the news to Pym, who joined him on the 22nd with three powerful frigates; the force was overwhelmingly superior to the French, and Pym resolved to go into the port and take or destroy them. But as he attempted to do so on the 23rd two of his ships ran aground and could not be moved; a third, going on the wrong side of a shoal, was unable to get close enough in; the Néréide alone succeeded in reaching her allotted station, and found herself the target for the whole French force. After one of the most obstinate defences on record, being reduced to a shattered wreck and having lost 222 men killed or wounded out of a total of 281, she struck her colours on the morning of the 24th. The terrible loss of men was partly explained by the fact that the upper works of the ship—a French prize—were lined with fir, which, on being broken through by cannon shot, gave off showers of dangerous splinters. At the very beginning of the action one of these struck Willoughby on the left cheek and tore the eye completely out of the socket. The first lieutenant was killed; the second lieutenant dangerously wounded; the lieutenant of marines was also wounded; two lieutenants of soldiers were killed. When, after the capture of the Isle of France in December, Willoughby recovered his liberty and was tried for the loss of the Néréide, the court declared that the ship had been ‘carried into battle in a most judicious, officer-like, and gallant manner,’ and formally expressed ‘its high admiration of the noble conduct of the captain, officers, and ship's company during the whole of the unequal contest.’ The sentence, concluding with a ‘most honourable’ acquittal, has been correctly described as ‘unprecedented’ (Marshall).
On his return to England Willoughby was surveyed by a medical board, and on their report was awarded (4 Oct. 1811) a pension of 300l. per annum, which was afterwards (1 July 1815) increased to 550l. Meantime, in 1812, having no immediate prospect of employment, he obtained leave to go abroad, and went to the Baltic, where he offered his services as a volunteer to Sir Thomas Byam Martin [q. v.], then commanding in the Gulf of Riga. Learning, however, from Martin that there was no immediate prospect of any active operations, he went on to St. Petersburg, where his offer to serve with the Russian army was accepted. He was then sent to Riga, from which, on 26 Sept., he accompanied Count Steinheil, who, with a force of fifteen thousand men, was marching to join Wittgenstein at Polotzk. Before this could be effected Steinheil was surprised by a very inferior French detachment, and utterly routed with the loss of some two thousand men killed or taken prisoners. Among these latter was Willoughby, who had put a wounded Russian on his own horse, and was himself leading it when he fell into the hands of a party of French hussars. A Dutch officer in the French service befriended him and supplied him with money, so that he was able to make the terrible retreat from Russia with comparative comfort. Even so, however, the hardships he underwent told severely on a constitution already tried by wounds and a tropical climate, and at Königsberg he was seized with a fever which confined him to bed for seven weeks. Special representations had been made on his behalf by order of the czar, but Napoleon refused to exchange him, and on his return to France ordered him to be confined au secret in the Château de Bouillon. Here he remained for nine months, till, on the advance of the allies, he was moved to Peronne, whence he managed to escape.
On 4 Jan. 1815 Willoughby was nominated a C.B.; from 1818 to 1822 he commanded the Tribune frigate on the coast of Ireland and in the West Indies; on 30 June 1827 he was knighted at the instance of the Duke of Clarence, then lord high admiral, and again, by a curious blunder of the king's, on 21 Aug. 1832, when he was invested with the insignia of a K.C.H.; on 14 Jan. 1839 he was awarded a good-service pension, and on 30 Nov. 1841 was appointed a naval aide-de-camp to the queen. He was promoted to be rear-admiral on 28 April 1847, and died, unmarried, at his house in Montagu Street, Portman Square, after a fortnight's suffering, on 19 May 1849. It is said that by the seamen of his day he was known as ‘the immortal.’
A portrait of Willoughby is at Wollaton, the property of Lord Middleton, by whom it was lent to the Naval Exhibition of 1891.
[The Memoir in Marshall's Roy. Nav. Biogr. vi. (suppl. pt. ii.) 111 is unusually long (eighty-four pages), written apparently from notes supplied by Willoughby himself; that in O'Byrne's Nav. Biogr. Dict. is merely an abstract of Marshall's. See also Gent. Mag. 1849, ii. 648; James's Naval Hist. (1861 edit., in vol. vi. is an engraving of the Wollaton portrait); Troude's Batailles Navales de la France; official documents in the Public Record Office, more especially the Minutes of Courts Martial.]
WILLOUGHBY, RICHARD de (d. 1362), judge, was the son of a Richard de Willoughby who acted as justice in eyre
