as fourth viscount on 24 Oct. 1870, and died at Biarritz on 1 April 1883. He married on 26 July 1858, at the episcopal chapel, Trinity, near Edinburgh, Emily Marianne, youngest daughter of Major-general Sir Charles Ashworth [q. v.] and widow of the naturalist, Edward Forbes [q. v.] By her he had two surviving sons, Barry Nugent, fifth viscount (1859–1885), and Algernon William, sixth viscount. Yelverton's marriage episode was reproduced in the novel ‘Gentle Blood, or the Secret Marriage’ (Tait's Edinb. Mag. 1861), by James Roderick O'Flanagan, while Cyrus Redding [q. v.] based the plot of ‘A Wife and not a Wife’ (1867) on the story of Yelverton's Irish marriage.
[Burke's Peerage; Boase's Modern Biogr. s.v. ‘Avonmore’ and ‘Longworth;’ Allibone's Dict. of Engl. Lit. s.v. ‘Yelverton;’ authorities cited under Longworth, Maria Theresa.]
YEO, Sir JAMES LUCAS (1782–1818), commodore, son of James Yeo, formerly agent victualler at Minorca, was born at Southampton on 7 Oct. 1782. Both father and mother survived their son, the former dying a pensioner at Hampton Court Palace on 21 Jan. 1825, the latter at Boulogne on 13 Jan. 1822. As a child James was at a school at Bishop's Waltham, but was not much more than ten when, in March 1793, he was entered on board the Windsor Castle, going out to the Mediterranean as flagship of Rear-admiral Phillips Cosby [q. v.], whom he followed to the Alcide, returning to England with him in the end of 1794. In the spring of 1795 he joined the Orion with Captain John Thomas Duckworth [q. v.] in the Channel, and was shortly afterwards taken by Duckworth to the Leviathan, going out to Jamaica. On 20 Feb. 1797 Yeo was promoted to be lieutenant of the Albicore, in which he continued in the West Indies till, early in 1798, after a sharp attack of yellow fever, he was sent home. He was then appointed to the Veteran in the North Sea, and in December 1798 to the Charon, going to the Mediterranean, where in May 1800 he was moved into El Corso brig, with Commander William Ricketts. In her he was present at the siege of Genoa, and afterwards in the Adriatic, where on 26 Aug. 1800 the brig's boats, commanded by Yeo and covered by the Pigmy cutter, forced their way into the harbour of Cesenatico, burnt or sank thirteen merchant vessels, whose wrecks choked the harbour, and burnt the piers (Marshall, Royal Naval Biogr. iv. (vol. ii. pt. ii.) 689–690). In February 1802 Yeo was moved to the Généreux, and in her he returned to England. In February 1805 he was appointed to the Loire, with Captain Frederick Lewis Maitland [q. v.], and commanded her boats on several expeditions, particularly in Muros Bay on 4 June, where, after spiking the guns of a small battery, with only fifty men he stormed a closed fort in the town, spiked its guns—twelve 18-pounders—and made it possible for the Loire to seize a large privateer and some other vessels lying in the bay. The privateer was commissioned for the navy under the name of Confiance, and Yeo promoted to command her. His commission was dated 21 June 1805 (James, iv. 33–6).
In the Confiance Yeo was employed for the next two years at Lisbon. In November 1807 he was sent home with despatches by Sir William Sidney Smith [q. v.], and on 19 Dec. was promoted to the rank of captain. He was, however, continued in the Confiance and sent back to the Tagus, whence in the following spring he accompanied Smith to Brazil. From Rio de Janeiro he was sent in September to Para, where he suggested to the governor the practicability of taking Cayenne and French Guiana. The governor adopted the suggestion, and put Yeo in command of such Portuguese as he could add to his force; but when he landed at Cayenne on 7 Jan. 1809 he had in all only four hundred men with whom to attack a strongly fortified position mounting over two hundred guns of various sizes. When five weeks later the place surrendered, Yeo found himself with upwards of a thousand prisoners on his hands and no adequate means of securing them. For more than a month, till he received reinforcements, neither Yeo nor any of his officers and men slept out of their clothes. Most of them were attacked by fever, and Yeo, after being confined to bed for two months, was obliged to go to England to recruit his health. On his return to Rio the prince regent of Portugal presented him with a valuable diamond ring and nominated him a knight commander of St. Benedict of Aviz, an order of a semi-religious character; it is said that Yeo was the first protestant admitted to it. His acceptance of the order was approved by George III, and he was knighted on 16 March 1810 (ib. v. 73–7).
In 1811 Yeo commanded the Southampton frigate on the Jamaica station, and on 3 Feb. 1812 took, after an obstinate but very one-sided action, the Amethyste, a large piratical frigate which had been stolen from the Haytian emperor, Christophe, and fitted out by one Gaspard, a Frenchman, with a crew of seven hundred men, ‘a
