Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall sp3.djvu/402

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POST-CAPTAINS OF 1814.
381


HON. KENELM SOMERVILLE,
[Post-Captain of 1814.]

A son of the late Hon. Hugh Somerville, a colonel in the army, by his second lady, Mary, eldest daughter of the Hon. Wriothesley Digby, of Meriden, co. Warwick, and only surviving brother of the present Lord Somerville, in the Scotch peerage.

This officer was made lieutenant, Nov. 11, 1807; advanced to the rank of commander Feb. 1, 1812; and subsequently employed, in the Thames troop-ship, on the North American station. His conduct during the expedition up the Patuxent river, on which occasion he held a command in the British flotilla, obtained him the “warmest acknowledgments” of Rear-Admiral Cockburn, who “earnestly recommended” him to Sir Alexander Cochrane’s “favorable notice.” His post commission bears date June 7, 1814.

Agent.– Sir F. M. Ommanney.



EDMUND LYONS, Esq.
[Post-Captain of 1814.]

A son of the late John Lyons, of the island of Antigua, and of St. Austen’s House, Lymington, co. Hants, Esq. at which latter place he was born, Nov. 21, 1700.

Mr. Edmund Lyons first went to sea, for the benefit of his health, in the Terrible 74, commanded by his early friend and constant patron, Sir Richard Bickerton, Bart, at which period he could not have been more than 8 years of age. After a cruise in that ship, having in the course of it determined to become a sailor, his parents sent him to Winchester school for three years, and at the expiration of that time placed him under the care of Sir Harry Neale, then captain of the Queen Charlotte yacht. He subsequently served five years in the Active frigate, Captain Richard Hussey Moubray, chiefly on the Mediterranean station[1]. One of the

  1. See Vol. I. Part II. pp. 807–810. N.B. We should have mentioned, in the account of Rear-Admiral Moubray’s services, that the Active never was in harbour a month at any one time during the whole period of his command.