Lord Nelson, who most kindly received him on board the Victory, in which ship he had the honor of serving as forecastle-mate at the glorious battle of Trafalgar. On her being put out of commission he obtained a warm recommendation from Sir Thomas Masterman Hardy to Captain Brydges W. Taylor, who immediately consented to his joining the Thames 32, a new frigate, then fitting out at Chatham. By the latter amiable officer, whose subsequent melancholy fate we have elsewhere recorded, he was introduced in a very particular manner to Lords Hawkesbury and Amherst, with other distinguished personages, who soon afterwards embarked in the Thames to view the French coast, and the grand encampment of Napoleon’s “Army of England.” Captain Taylor also did Mr. Robertson the honor of taking him into his own boat, when the first attempt was made, under the orders of Commodore Owen, to destroy the Boulogne flotilla, by means of Congreve rockets.
In the summer of 1806, the Thames accompanied the Phoebe 36, Captain James Oswald, to the Greenland Seas, in pursuit of some French frigates which had been sent thither to interrupt our whalers. On her return from thence, she was ordered to the West Indies, where we find Mr. Robertson joining the Northumberland 74, bearing the flag of Rear-Admiral the Hon. Sir Alexander Cochrane, in April, 1807. Some months afterwards, he followed that officer into the Belleisle 74; and served as mate of the signals at the capture of the Danish islands[1]. In Feb. 1808, he was appointed lieutenant of the Galatea frigate, vice Boyle, whose death at sea had been reported, but whom his intended successor found sitting at the captain’s table, giving not only the most convincing proofs of his being still alive, but also in the best of health and spirits.
On re-joining the flag-ship, which he could not do until April, Mr. Robertson had the mortification to find that several real death vacancies had occurred, and been given to others, during his absence; the rear-admiral, of course, con-
