tremity against him. After the suppression of the rebellion, this reverend gentleman used the most indefatigable exertions, and made great personal sacrifices, in procuring the pardon and release of many of his deluded parishioners.
The maternal grandfather of the officer whose naval services we are about to record, was Murdoch Mackenzie, of Letterewe, who espoused the cause of the Stuarts, and behaved with desperate bravery, when fighting under his kinsman, William, Earl of Seaforth, at the battle of Glenshiel, in 1718. Perceiving himself abandoned by his friends, he literally cut his way through the hostile ranks; but the exertion was so violent, that the hand with which he wielded his broadsword became swollen to such a degree it could not be extricated from the guard without the assistance of fomentations, applied by an old woman, the only inmate of a solitary hut, in an unfrequented part of the highlands. From thence he retired to his own residence on the banks of Loch Maree, where he was speedily joined by the Earl of Seaforth, who, on embarking for the Hebrides, embraced, and addressed him in these emphatic words: “Ah! Murdoch, had we all done our duty yesterday, as you did, the present melancholy tale could not be told of us.”
The subject of the following memoir, having early evinced a predilection for the naval service, embarked as midshipman on board the Inspector sloop, Captain (now Sir Robert Howe) Bromley, in Leith roads, April 6th, 1801. During the whole of the peace of Amiens, he served under Captain (afterwards Rear-Admiral) the Hon. Francis F. Gardner, senior officer on the Irish station; and in the spring of 1803, joined the Canopus 80, Captain John Conn, fitting out at Plymouth, for the flag of the late Sir George Campbell, who was then attached to the Channel fleet, but destined to serve under Lord Nelson, in the Mediterranean.
After a service of nearly two years in the Canopus, during which he was in repeated skirmishes with the batteries on Cape Sepet, and the French ships occasionally sent out to prevent a close reconnoissance of Toulon harbour, Mr. James Robertson was strongly recommended by Captain Conn to
