Hamlets’ militia, F.R.S. and F.S.A. who died Feb. 17, 1812, at the advanced age of 73 years.
He was promoted to the rank of Post-Captain, April 18, 1783, and during the Dutch and Spanish armaments, commanded the Carysfort of 28 guns. At the commencement of the French war, in 1793, he was appointed to the Diomede, a 50-gun ship, and ordered to the East Indies.
On the 22d Oct. 1794, the Diomede, being off the Mauritius, in company with the Centurion, a ship of similar force, fell in with a French squadron consisting of two frigates, one corvette, and a brig. After a smart action the enemy retreated into Port Louis, with the loss of 38 men killed and 87 wounded. The Diomede’s loss we have not been able to ascertain; but the Centurion, which ship appears to have borne the brunt of the action, had 27 men killed and wounded.
On the 2d Aug. in the following year, the Diomede, whilst turning into Back Bay, near Trincomalee, with a transport brig in tow, struck on a sunken rock which was supposed to be about half a mile further to the northward than its true situation, and after getting off sunk with all her stores on board about three miles to the northward of Flag-Staff Point. The Diomede, at the time this accident occurred, formed part of the squadron under Commodore Rainier, employed in the reduction of Trincomalee, which surrendered by capitulation on the 26th of the same month. During the latter part of the siege, Captain Smith commanded a detachment of 300 seamen and marines, landed to co-operate with the army, under Colonel J. Stuart[1].
- ↑ In the month of May 1795, the first official accounts reached India of the war between Great Britain and Holland, a report of which had some time before caused preparations to be made for that event. On the 1st of Aug. a squadron consisting of the Suffolk 74, bearing the broad pendant of Commodore Rainier, Centurion and Diomede 50’s, Heroine frigate, and several transports, having on board about 3000 troops, commanded by Colonel Stuart, anchored in Back Bay, Ceylon, and the commandant of Trincomalee was immediately summoned to surrender. On the 3d the troops were disembarked without opposition; but owing to the extraordinary high surf and the violence of the wind, it took ten days to land the whole of the stores and provisions. The carriage of these and of the artillery to the camp, a distance of about three miles, over a heavy sand, was cheerfully executed by the seamen. On the 23d, the batteries having been completed, were opened on the lower fort with such effect, that by the 26th, a practi-
