in-chief on the Cape station, where he fell a sacrifice to the climate of Eastern Africa, having caught the fever of that country whilst prosecuting various interesting services which it does not fall within our province to record. He died on board the Andromache frigate, when returning from the island of Mombass to Mauritius, Sept. 4, 1824, having previously run down the western coast of Madagascar, visited the extensive bay of Bembatooka, passed the Comoros, and touched at the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba, belonging to the Imaun of Muscat.
ROBERT O’BRIEN, Esq.
Manager of the Dublin and London Steam Packet Company.
[Post-Captain of 1804.]
This officer is a brother of Sir Edward O’Brien, Bart. M.P. for the county of Clare in Ireland, and representative of a family, the elder branch of which received a patent of baronetage in 1686.
He obtained the rank of Lieutenant in 1797; was made a Commander in 1800; and posted into the Clorinde frigate, at Jamaica, May 1st 1804.
Captain O’Brien’s next appointment was, about Jan. 1813, to the Doris of 42 guns; and in the course of the same year, we find him escorting the outward bound trade to China. His subsequent proceedings in the East Indies met with the marked disapprobation of the Admiralty, as will be seen by the following official letter of their Lordship’s Secretary to the senior officer on that station, dated Feb. 17, 1816:
“Sir, Having laid before my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty a letter from Captain O’Brien, dated at Madras the 7th October last, stating that in consequence of the death of Rear-Admiral Sir George Burlton, and in the absence of Captain Sayer, of H.M.S. Leda, on a distant part of the station, he had assumed the temporary command in the Indian seas, removing from his proper ship the Doris into the Wellesley, and hoisting in the latter a Broad Pendant.
“I have their Lordships’ commands to signify their direction to you to express to Captain O’Brien their Lordships’ entire disapprobation of his presuming to hoist a Broad Pendant and assume a command contrary to the Rules of the Service, and without any kind of authority for so doing, and it is their Lordships’ further direction that. Captain O’Brien be imme-
