A Naval Biographical Dictionary/Higginson, George Montagu
HIGGINSON. (Retired Commander, 1835. f-p., 23; h-p., 40.)
George Montagu Higginson entered the Royal Naval Academy in 1784; and embarked, in 1787, as Midshipman, on board the Adventure 44, Capts. Parry and John Nicholson Inglefield. After two years of servitude on the coast of Africa in that vessel, he was next, until the commencement of the French revolutionary war, employed, on the Home and West India stations, in the Chichester store-ship, Lieut.-Commander Chas. Papps Price, Triton 20, Capt. Geo. Murray, and Hector 74, Capt. Geo. Montagu. Under the latter officer he witnessed the unsuccessful attack of 1793 upon Martinique. He then became Master’s Mate of the Alert 16, Capt. Chas. Smith, and in May, 1794, while on his passage out to America, he had the misfortune to be captured by the French 36-gun frigate Unité, after an action of an hour and 40 minutes, in which the British vessel sustained a loss of 3 men killed and 15 wounded. On his arrival at Rochefort Mr. Higginson, by a decree of the National Convention, was sentenced to death, together with the rest of his companions. They were thereupon all committed to a bare hulk, and for the space of three weeks were forced to subsist upon an allowance of one pound of black bread and a pint of sour wine each a-day, with the addition of some horse-bean broth, and of 14 ounces, per man, of meat in 10 days. Their sentence being at the expiration of that time commuted, they were marched to Cognac, without any alteration, however, being made in their rations. Medical aid, too, was totally denied to them, and in the course, in consequence, of 13 months, a full third of their number fell helpless victims to the ravages of sickness. Mr. Higginson himself was so inveterately attacked by fever that the upshot was a liver complaint, whose effects, continuing to be felt for many years, frequently incapacitated him from service. In July, 1795 having at length effected his escape, he joined the Prince 98, bearing the flag at Spithead of Admiral Harvey; from which ship he was soon, on 1 Sept. in the same year, promoted to a Lieutenancy in the Topaze 36, Capt. Stephen G. Church. When afterwards on the coast of North America, Mr. Higginson, about the close of 1797, was compelled, owing to injury received in the execution of his duty, to go to sick-quarters at Norfolk, in Virginia, where he suffered a relapse of his liver complaint. He ultimately found himself under the necessity, at a personal expense of 30l., of returning to England. During a few months in 1798, and again of a few in 1799, we find him employed at the Nore and in the Mediterranean on board the Hecla bomb and Defiance 74, Capts. Jas. Oughton and Thos. Revell Shivers, appointments which his health obliged him in each case to resign. At the commencement of the late war, being at the time in France for change of air, he was a second time made prisoner of war, and detained for a period of 14 months at Valenciennes, from which place he then had the fortune to contrive a flight. His next and last appointments were – in 1804-5, to the command of the Happy Return and Fly hired cutters, and Enchantress 10, on the Channel station – 29 March, 1806, to the Royal William, bearing the flag of Admiral Montagu at Spithead – and, 23 June, 1806, to the command of the Pigmy 14, which vessel, through the ignorance of her pilot, and at a moment when he himself was confined by illness to his bed, he lost, off Ile d’Oléron, 2 March, 1807. He remained thenceforward a captive in France until the peace of 1814. Unable afterwards to procure employment, our unlucky officer accepted the rank of Retired Commander on the Junior List 17 Jan. 1831; and on 19 March, 1835, he was promoted to the Senior List. Agent – J. Hinxman.