A Naval Biographical Dictionary/Brown, Thomas
BROWN. (Vice-Admiral of the Red, 1846.)
Thomas Brown, when a Lieutenant of the Flora, commanded a gun-launch during the operations in Egypt in 1801, and for his services obtained the Turkish gold medal. In command of the Orestes he was frequently, in 1804-5, in action with the enemy’s flotilla between Dunkerque, Calais, and Boulogne. On one occasion he captured two armed schuyts; and on another he engaged and drove into port in a sinking state a praam of 18 guns, bearing the flag of a Rear-Admiral, and at the time in company with many other vessels. In July, 1805, he volunteered to endeavour to discover a passage for leading a British squadron into Dunkerque. While he was so employed the Orestes, at the commencement of an ebb-tide, took the ground on the Bree-Sand. The enemy’s shot soon passing through her hull, and their flotilla dropping down, it was found necessary to blow her up, to prevent her from falling into their hands. In the Solebay Capt. Brown, in 1808, chased a French frigate into Cherbourg; and in the Vengeur, in 1811, he united with the Venerable 74, Capt. Sir Home Popham, in driving into the same port two line-of-battle ships and a frigate. The Loire, while he was in her, compelled the American ship President to put into New York, twice engaged Commodore Barney’s flotilla of gunboats in the Patuxent, and was otherwise actively employed both in that river and the Potomac under Sir Geo. Cockburn. During his stay in the Chesapeake Capt. Brown, on more occasions than one, landed with the seamen and marines. From the early part of 1837 until he was promoted to Flag-rank he filled the appointment of extra Naval Aide-de-Camp to His late and Her present Majesty.