WILLIAM PEERE WILLIAMS FREEMAN, Esq.
(Late Williams.)
Senior Admiral of the Red.
This officer, who has recently obtained the royal permission to take and use the surname of Freeman, after passing through the subordinate ranks of Midshipman, Lieutenant, and Commander, was promoted to that of Post-Captain, Jan. 10, 1771, and served as such with great credit during the contest with our trans-atlantic colonies.
On the 10th Aug. 1780, Captain Williams being on a cruise off Ushant, in the Flora, of 42 guns and 259 men, fell in with an enemy’s frigate and a cutter, the former of which he captured after a most desperate action. She proved to be la Nymphe, of 32 guns, pierced for 40, and 291 men, 63 of whom, including her commander, were killed, and 73 wounded. The loss sustained by the Flora was 9 killed and 27 wounded. It is somewhat singular, that la Nymphe was taken by the Flora in the same manner in which she herself afterwards took the Cleopatra[1]; the wheel being shot away, she became ungovernable, fell on board her antagonist, and was carried by boarding[2].
In the month of March, in the ensuing year, Captain Williams accompanied the fleet under Vice-Admiral Darby, to the relief of Gibraltar[3], from whence he proceeded to Port Mahon. On the 29th May following, the Flora and Crescent, the latter commanded by the present Admiral Sir Thomas Pakenham, being near the coast of Barbary, on their passage from Minorca, and having recently escaped from a very superior Spanish squadron, fell in with two Dutch ships; but it then blowing a gale of wind, Captain Williams waited for a more favourable opportunity to bring them to
- ↑ See Viscount Exmouth.
- ↑ This appears to have been the first action in which a British man-of-war, mounting carronades, was engaged. The Flora had on board six pieces of ordnance of that description, (eighteen pounders) in addition to her 36 long guns. See James's Naval History, vol. i, note † at p. 63.
- ↑ See p. 4, at which place we should have remarked, that in addition to the annoyance afforded by the Spanish gun-boats, the enemy opened the whole of his land batteries, and continued to bombard the rock during the period that the British fleet remained in its vicinity; by which cruel proceeding a great part of the town was destroyed, and many of the inhabitants reduced to indigence and beggary.
