(brother to the Earl of Longford), and nearly the whole of his officers and crew perished, Dec. 4, 1811.
The Talbot was afterwards successively employed in affording protection to the Newfoundland and West India trade; and Captain Swaine continued to command her until April 28, 1814; on which day he was appointed to the Statira frigate, vacant by the death of Captain Hassard Stackpoole, who had fallen in a duel with Lieutenant Thomas Walbeoff Cecil, of the Argo 44[1].
In that ship. Captain Swaine returned home from Jamaica, and subsequently conveyed Sir Edward Pakenham and Major-General Gibbs, with a number of other military officers, to New Orleans[2]. We afterwards find him proceeding to St. Mary’s and Bermuda. Returning from the latter place to join Sir Alexander Cochrane, at Isle Dauphine, he again had the misfortune to be shipwrecked.
On the 26th Feb. 1815, at 10 A.M., being then off Cuba, the Statira struck upon a rock which was not laid down in the Admiralty charts, nor in any others that her commander had ever seen. All his endeavours to save her proved ineffectual, and she went down in about half an hour after the officers and crew were removed into a transport under her convoy. It is almost needless to add, that Captain Swaine was fully acquitted, when tried for the loss of his ship; it being proved that the existence of such a rock was totally unknown. He returned to England as passenger on board the Asia 74.
Captain Swaine married, in 1806, the eldest daughter of the late Rev. Charles Le Grice, of Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk; by which lady he has a son and three daughters.
Agent.– Messrs. Stilwell.
- ↑ Lieutenant Cecil, third son of the late William Cecil, of Duffryn, co. Monmouth, Esq. was shortly afterwards promoted into the Electra sloop, but died of the yellow fever, at Port Royal, Oct. 24, 1814. Some account of his family and services will be found in the Nav. Chron. Vol. xxxii, p. 478.
- ↑ See Vol. I, Part II, note at pp. 637–639.
