admiral) Man Dobson.
