West, in Pembrokeshire, and connected with most of the principal families in that county.
This officer entered the royal navy at an early age, as midshipman on board l’Aigle frigate, Captain (now Admiral Sir Charles) Tyler, with whom he suffered shipwreck, near Tunis, in 1795. He then joined the Marlborough 74, Captain Thomas Sotheby, employed in the blockade of Cadiz; and subsequently the Warrior, of similar force, commanded by Captain Tyler, in which ship he continued during the remainder of the war.
The Warrior was with Lord Keith when that officer pursued the combined fleets of France and Spain from the Mediterranean to Brest, in Aug. 1799; from which period she was stationed off Ushant until the beginning of 1801, when we find her attached to the expedition under Sir Hyde Parker, destined to act against the Northern Confederacy. On the 2d April, 1801, Mr. Phillips was employed in her boats, rendering assistance to the Monarch 74, one of Lord Nelson’s supporters in his memorable attack upon the Danish line of defence before Copenhagen.
On her return home from the Baltic, the Warrior was ordered to join Sir James Saumarez, then commanding a squadron off Cadiz; from which station she proceeded to the West Indies, in company with some other ships, to watch the motions of a French force which had been sent against St. Domingo, immediately after the suspension of hostilities, in 1801. She was paid off at Plymouth, in the summer of 1802.
During the remainder of the peace of Amiens, Mr. Phillips, then a passed midshipman, served in the Spitfire sloop, on the Milford and Irish stations; and subsequently, in the Canopus 80, bearing the flag of Rear-Admiral (afterwards Sir George) Campbell, off Toulon. On his return to England, he was appointed sub-lieutenant of the Wrangler gun-brig, in which vessel’s six-oared cutter he captured le Bien-Aimé, French transport, lying under a battery of four guns, two field-pieces, and a mortar, near Etaples. For this service he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant,
