Mr. Basil Hall entered the royal navy in May, 1802; and served the whole of his time, as midshipman, in the flag-ships of Sir Andrew Mitchell and the Hon. George C. Berkeley, on the Halifax station. His first commission bears date Jane 10, 1808; at which period he was appointed junior lieutenant of the Endymion frigate. Captain the Hon. Thomas Bladen Capel; under whom he assisted in covering the retreat and embarkation of Sir John Moore’s army, at Corunna, in Jan. 1809. We subsequently find him serving on shore in cooperation with the Spanish patriots[1].
Lieutenant Hall’s next appointment was, Mar. 9, 1812, to the Volage 22, from which ship he removed to the Illustrious 74, bearing the flag of Sir Samuel Hood, on the East Indian station. In 1813, he had the acting command of the Theban frigate, under the orders of the same distinguished officer, whom he accompanied during a journey over great part of the island of Java. His promotion to the rank of commander took place, Feb. 22, 1814; on which occasion he was appointed by the Admiralty to the Victor sloop, then building at Bombay.
The Victor arrived in England about the time that the embassy to China, under Lord Amherst, was projected; and Captain Hall had not been long on half-pay when he was appointed to the Lyra, a 10 gun brig, attached to that expedition. On his return home, in 1817, he published a very interesting account of “A Voyage of Discovery to the Western Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island, in the Japan Sea[2], with a Vocabulary of the Language of the Island {by Lieutenant H. J. Clifford, R.N.), and an Appendix, containing Charts and various Hydrographical and Scientific Notices. Illustrated by eight coloured engravings of Scenery, and the Costume of the People of Corea, and particularly of the more interesting Inhabitants of Loo-Choo.”
The second edition of “Loo-Choo,” published in 1820, is
- ↑ See Commander Charles Thomas Thruston.
- ↑ Performed while the British Ambassador was engaged in dignified discussion with the flower of the human race.
