Charles Paget

Vice-Admiral Sir Charles Paget GCH (7 October 1778 – 27 January 1839) was a British sailor who also became a liberal politician and Member of Parliament. Naval career Vice-Admiral Sir Charles Paget (1778–1839) was the son of Henry Bayly Paget, 1st Earl of Uxbridge, and Jane Champagné, and was brother to Henry Paget, 1st Marquess of Anglesey. He joined the Royal Navy in 1790, and by 1797 he was captain of HMS Martin, a sloop of war serving at the Battle of Camperdown. In 1798 Paget became post-captain of HMS Brilliant, a small frigate in which he captured le Dragon of 11 guns, and the St Jago, a Spanish privateer of 10 guns. In 1800 he removed into HMS Egyptienne. His next appointment was to HMS Hydra, a frigate of 38 guns, in which he proceeded to the Mediterranean where he remained about twelve months. On 6 April 1803 he commissioned HMS Endymion, a frigate of the largest class, and in the course of the ensuing summer he captured Bacchante, a French corvette of 18 guns, Adour, a store ship pierced for 20 guns, and General, a Morcau schooner privateer of 16 guns. He subsequently intercepted several richly laden Spanish merchantmen coming from South America, and he also captured Colombe, a French corvette of 10 guns off Ushant. Towards the close of the long French war, Paget, while cruising in the Endymion on the coast of Spain, sighted a French ship-of-the-line in imminent danger, embayed among rocks upon a lee shore, bowsprit and foremast gone, and riding by a stream cable, her only remaining one. Though it was blowing a gale, Paget bore down to the assistance of his enemy, dropped his sheet anchor on the Frenchman's bow, buoyed the cable, and veered it athwart his hawse. This the disabled ship succeeded in getting in, and thus seven hundred lives were rescued from destruction. After performing this chivalrous action, Endymion, being herself in great peril, hauled to the wind, let go her bower anchor, club-hauled and stood off shore on the other tack.