Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall v4p1.djvu/399

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376
commanders.

This gallant officer obtained a commander’s commission on the 19th Aug. 1815; and was appointed to the Arab sloop, attached to the Irish station. Mar. 22d, 1822. In that vessel he perished, with all his officers and crew, on the coast of Mayo, near Broadhaven, Dec. 12th, 1823; leaving a widow (formerly Miss Eliza Gould, of Blandford) and several young children to lament his melancholy fate.



WILLIAM HENRY DICKSON, Esq.
[Commander.]

Obtained a lieutenant’s commission in Jan. 1806, and his present rank on the 21st Aug. 1815. At the close of the late war with France, he commanded the Maria schooner; and, since the peace, the Chanticleer sloop of war. He was the zealous projector and principal promoter of the Royal Naval School, now about to be established near London.



JAMES ROBERTSON WALKER, Esq.
[Commander.]

Eldest son of James Robertson, Esq. a deputy lieutenant, and an active, upright, and useful magistrate of Ross-shire, (late collector of H.M. Customs at Stornoway, in the northern division of the island of Lewis, annexed to the same county,) by Annabella, eldest daughter of John Mackenzie, Esq. of Letterewe, on the banks of the grand and romantic Loch Maree. His paternal grandfather was pastor of the extensive parish of Loch Broom, and equally eminent for clerical virtues as he was celebrated for great personal strength, and the aid he afforded to the royal cause in the rebellion of 1745-6; during the heat of which, and at a most critical moment, he was the means of preventing a large detachment of the King’s forces, under the guidance of the Earl of Loudon and the celebrated Lord President Forbes, from being cut off by the rebels under the Duke of Perth. For his conduct on this occasion, he was made prisoner by some of his own flock, who had followed Lord Cromartie into the ranks of the young Pretender, and whose personal respect for their pastor alone prevented them from proceeding to the utmost ex-