Aug. 1781, when he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant, in the Royal Oak, of 74 guns.
During his continuance in this ship, Mr. Williams, who had previously shared in the action between Vice-Admiral Arbuthnot and the Chevalier de Ternay[1], bore a part in the battles with Count de Grasse, Sept. 5, 1781[2], and April 9 and 12, 1782[3]; on which latter occasion, the Royal Oak, commanded by Captain Thomas Burnet, had 8 men killed and 30 wounded.
Lieutenant Williams’s next appointment was to the Argo, 44, Captain Butchert, which vessel, being on her return from Tortola to Antigua, fell in with, and after a warm action of five hours, during which period it blew so fresh that she could not open her lower-deck ports, was compelled to surrender to the French frigates la Nymphe and l’Amphitrite, each mounting 46 guns. She was, however, re-captured about 36 hours after, by the Invincible, 74; and Admiral Pigot, the Commander-in-Chief on that station, was so well pleased with the gallantry displayed by her officers, that, immediately after they had passed the usual ordeal of a Court-Mar tial, and obtained an honorable acquittal, he offered to re-appoint the whole of them to her. This proposal being accepted by Mr. Williams, he became first Lieutenant of the Argo, and continued in the same ship till the peace of 1783, when she returned to England, and was put out of commission. We subsequently find him in the Myrmidon, of 20 guns, whose Captain, the present Admiral Drury, was ordered to escort a beautiful yacht sent from England as a present to the Crown Prince of Denmark; which circumstance afforded Lieutenant Williams an opportunity of visiting the capital of that kingdom.
At the period of the Spanish armament (1790), our officer obtained an appointment to the Elephant, 74, commanded by the late Sir Charles Thomson, Bart.; and on the breaking out of the war with revolutionary France, he accompanied the same officer in the Vengeance, another third rate, to the West Indies; from whence he returned after the failure of an attack made upon Martinique by the forces under Rear-Admiral Gardner and Major-General Bruce, in June 1793[4].
