A Naval Biographical Dictionary/Rider, William Barnham
RIDER. (Commander, 1806.)
William Barnham Rider entered the Navy, in 1781, as A.B., on board the Crocodile, Capt. Jas. King, employed in the Channel; and in the course of the following year became Midshipman, under the same officer, of the Resistance, on the West India station. Between 1786 and the commencement of the French revolutionary war he served on the coast of Scotland, at Newfoundland, and in the Channel and Mediterranean, in the Scourge, Capt. Rich. Rundell Burgess, Pegasus, Capt. Herbert Sawyer, Salisbury 50, flag-ship of Admiral Milbanke, Prudente 38, Capt. Henry Trollope, and Britannia 100, bearing the flag of Admiral Hotham. He was afterwards, until the peace of Amiens, employed in the Mediterranean and Channel, as Lieutenant, on board the Diadem 64 and Aigle 38, both commanded by Capt. Chas. Tyler, St. George 98, Capt. Sampson Edwards, and San Josef 110, Capt. Wm. Wolseley. In the Diadem he took part, we believe, in Hotham’s first partial action 14 March, 1795; and in the Aigle he was wrecked, near Tunis, 18 July, 1798. During the two or three years which anteceded his promotion to the rank of Commander 22 Jan. 1806, he served at home in the Sea Fencibles and in the Galykheid 64, Capt. Isaac Wolley, Otter sloop, Capt. John Davies (a), and Antelope 50, flag-ship of Sir Wm. Sidney Smith. He subsequently commanded the Gorgon 44, and, for a long time, the Challenger sloop, on the Home and West India stations. On 20 Nov. 1810 he lost his commission by the sentence of a court-martial for returning home with despatches from the Lieutenant-Governor of Curaçoa without having obtained the previous authority of the naval Commander-in-Chief at Jamaica; but the court, feeling strongly that in the commission of this offence against professional etiquette he had been misled by error of judgment, arising from the best motives for the welfare of his king and country, earnestly recommended him to the favourable consideration of the Admiralty. He was in consequence restored to his former rank in March, 1811. He has since been on half-pay.
Commander Eider is married and has issue. Agent – Joseph Woodhead.