Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall sp1.djvu/403

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382
POST-CAPTAINS OF 1808.

daughter of Henry Wedderburn, of Wedderburn and Birkhill, N.B. Esq. His eldest brother. Major Cathcart of the 19th dragoons, died in 1810.

Agent.– Joseph Dufaur, Esq.



ROBERT ELLIOT, Esq.
[Post-Captain of 1808.]

A native of Roxburghshire, N.B. and brother to Major-General Henry Elliot.

This officer was born in Oct. 1769; and he appears to have entered the navy in 1781, under the patronage of Captain (afterwards Rear-Admiral) Thomas Lenox Frederick, with whom he first went to sea in the Diomede 44, which ship was actively and very successfully employed on the North American station until the cessation of hostilities in 1783[1].

After passing his examination for a Lieutenant (1788), Mr. Elliot accepted a commission in the Swedish marine, promotion at home being unattainable by any one destitute of parliamentary interest. Some of the battles in which he bore a part have been briefly noticed at p. 292 et seq. of our first volume.

At the conclusion of the war between Gustavus and Catharine, Mr. Elliot returned to England; and in July 1793, we find him appointed senior Lieutenant of the Savage sloop of war. He subsequently served as first of the Greyhound frigate; and towards the close of 1796, obtained the command of the Plymouth hired lugger, in which vessel he captured two French privateers and several merchantmen, one of the former mounting 14 guns, with a complement of 55 men. His promotion to the rank of Commander took place Feb. 14, 1801.

During the remainder of the French revolutionary war, Captain Elliot commanded the Good Design armed ship, attached to the Egyptian expedition; and his name appears in the list of officers who were presented with gold medals by

  1. A biogrphical memoir of Rear-Admiral Frederick will be found in the Naval Chronicle, Vol. XXXVII, p. 265 et seq.