Royal Naval Biography/Hilton, John
JOHN HILTON, Esq.
Knight of the Royal Sicilian Order of St. Ferdinand and of Merit.
[Commander.]
This officer obtained a lieutenant’s commission in Aug. 1806; and served as first of the Bustard sloop. Captain John Duff Markland, employed in the Gulf of Venice, and on the coast of Calabria, in 1809 and 1810. On the 24th July, in the latter year, he received four wounds, while attempting to burn an armed felucca, under Cape del Arme. On the 12th Oct. 1811, he obtained the royal authority to accept and wear the insignia of K.F.M. which His Sicilian Majesty had been pleased to confer upon him, “as a testimony of his royal approbation of the great courage and intrepidity displayed by him in various actions with the enemy’s vessels near Messina.” About the same period, he was appointed to the Ganymede 26, Captain John Brett Purvis; and at the close of the war, we find him in the Minstrel 20, Captain Robert Mitford, on the Mediterranean station. His promotion to the rank of commander took place on the 15th June, 1814.