SIR GEORGE RALPH COLLIER, Bart.
[Post-Captain of 1802.]
Knight Commander of the most honorable Military Order of the Bath; a Groom of the Bedchamber to H.R.H. the Duke of Gloucester; and a Member of the African Institution.
This lamented officer was the second son of the late Ralph Collier, Esq., many years chief Clerk in the Victualling department of the Royal Navy. He was born in 1774, and being intended for his Majesty’s naval service, received a suitable education at the Maritime Academy, Chelsea. During the Dutch and Spanish armaments we find him serving as a Midshipman on board the Carysfort frigate, commanded by Captain Matthew Smith; and we have been told by an officer who was his schoolfellow and messmate, that he was then not only a good astronomer, marine-surveyor, and draftsman, but that he was also very well acquainted with the French, Spanish, and Italian languages a combination of qualifications rarely to be met with in a young sea-officer at that period of our naval history.
We have no certain information respecting Mr, Collier’s services previous to 1799, in which year he served as first Lieutenant of the Isis, a 50-gun ship, bearing the flag of Vice-Admiral Mitchell, at the capture of a Dutch squadron in the Texel[1]; and being sent to England with that officer’s despatches, he was promoted to the rank of Commander, and appointed to the Victor of 18 guns and 120 men, in which vessel he greatly distinguished himself by his gallant and persevering action with la Fleche, a French corvette of 22 guns, which had recently landed a number of banished Frenchmen on the Seychelles, in the Indian Ocean, and was proceeding to cruise against our commerce in the Bay of Bengal. The following is a copy of his official letter on the occasion:
- ↑ See Vol. I. note at p. 414, et seq.
- ↑ The Victor had been employed conveying the troops sent from India to co-operate with the British army in Egypt: see Vol. II. part I. p. 467.
