Genéréux, while employed in the blockade of Malta, assisted at the capture of la Diane French frigate, mounting 42 guns, but with only 114 men on board, the remainder having been landed at la Valette, to assist at the defence of that garrison[1].
In Aug. 1801, Mr. Dixon was appointed acting Lieutenant of the Alexander, in which ship he continued, under the command of his father, until she was paid off at Portsmouth, in Aug. 1802. His first commission bears date April 18, 1802. Lieutenant Dixon’s next appointment was, Oct. 1803, to be third of the Terrible 74, Captain Lord Henry Paulet, then employed in the blockade of the enemy’s ports, but subsequently forming part of the squadron under Sir R. J. Strachan, despatched to St. Helena in quest of an equal number of French line-of-battle-ships, one of which was commanded by Jerome, brother to Napoleon Buonaparte.
On the 19th May, 1806, Sir Richard J. Strachan again sailed from Plymouth in pursuit of the same French squadron; and on this occasion he was likewise accompanied by the Terrible. After cruising for some time off Madeira and the Canary islands, he proceeded to Barbadoes, where he received so good information, that the night of Aug. 18th fell upon both squadrons nearly in the same latitude, and within a degree of the same longitude; the British experiencing a tremendous hurricane in lat. 21° 25' N. long. 62° W. the enemy, in lat. 22° N. long. 63° W. The accidental circumstance of a day’s earlier departure from Carlisle bay, might have enabled Sir Richard to have crossed the path of the French Admiral, Mons. Villaumez, as the latter was returning to his cruising ground from the eastward, after unsuccessfully seeking for Jerome Buonaparte, who had unceremoniously quitted his protection, eighteen days before.
In the above hurricane, which continued with unabated violence for 36 hours, the Terrible was totally dismasted, and had all her boats either blown or washed away; her tiller broke, and the spare one was scarcely shipped before it did the same:– in this alarming situation, and left to the fury of
- ↑ La Diane struck to the squadron under Captain George Martin, after a chaae of some hours and a running fight with the Success frigate, Captain Shuldham Peard.
