Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall sp2.djvu/150

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POST-CAPTAINS OF 1810.
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pushed on without waiting for the detachment of boats to assemble. On landing at Prota he found that the marines of the Canopus had attacked a large building situated on an eminence in the centre of the island, surrounded with a strong iron railing, and defended by at least one hundred Turks, two or three of whom were firing through each of its numerous loop-holes and windows. An attempt was now made to get part of the marines round to the left wing; and Lieutenant Willoughby, perceiving three men to be much exposed, was calling to them to stoop, when two pistol-balls struck him, one entering his head just above the right jaw, and, from the upward position of his face at the moment, taking a slanting direction towards the region of the brain, where it has ever since remained. The other shot cut his left cheek in two, and he lay, for more than six or seven minutes, apparently lifeless on the ground; but, at the very moment that his party began to retreat, one of his arms was observed to move, and he was carried off to the ship as one of whom no hopes were entertained. In short, so desperate was his case, that the surgeon of the Royal George also considered him to be mortally wounded, and officially reported him as such for three days afterwards.

The commissioned officers slain at Prota were Caption Kent, R.M. and Lieutenant Belli, of the Royal George; which latter gentleman, it will be remembered, was wounded when serving under Lieutenant Willoughby, at the capture of la Felicité, in March, 1804. Among the badly wounded were Messrs. John Alexander and John Wood Rouse, midshipmen, both of whom were with him when he so gallantly pursued the Turkish boats in the morning of the same day. It is worthy of remark, that Messrs. Willoughby, Belli, Alexander, and Rouse, all belonging to the same ship, were nearly touching one another when each received one or more of the Turkish shot.

Although Lieutenant Willoughby’s perseverance, gallantry, and sufferings, whilst employed in the sea of Marmora, were not publicly reported by Sir John T. Duckworth, with whom he had always been on the most friendly terms, his praise-