Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall v3p2.djvu/38

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captains of 1828.
27

sloops; the Magnificent, receiving ship; and the Druid frigate, on the West India station, from whence he returned home in the autumn of 1829. His commission as Captain bears date Mar. 23d, 1828; and was transmitted to him through his first naval patron, together with the copy of a letter from Mr. Barrow, expressing the Lord High Admiral’s approbation of the exertions used in re-equipping the Espiegle at Port Royal, when there was a probability of her services being immediately required; and which Vice-Admiral Fleeming had been pleased to notice and represent.

Agent.– J. Woodhead, Esq



GEORGE WILLIAM CONWAY COURTENAY, Esq.
[Captain of 1828.]

Son of Clement Strafford Courtenay, Esq. (who served in the old 92d regiment during the contest between Great Britain and her revolted colonies, and who raised the Cheshire Fencibles, at the commencement of the French revolutionary war,) by Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Sir Robert Cunliffe, Bart., of Acton Park, co. Denbigh; and sister to the present Sir Foster Cunliffe, Bart. He is also nephew to the late Captain George W. A. Courtenay, who gloriously fell, while commanding the Boston frigate, in action with a French ship of superior force, near New York, Aug. 1st, 1793[1]. His paternal grandmother, Lady Jane Stuart, was sister to the celebrated Earl of Bute, who resigned the high office of First Lord of the Treasury in 1763, after having been a minister of the crown for twenty-six years.

Mr. G. W. Conway Courtenay was born at Beach Hall, near Chester, in June 1794; and entered the royal navy early in 1806, under the patronage of Earl St. Vincent, who placed him with his nephew, the present Rear-Admiral William Parker, C.B., then commanding the Amazon 38, attached to the Channel fleet.

In this frigate, Mr. Courtenay saw much active service on the coasts of France and Spain; and he appears to have been