Royal Naval Biography/Ferrier, John
JOHN FERRIER, Esq
Vice-Admiral of the Red.
This officer obtained the rank of Post-Captain, Nov. 22, 1790. In the spring of 1796, he was appointed to the command of the York, of 64 guns, in which ship he served on the Jamaica station during a period of five years. In the autumn of 1801, when Lord Nelson meditated an attack on Flushing, Captain Ferrier was employed under the orders of his Lordship, whose esteem he acquired, as will be seen by the following extract from a letter written by that Admiral to the Earl of St. Vincent, then first Lord of the Admiralty: “Captain Ferrier you do not know, therefore it becomes me to tell you, that his ship is in the very first order, and that he is a man of sense, and as steady as old Time himself; I am much pleased with his regularity and punctuality.”
On the recommencement of hostilities, in 1803, Captain Ferrier was appointed to the Albion, of 74 guns, and proceeded in her to the East Indies. A few days after the discomfiture of the French Admiral Linois, by a fleet of deep-laden Indiamen, commanded by Captain Dance, that officer fortunately fell in with the Albion and Sceptre, in the Straits of Malacca; and Captain Dance having represented to Captain Ferrier the great national consequence of the Honorable Company’s ships, he was induced to convoy them to St. Helena, where they arrived in safety June 9th, 1804.
Captain Ferrier was promoted to the rank of Rear-Admiral, July 31, 1810; and towards the latter end of that year was appointed to a command in the North Sea fleet. He accordingly hoisted his flag in the Bellerophon, of 74 guns, where it continued until the commencement of the year 1813, when he shifted it into the Scarborough, of the same force. He was made a Vice-Admiral on the 4th June, 1814.