place Oct. 24, 1794; and from that date he remained unemployed until the spring of 1803, when he was appointed to the command of the Glatton, of 54 guns, in the Baltic, from whence he returned to England in the ensuing autumn; and on his arrival at Chatham, was ordered to take the command of the Isis, a 50-gun ship then in dock, and to fit her out with the utmost expedition.
The exertions used by Captain Nowell on this occasion are worthy of notice. Notwithstanding he had to fit the ship with new rigging, and but very few seamen among his crew, yet on the ninth day she was taken to the Nore fully equipped and ready for sea. The Isis formed part of the force assembled off the French coast under Lord Nelson, of whom Captain Nowell, with several other officers of the same rank, requested permission to assist in the attack made upon the Boulogne flotilla, but which his Lordship, with his usual consideration, handsomely declined to grant, as in the event of success, their presence would probably have been of some hindrance to the
this memoir, it appears necessary to state the occasion of his secession for awhile from the duties of his profession. During a gale of wind, and when in the act of ascending the side of a cutter lying outside the harbour of Ostend, from which place he was returning, charged with despatches from H.R.H. the Duke of York, the man-ropes slipt through his hands, and he sank between the vessel and his boat. The sea at the time running very high, the next rise brought his head in contact with the under part of the cutter’s channel, and deprived him of his senses. In this state he was conveyed to the Ferret; and the necessary precaution of bleeding him having been omitted by the surgeon, a violent fever ensued; on his recovery from which he found that, in addition to the dislocation of several toes of the right foot, his vision was so affected that every object appeared double. On his arrival in London, he placed himself under the care of Dr. Weir, from whose mode of treatment he derived considerable benefit; but notwithstanding the skill of that celebrated oculist, every attempt to restore his sight to its original strength failed of success, and he was thus doomed to many years of painful inactivity, at a period, when, but for this misfortune, the talents and zeal which he had already displayed on so many occasions would, in the common course of events, have secured for him a participation in those honors which are enjoyed by his more fortunate compeers. To the same cause may probably be attributed the nonappearance of a treatise on sea-gunnery, which we have reason to believe he at one time had it in contemplation to publish; and which, from his well-known proficiency in that art, there can be no doubt, would have met with a most favorable reception from the naval world.
