Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 42.djvu/351

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Otway
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Otway

demy. His contribution was a spirited but unfinished drawing of ‘The Battle of the Angels;’ and in the same year he was appointed keeper of prints in the British Museum, a post he retained till his death on 26 May 1836. Some vigorous pencil and tinted drawings, dated 1804, show mastery of drawing and imagination. Similar drawings are in the British Museum.

Although Ottley's writings did not reach a very high standard, and are now superseded, they were of much service in spreading knowledge and stimulating inquiry, and have furnished material for later writers. In the British Museum are catalogues of two sales of his pictures, in 1811 and 1837.

[Redgrave's Dict.; Bryan's Dict. ed. Graves and Armstrong; Engl. Cycl.]

C. M.


OTWAY, CÆSAR (1780–1842), miscellaneous writer, son of Loftus Otway, was born in 1780 in co. Tipperary of an English family long settled there. He matriculated at Trinity College, Dublin, on 6 Dec. 1796, being then sixteen years of age, graduated B.A. in 1801, and, after being ordained, was given the curacy of a country parish, where he remained seventeen years. His second appointment was to the assistant-chaplaincy of Leeson Street Magdalen Chapel, Dublin, where he became one of the leading preachers. In conjunction with Joseph Henderson Singer [q. v.], he started, in 1825, the ‘Christian Examiner,' the first Irish religious magazine associated with the established church. It was in this periodical that William Carleton, encouraged by Otway, begun his literary career. Otway was an enthusiastic antiquary and an admirer of Irish scenery, and he co-operated with George Petrie [q. v.] in the first volume of the ‘Dublin Penny Journal.’ in which he wrote under the pseudonym of ‘Terence O'Toole.’ He was also a contributor to the ‘Dublin University Magazine.’ Ill-health prevented him from realising his design of writing a history of Ireland, and of editing the works of Sir James Ware. He died in Dublin on 16 March 1842.

His works are: 1. ‘A Letter the Roman Catholic Priests of Ireland’ (signed ‘C. O.'), 8vo, 1814. 2. 'A Lecture on Miracles...with Appendices' 8vo, 1823. 3. ‘Sketches in Ireland,' anon. 8vo, 1827, 4. ‘A Tour in Connaught,' anon. 8vo, 1839. 5. ‘Sketches in Erris and Tyrawly,' anon. 8vo, 1841. 6. ‘The Intellectuality of Domestic Animals,' a lecture, 16mo, 1817.

[Athenæum, 1842, p. 294; Dublin University Magazine, vols. xiv. xix. (portrait), information from Dr. Ingram. Trin. Coll. Dublin; Wills's Irish Nation, iv. 456-8.]

D. J. O'D.


OTWAY, Sir ROBERT WALLER (1770–1846), admiral, seoond son of Cooks Otway of Castle Otway, co. Tipperary, by Elizabeth, daughter of Samuel Waller of Lisbrian, Tipperary, was born on 26 April 1770 (Foster). He entered the navy in April 784 on board the Elizabeth, guardship at Portsmouth, with Captain Robert Kingamill. In September 1785 he joined the Phaeton in the Mediterranean. The Phaeton was paid off in August 1786, and in November Otway joined the Trusty, going to the Mediterranean with the broad pennant of Commodore Cosby. On the return of the Trusty in February 1789, he was entered on board the Blonde, going to the West Indies, where, and on the coast of Africa, in different ships, he remained till promoted to the rank of lieutenant. on 8 Aug. 1793. In December he was appointed to the Impregnable of 98 guns, bearing the flag of rear-admiral Benjamin Caldwell [q.v.], and in her was present in the battle of l June 1794. On this occasion the Impregnable foretopsail-yard was badly injured, and Otway, accompanied by a midshipman, going aloft, succeeded in securing it so that the ship remained under control-a timely service, for which Caldwell publicly thanked him on the quarter-deck. Shortly afterwards, when, on his appointment as commander-in-chief in the West Indies, he shifted his flag to the Majestic, he took Otway with him as first lieutenant, and in the following January promoted him to the command of the Thorn sloop.

In her, in April, Otway captured La Belle Creole, a large schooner fitted out from Guadeloupe by Victor Hugues, in order to co-operate with the disaffected inhabitants of Saint-Pierre, Martinique, in burning the town and massacring the royalists, who, in acknowledgment of the service thus unwittingly rendered them, presented Otway with a sword valued at two hundred guineas. In May he captured the Courier National, a sloop of greatly superior force (cf. James i. 321). He afterwards rendered important assistance against the insurgents in St. Vincent and Grenada, and on 30 Oct. 1795 was posted by Sir John Laforey [q.v.], the new commander-in-chief, to the 32-gun frigate Mermaid (see Ralph, iv. 5 n.) In her, and afterwards in the Ceres of 32 guns and the Trent of 36, Otway, continuing in the West Indies for the next five years, had a singularly adventurous and successful career. He had an important share in the capture of Grenada in 1796; he cut out or destroyed several la privateers; and in July 1796, having information that the frigate Her-