Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall v1p2.djvu/266

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682
REAR-ADMIRALS OF THE RED.

men. The Bulwark also formed part of the squadron under Rear-Admiral Griffith, (now Colpoys,) in an expedition up the Penobscot; and assisted in taking Castine, and several other places in that river.

At the general promotion, June 4, 1814, Captain Milne was advanced to the rank of Rear-Admiral. His last appointment was to the command at Halifax; and he was preparing to sail, when Lord Exmouth received orders to fit out a squadron for the attack on Algiers[1]. Ever desirous of active service, our officer immediately solicited leave to join the expedition; and how well he acquitted himself, as second in command, is well known to the world.

Lord Exmouth, whose despatch is a master-piece of the kind, pays him the highest compliments, and laments that he was not sooner known to him. The loss on board his ship, the Impregnable, was greater than any British man-of-war, perhaps, ever before sustained, having 210 men killed and wounded; he himself received a slight wound, but did not report it. For his conduct in that tremendous conflict, he was nominated a K.C.B. Sept. 21, 1816; and subsequently received the royal permission to accept and wear the insignia of the Orders of Wilhelm of the Netherlands, and St. Januarius of Naples, conferred upon him by the sovereigns of those countries. He soon after proceeded to Halifax in the Leander, of 60 guns, and continued on that station during the customary period of three years.

On the 28th April, 1821, being the anniversary of the birthday of the late Viscount Melville, the foundation of a monument to his memory was laid in the centre of St. Andrew’s Square, Edinburgh, by Sir David Milne and Rear-Admiral Otway, assisted by other naval officers. An appropriate prayer was offered up on the occasion, by the Very Rev. Principal Baird. The structure is an exact representation of the celebrated column of Trajan, at Rome, and is consequently highly ornamental to the splendid metropolis of Scotland.

The current coins of the realm, an almanack, and several newspapers, were deposited in a crystal bottle, hermetically