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174

ADDENDA

to post-captains of 1801.




ALEXANDER WILMOT SCHOMBERG, Esq.
[Post-Captain of 1801.]

The Schombergs are a branch of the family of the Duke of Schomberg, who commanded the King’s troops, and fell at the battle of the Boyne, aged 80 years. They first came over to England with William III., and are the only family of that name in these dominions.

The subject of the following memoir is the eldest son of the late Captain Sir Alexander Schomberg, R.N. by Mary Susannah Arabella, only child of the Rev. Henry Chalmers, and niece to Sir Edmund Aleyn, Bart.[1]

Mr. Alexander Wilmot Schomberg was born in 1775, and first went to sea, at the age of ten years, in the Dorset yacht, commanded by his father, of whose services we have given a brief account in p. 817 of Vol. II. Part II. In 1788, he joined the Porcupine 24, Captain Lambert Brabazon, stationed on the N.W. coast of Ireland; and in 1789, the Lowestoffe 32, Captain Edmund Dodd, employed in the English Channel. We subsequently find him in the Trusty 50, bearing the flag of Sir John Laforey, commander-in-chief at the Leeward Islands, by whom he was appointed to act as lieutenant of the Nautilus sloop. Captain (now Lord Henry) Paulet, immediately after the capture of Tobago, in April, 1793[2].

On the arrival of the expedition sent from England to re-

  1. Lady Schomberg was an heiress on her mother’s side, and possessed of an estate called the Priory, in Essex.
  2. See Vol. I. note at p. 514.