Henry Smith (Royal Navy officer)
[1][2] He was promoted to lieutenant on 19 July 1821 and was appointed on 25 April 1823 to serve as such on the ship of the line HMS Genoa on the Lisbon Station.
[3][4] While commanding Magnificent Smith was the senior officer at Port Royal and received the thanks of the mercantile community there for his assistance with Jamaica's commercial interests.
[3] In January 1838 the Sultanate of Lahej agreed to transfer a number of its possessions, including the town of Aden to Britain but later decided against this and opened fire on the sloop-of-war HCS Coote.
[7] Smith was given command of an expedition, comprising Volage, the brig HMS Cruizer, Coote, the schooner HCS Mahé, and three transports, to secure Aden.
By 11 a.m. the gunnery of the ships had demolished Aden's lower batteries and destroyed a large tower, while landing parties ordered by Smith had cleared out the remaining enemy musket men in the rubble.
[3][9] For his capture of Aden Smith was nominated a Companion of the Order of the Bath on 13 August and received the thanks of the George Eden, 1st Earl of Auckland, the Governor General of India.
Negotiations broke down and the British were worried that their water supplies would be poisoned and so at 2 p.m. Smith, present in Volage's pinnace alongside several other small boats, fired at the nearest ship of the Chinese squadron of war junks.
[14] Despite the failure of Smith's action, several days later the Chinese opened trade with Hong Kong again, having received considerable damage to their warships in the attack.
[3][20][21] On 6 August the missionary Vincent John Stanton was captured by the Chinese while swimming in Casilha Bay near Macao and Smith took a small squadron of ships to avenge this.
[3] On 19 August Smith with 120 Royal Marines, 80 seamen, and 180 local volunteers, successfully fought the Battle of the Barrier in which he attacked the Chinese works and barracks at Portas do Cerco, including destroying seventeen guns and two junks; casualties were light, with four of the British wounded.
[24] Druid continued after this to protect British trade and hunt down pirates, at one point having several men of a boarding party killed when the junk they were investigating blew up.
[29] At 11 a.m. on 25 February Smith took Druid in with a portion of Bremer's force to attack the Chinese batteries on the south, south-west, and north-west of the island of Wangtong, while also firing on the forts still active on the west bank of the river.
The fire of the ships destroyed the batteries on Wangtong within the hour, allowing landing parties to attack and secure the location.
[3] At the latter battle Smith commanded the port division of the fleet, engaging the Chinese batteries at the entrance to Amoy, in order that the rest of the attack could go ahead securely.
[6] Smith married Anna, the eldest daughter of Sylvester Costigin of Dublin, on 18 September 1844 in Berne, Switzerland, at the British Embassy.
[42] Soon after, Prince Regent and Smith sailed for the Baltic to form part of the Royal Navy force fighting in the Crimean War.
[1][42] By 13 June Prince Regent was a part of the combined Franco-British fleet under Admiral Charles Napier fighting the Åland War but did not play a particularly active role in the campaign.
