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PREFACE
The following pages will be found to comprise an account, more or less detailed, of nearly five thousand officers, including all those now deceased, (in number upwards of six hundred,) whose names are contained in the ‘Navy List’ for January, 1845. I have not the presumption to anticipate that I have, in every case, afforded satisfaction. He would, indeed, be over confident, and possess but a slight knowledge of human nature, who could for a moment believe that it was in his power to please so vast a number of persons as those who must of necessity be more or less interested in these records. All I can fairly hope, is that the result of my labours may be received with general favour, and that the desire I have felt to do entire justice to my subject may have proved successful to as great an extent as I could be warranted in expecting. A work of this character could not have been compiled without an extensive intercourse with the individuals to whose professional biography it is devoted; and it is with pride I confess my belief that no public writer was ever more honoured with the confidence of a profession than I have been with that of the Navy. With many, however, especially of the younger members, owing to their absence on foreign service, I have not been able to communicate; and some there are who, from a too fastidious feeling of modesty, or from accidental causes, have left me to my own resources. Whenever such difficulties have arisen, I have endeavoured, I trust not unsuccessfully, to overcome them so far as increased activity and perseverance could enable me so to do; and to obtain, from sources hardly less authentic, the materials of which fortuitous circumstances had deprived me. In all cases I have endeavoured to be as correct in my statements and as copious in my details as circumstances would permit.
For whatever errors may have crept, unconsciously on my part, into the memoirs of those who have afforded me information, I can only express my regret, and suggest as an excuse the impossibility, in a work embracing so immense a body of facts, of guarding against occasional inaccuracies. But these I trust and believe will be found to be of rare occurrence. I shall be equally sorry if faults of commission (and faults there must also be of omission) should present themselves in the histories of those who have disregarded the applications which I felt myself bound to make, in duty to them as well as to myself. In the
