guard stations. It was superseded in official use by the adoption of Boxer's rocket in 1865. Dennett's rockets are said to have been sent to all parts of the world, and to have won for their inventor several honours from foreign sovereigns. A short time before his death, Dennett was appointed (apparently as some recognition of his services as an inventor) custodian of Carisbrooke Castle. He had a practical knowledge of antiquities, and was a corresponding member of the British Archæological Association. He contributed to its journal (vols. i.–v.) short accounts of various antiquities found in England, and read a paper on the barrows of the Isle of Wight at the Winchester congress of the association in 1845. He died on 10 July 1852.
[Gent. Mag. 1852, new series, xxxviii. 319–120; Journ. Brit. Arch. Assoc. 1854, p. 111; Archæological Journal, i. 391, ii. 83; Chambers's Encyclopædia, x. supplement, ‘Life Mortars and Rockets;’ Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th ed. ‘Lifeboat;’ Globe Encyclopædia, ‘Life-saving Apparatus;’ Cornhill Magazine, xxviii. 72.]
DENNIE, WILLIAM HENRY (1785?–1842), colonel, 13th light infantry, born about 1785, was son of Henry Dennie, barrister-at-law, of London, by his wife, Grace, daughter of William Steele, and granddaughter of Laurence Steele of Rathbride, co. Kildare, who married, secondly, Colonel William Kent, some time of 10th foot and afterwards of the Isle of Wight, and died in 1856 (Gent. Mag. new series, i. 122). Dennie's father appears to have had a brother (?) in the 38th foot, when that regiment was commanded by Colonel (afterwards General) Hon. Edward Fox, and through General Fox his widowed mother obtained for him an ensigncy in the 22nd foot, dated 1 Jan. 1800. He became lieutenant therein August 1804; captain, 4 Oct. 1810; and major, 19 April 1821. He first joined the regiment after its arrival in India in 1802, and won Lord Lake's approval by his conduct during some regimental disorder (Dennie; Shipp, i. 61). Dennie served with the regiment throughout Lord Lake's campaigns in India in 1804–5, at the capture of Mauritius (Isle of France) in 1810, and afterwards in Mauritius, Channel Islands, and Ireland. After obtaining his majority he exchanged to the 13th foot, which soon after was made light infantry and ordered to India. With the 13th foot he served during the first Burmese war, in which he distinguished himself on many occasions, and was severely wounded. For his services in Burmah he was made brevet lieutenant-colonel and C.B. He likewise served with the regiment in the ‘Army of the Indus’ in 1838–9. When General Nott was appointed to the second division of the army, Dennie succeeded to the command of his native brigade, and was employed in Scinde, Beloochistan, and Lower Afghanistan, which he considered the most arduous duty on which he was ever employed. His services were unacknowledged at headquarters, where there appears to have been a desire to make him a scapegoat for the administrative blundering incidental to Afghan campaigns. He led the storming party at the capture of the fortress of Ghuznee, where he was the first man within the walls after the blowing open of the gates. Dennie was in disfavour at headquarters at the time, and the Ghuznee honours conferred on some of his juniors in service and inferiors in army rank were withheld from him by an official quibble. Of this he complained respectfully but bitterly to the Indian authorities and the Horse Guards, without redress. Fierce, fiery, romantically chivalrous, as a writer in the ‘Bombay Gazette’ described him, Dennie appears to have been irritably impatient of acts of injustice to which he himself would have been no party, but which would scarcely have moved a less sensitive man. During the occupation of Cabul, Dennie was despatched with a small force in September 1840 against part of the army of Dost Mahomed, which, after a series of brilliantly executed manœuvres amid the fastnesses of the Hindu Khoosh (Seaton, Cadet to Colonel), he brought to battle at Bameean on 18 Sept. 1840, when with one thousand men he defeated ten thousand of the enemy, who lost over eight hundred killed and wounded. So decisive were the results that Dost Mahomed surrendered immediately afterwards, and the campaign came to an end. In October 1841 a force under Sir Robert Sale was sent from Cabul against a body of Afghan insurgents who had occupied the Khoord Cabul. These troops, of which the 13th light infantry formed part, seized the ruined fortress of Jellalabad, and rendered themselves ‘illustrious’ by its subsequent defence from November 1841 to April 1842. Dennie commanded the rear-guard in the operations in the Khoord Cabul between 9 Oct. and 30 Oct., and, when Sir Robert Sale was wounded, succeeded to the command of the force, which he held during the greater part of the famous defence of Jellalabad. He is said to have predicted the disaster to General Elphinstone's army, and even the receipt of the tidings by a solitary survivor, a prediction strangely fulfilled by the arrival of Dr. Brydone [q. v.] at Jellalabad (Seaton; Gleig). Dennie was shot through the body when on horseback at the head of his regiment, in the sortie from Jellalabad of 6 April 1842. The wound proved
