A Naval Biographical Dictionary/Dwyer, Michael
DWYER. (Commander, 1842. f-p., 13; h-p., 30.)
Michael Dwyer entered the Navy, 17 Nov. 1804, as A.B., on board the Galgo sloop, Capt. Michael Dodd. From July, 1805, until the year 1812, he successively served, as Midshipman and Master’s Mate, in the Unité 36, Capt. Chas. Ogle, Queen 98, Capt. Fras. Pender, Zealous 74, Capts. John Giffard and Wm. Pierrepont, Bulwark 74, Capt. Hon. Chas. Elphinstoue Fleeming, Téméraire 98, bearing the flag of Rear-Admiral Fras. Pickmore, Unité again, Capt. Edwin Henry Chamberlayne, and Weasel and Minstrel sloops, both commanded by Capt. John Strutt Peyton. During that period, among other services, Mr. Dwyer was actively employed in the blockade of Carthagena and of Toulon, and at the siege of Cadiz; and, when in the Unité, he took part, on 1 May, 1811, in a very gallant action of an hour and a half in Sagone Bay, where that frigate, in company with the Pomone 38, and Scout 18, effectually destroyed the two armed store-ships Giraffe and Nourrice, each mounting from 20 to 30 guns, and protected by a 5-gun battery, a martello tower, and a body of about 200 regular troops. On 4 July in the same year he further contributed, in the Unité’s boats, under Lieut. Joseph Wm. Crabb, to the capture, beneath a shower of grape from a battery at Port Hercule, on the Roman coast, of the armed and vigorously defended brig St. François de Paule; and, in the course of the same day, he assisted Capt. A. W. J. Clifford, of the Cephalus, in very spiritedly cutting out three merchant-vessels from between Civita Vecchia and the mouth of the Tiber.[1] On 12 Aug. 1812 – (he had been unknowingly promoted to the rank of Lieutenant by commission dated 21 of the previous March) – we find Mr. Dwyer landing from the Minstrel (as a preliminary step to the capture of three privateers, two of which had been hauled on shore in the port of Biendom, near Alicant), and, at the head of a party of only seven men, successfully storming, in face of a desperate resistance, a battery of 6 9-pounders, garrisoned by eighty Genoese, the crews of the two vessels alluded to. Before, however, Mr. Dwyer and his little band of heroes, after spiking the guns of the battery, could regain their boat, they were surrounded by a detachment of 200 French troops, and were ultimately overwhelmed; but not until, of the British handful, 1 man had been killed, the 6 others desperately wounded, and their gallant leader stabbed by a bayonet in seventeen different places of his left arm and side, besides receiving, as in other parts of his body, a desperate gun-shot wound through the right shoulder, which has ever since deprived him of the use of that arm. We may add that, in admiration of their consummate valour, the prisoners were at once set at liberty by their generous enemy; and that Mr. Dwyer, who, as a matter of course, afterwards obtained a pension for his wounds of 91l. 5s., was also presented with an elegant sword by the Patriotic Society. Being next appointed, 16 July, 1813, to the Révolutionnaire 38, Capt. John Chas. Woolcombe, he occasionally served in the trenches at the ensuing siege of St. Sebastian, and materially hastened the fall of that important place by commanding the division of boats which stormed and captured the island of Sta. Clara. He afterwards made a voyage to China, and when at the Cape of Good Hope, in July, 1816, was the chief instrument, by his energy and activity, of saving the Révolutionnaire and her consort the Zebra from destruction, both those vessels having been stranded, during a tremendoust hurricane, in Simon’s Bay. Quitting the Révolutionnaire in Dec. 1816, Lieut. Dwyer subsequently commanded the Bittern tender, of 10 guns, on the Plymouth station, from 12 Nov. 1824, until 7 Jan. 1826; and, on 9 March, 1842, he was appointed to the Fearless surveying-steamer, Capt. Fred. Bullock. Being in command of that vessel on the occasion of the Queen’s visit to Scotland, he was at length, on Her Majesty’s return, promoted to the rank he now holds, 21 Sept. 1842. He has not since been afloat. Agent – J. Hinxman.
- ↑ Vide Gaz. 1811, p. 1864.