Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall sp4.djvu/59

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50
POST-CAPTAINS OF 1815.

armed en flûte, which appointment was confirmed by the Admiralty, on the 13th Aug. following.

In that ship, Captain Badcock successively visited Cadiz, Gibraltar, Minorca, Majorca, and Alicant; also Oran, in Barbary, where he supported the dignity of a British officer, by constantly refusing to pull off his boots before he went into the presence of the Bey, although his object, in seeking several audiences of that personage, was to obtain supplies for the British forces, and he observed that the Spanish Consul and others complied with a requisition so degrading.

Having conveyed those supplies to Alicant, Captain Badcock was ordered by Rear-Admiral Hallowell, under whose orders he had been placed, to take a station in Altea bay, for the protection of the watering place and town. Whilst at anchor there, he prevented a French foraging party, 300 strong, from levying a contribution upon the inhabitants of that place. He subsequently drove a small privateer on shore, near Denia, in the Gulf of Valencia; and obtained well-merited praise “for the assistance he afforded” Lieutenant-Colonel Prevost and Captain Charles Adam, while attached to the army, at the siege of the Col de Balaguer[1]. On the day after the surrender of that strong fortress, he set off with those officers and several others, to reconnoitre in the direction of Tortosa. The result of that expedition has been stated at p. 228 of Vol. II. Part I. Previous to his departure from the Mediterranean, he received, in common with the other officers of the squadron, the public thanks of Sir Edward Pellew, Rear-Admiral Hallowell, and Captain Adam, for his highly meritorious conduct during the whole of the operations in Catalonia: copies of the general memorandums conveying those thanks will be found sp4_p25.

After Sir John Murray’s unaccountable retreat from before Tarragona, the Brune conveyed that officer to Palermo; from whence she conveyed the 44th regiment to Spain, and Lord Mahon, his lady, and two sons, to Portsmouth. She subsequently took 700 troops to Holland, and 300 royal