Royal Naval Biography/Rose, James
JAMES ROSE, Esq.
Knight of the Royal Swedish Order of the Sword.
[Commander.]
We first find this officer serving under Captain (afterwards Admiral) George Losack, in the Jupiter, of 50 guns. He obtained the rank of lieutenant in Sept. 1796; and was wounded, on board the Ardent 64, Captain R. R. Burgess, at the memorable battle of Camperdown, Oct. 11th, 1797[1]. In Feb. 1805, whilst commanding the Growler gun brig, he captured, after a running action of one hour and thirty minutes, a French national brig mounting two long 24-pounders, one long eighteen, and four swivels, with a complement of fifty men; and on the 25th of the following month, he succeeded in cutting off and securing two gunboats, with twenty-seven men on board, forming part of a division of flotilla, proceeding through the Passage du Raz. In July, 1807, the Growler, then attached to the blockading squadron in the Pertuis Breton, assisted at the capture and destruction of two armed chassé marées and twenty other coasting vessels[2].
Lieutenant Rose subsequently commanded the Crown prison-ship, in Portsmouth harbour, and the Hearty gun-brig, on the Heligoland station; where he was serving when promoted to his present rank, Oct. 7th, 1813. The operations in which he was principally engaged, whilst thus employed, have been detailed in our memoirs of Captains John M‘Kerlie, John Marshall, Arthur Farquhar, &c. The Order of the Sword was conferred upon him for his conduct at the siege of Gluckstadt. Mrs. Rose, to whom he was married when only a midshipman, died in Jan. 1810.