SIR THOMAS STAINES,
[Post-Captain of 1806.]
Knight Commander of the Most Honorable Military Order of the Bath, Knight Commander of the Royal Sicilian Order of St. Ferdinand and of Merit, and Knight of the Imperial Ottoman Order of the Crescent.
This officer was born at Dent de Lion, near Margate, co. Kent, in 1776; and commenced his naval career at the beginning of Jan. 1790, from which period he served as a Midshipman on board the Solebay frigate, commanded by Captain Matthew Squire, on the West-India station, till the spring of 1792. We subsequently find him proceeding to the Mediterranean, under the command of Captain (now Commissioner) Cunningham, with whom he continued in various ships, from the commencement of the French revolutionary war, until the surrender of Calvi, in Aug. 1794. The services in which he was engaged during that period have been noticed at p. 76 et seq. of Vol. II. Part I.
Two days after the final subjugation of Corsica, Mr. Staines was removed from the Lowestoffe frigate into the Victory, a first rate, bearing the flag of Lord Hood, in which ship he assisted at the destruction of l’Alcide French 74, near Toulon, July 13, 1795[1]. He afterwards served as mate of the signals, under the immediate eye of Sir John Jervis, by whom he was made a Lieutenant, and appointed to the Peterel sloop, July 3, 1796.
In Dec. following, Lieutenant Staines landed on the coast of Corsica, which island had been recently evacuated by the British[2], where he took possession of a martello tower, and threw the gun, a long brass 12-pounder, over a precipice into the sea. This service was performed without any loss; but on returning to the Peterel. he found her aground within musket-shot of the beach, where she remained for three hours, exposed to a continual fire of small arms, by which 3 of her crew were wounded.
- ↑ The Victory then bore the flag of Rear-Admiral Mann. See Vol. I, p. 159.
- ↑ See id. note * at p.255.
