He entered the navy in May 1801, and after serving in the North Sea and Mediterranean, at the Cape of Good Hope, the capture of Montevideo in 1807, and in the Bay of Biscay, was promoted lieutenant on 13 October 1808.
[1] Poor health compelled him to resign the command in May 1815; and in the summer of 1816 he left England in company with an old friend and messmate, Captain James Mangles, with the intention of making a tour on the continent.
At Acre they embarked in a Venetian brig for Constantinople; but falling ill with dysentery, they were landed at Cyprus for medical assistance.
After the battle of Navarino he was appointed by Sir Edward Codrington to bring home HMS Genoa, whose captain Walter Bathurst had been killed, which he paid off at Plymouth in January 1828.
[1] Letters of the tour party were collected, and privately printed in 1823 as Travels in Egypt and Nubia, Syria, and Asia Minor, during the years 1817 and 1818.