RICHARD BUDD VINCENT, Esq.
A Companion of the Most Honorable Military Order of the Bath.
[Post-Captain of 1805.]
This officer is a native of Newbury, in Berkshire, where his father resided for many years, as a banker. He commenced his naval career under the auspices of Vice-Admiral Barrington, and accompanied that officer to the relief of Gibraltar, in 1782. The Britannia, a first-rate, bearing his patron’s flag, appears to have been one of the ships particularly engaged in the subsequent skirmish between Lord Howe’s fleet and the enemies’ combined forces, off Cape Spartel; her loss on that occasion consisting of 8 men killed and 13 wounded, and the grand total being only 72 slain and 193 wounded[1].
From the peace of 1783, until his promotion to a Lieutenancy, Nov. 3, 1790, we find Mr. Vincent serving successively in the Salisbury 50, Trimmer sloop of war, Pegase and Carnatic third rates, and Prince of 98 guns: the former ship bearing the flag of Vice-Admiral I. Campbell, commander-in-Chief at Newfoundland; the latter, that of Sir John Jervis, in the grand fleet, during the Spanish armament.
Mr. Vincent’s first appointment as a Lieutenant, was to the Wasp sloop of war, employed in the Channel, for the suppression of smuggling. He subsequently joined, in succession, the Terrible 74, commanded by Captain Skeffington Lutwidge; Victory, a first rate, bearing the flag of Lord Hood, commander-in-chief on the Mediterranean station; and Triumph 74, commanded by the late Sir Erasmus Gower.
In 1793 and the two following years, Mr. Vincent saw much active service, the Terrible forming part of Lord Hood’s fleet at the occupation, defence, and evacuation of Toulon; as also during the siege of Corsica[2]; and the Triumph being one of the small squadron under Vice-Admiral Cornwallis, when that officer effected his masterly retreat in the face of a
- ↑ The British had 34 sail of the line. N.B. The Hon. Samuel Barrington, Senior Admiral of the White, and General of Marines, died at Bath, Aug. 16, 1800, in the 71st year of his age. A portrait and memoir of that highly distinguished officer will be found in the Naval Chronicle, vol. iv. p. 169 et seq.
- ↑ See memoirs of Viscount Keith, Lord Radstock, Admiral Purvis, Sir W. Sidney Smith, Admiral Wolseley, &c. &c. in our first volume.
