“I cannot sufficiently express to you the gallantry and coolness with which every individual officer, seaman, marine, and soldier, conducted himself during the two months we maintained this post, particularly during the last two days.”
The loss sustained by the navy on the 21st and 22d April, 1810, was 9 men killed, and 22, including two midshipmen, wounded.
In Mar. 1811, the Eagle was sent to the Adriatic, where Mr. Hotham received his first commission, appointing him lieutenant of that ship, and dated Feb. 12th, 1812. He had previously acted in the same capacity on board the Unité frigate. Captain Edwin Henry Chamberlayne, who made honorable mention of him, when reporting the capture of la Persanne French store-ship, mounting 26 long 9-pounders, with a complement of 190 men, from Corfu bound to Trieste, Nov. 29th, 1811[1].
On the 8th June, 1813, the boats of the Elizabeth (74) and Eagle, under Lieutenants Mitchell Roberts, Richard Greenaway, Martin Bennett, and William Hotham, destroyed a two-gun battery at Omago, on the coast of Istria, and brought out four vessels loaded with wine, which had been scuttled near that town. About 100 French soldiers were at the same time driven from thence by the marines of the two ships, under Captain John Hore Graham and Lieutenant Samuel Lloyd. Only one man was wounded in the execution of this service, “and the conduct of all the officers was highly creditable.”
The conspicuous part borne by the Eagle at the capture of Fiume, July 3d, 1813, has been fully noticed at p. 673, et seq. of Vol. I. Part II. On the fourth day afterwards, a party of her seamen and marines, under Lieutenants Greenaway, Hotham, and Lloyd, stormed and carried the fortress of Farasina (mounting five long 18-pounders), disabled the guns, and laid all the works in a heap of ruins. On this occasion, not a man was killed, and Mr. Hudson, midshipman, was the only person wounded.
- ↑ See Vol. II. Part II. note †, p. 803.
