Nelson's Band of Brothers: Lives and Memorials by Captain Peter Hore

Author:Captain Peter Hore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / Naval
ISBN: 9781848323568
Publisher: Seaforth Publishing
Published: 2015-05-19T16:00:00+00:00

ROWLEY

Samuel Campbell Rowley (1774–1846) was born at Mount Campbell, Drumsna, County Leitrim, Ireland; his father, Clotworthy Rowley, was a lawyer and politician, but many others of his family for several generations were honest men, admirals and captains in the Navy. He was distantly related to another of the Band of Brothers, Clotworthy Upton.

Rowley entered the Navy though the Royal Naval Academy, Portsmouth, in 1785, and went to sea as a volunteer in 1789 in Blonde on the West Indies station. It may be assumed that it was his family’s political interest which found him employment at sea during the years of relative peace between the American and French wars when many naval officers were on the beach. He passed for lieutenant in 1792 and he was promoted two years later into Vengeance (74).

On the night of 10 April 1795, while a lieutenant in Astraea (32, Captain Lord Henry Paulet), he assisted in the capture of the French Gloire (40) – William Pryce Cumby was Paulet’s first lieutenant – and Rowley continued in Astraea in the Channel, the West Indies and the North Sea until promoted to commander on 30 January 1799.

Meanwhile, Rowley was also a member of the last Irish Parliament 1797–1800, when on one of his rare appearances he voted against the Union. Later he was persuaded to change his mind and between 1801 and 1806 was a member of the Westminster Parliament.

On 6 April 1799 he was made master and commander of the bomb vessel Terror and was on the expedition to Copenhagen in 1801. In June his brother, another politician, applied for him to be promoted, which he duly was on 29 April 1802. After this even John Marshall, who in his Royal Naval Biography was always keen to find the good so oft interred with men’s bones, could find no mention of Rowley until his appointment to the frigate Laurel (36) in February 1811.

At first light on 12 January 1812, in heavy weather and low visibility and running at 8 knots under close-reefed topsails, Rowley hit a rock in Quiberon Bay. Laurel slid off into deeper water, one anchor cable broke and the other only brought her up when it had run out to the clench. Rowley had the unpleasant surprise of seeing Laurel’s false keel and part of her main keel bob to the surface and float away. He had no choice but to run for the shore. The guns were thrown overboard and all the boats, and the masts fell as she struck with great force and settled with the water already up to her quarterdeck. Rowley struggled through the day to save his people and some two hundred were rescued by other British warships, but ninety-six officers and men were taken prisoner, including two officers who had gone ashore to seek help and to ask the French commandant of a nearby fort to cease firing, ‘but which he inhumanely refused notwithstanding a flag of truce and the signal of distress’. Rowley was acquitted at court-martial of all blame.

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