Author: Rowe, Henry Nathaniel
Biography:
ROWE, Henry Nathaniel (1782-1860: O’Byrne)
He was the son of the Rev. Henry Rowe (q.v.) and his wife Harriet Bland, who had married on 9 Sept. 1774 at St. Peter’s, Chertsey, Surrey. He was the second child born to them to whom they gave that name, the first having been born on 29 Jun. and buried on 27 Oct. 1776. No baptismal record has been found for him and the baptism may have been private. He entered the navy in 1798, serving in the North Sea and West Indies as a midshipman on various ships. He saw further action in the Channel and was promoted to full Lieutenant and Commander in Feb. 1805. He was at the Battle of Trafalgar (1805) and the Siege of Copenhagen (1807) where he was badly wounded and had a leg amputated. He received a pension (which rose to £200 p.a. in 1815) but continued to serve and saw action at Guadeloupe in 1810. He returned to England in 1811 and was later promoted to honorary Captain, on 10 Sept. 1840. He married Joanna Crewe at St. Mary’s, Lambeth, on 24 May 1809. They had two sons and two daughters. They continued to live south of the river, first at Lambeth and then at Walworth. Like his father he was in constant debt, spending time in the King’s Bench in 1811 and again in 1830-33, when he underwent bankruptcy proceedings. In the 1840s his financial situation eased and he retired to Wintersells, Byfleet, Surrey. His wife died there in 1847. He died at 3 Barrington Cottages, Coldharbour Lane, Brixton, South London, on 24 Oct. 1860, with his age given in newspaper reports and on his death certificate as 78. He was buried at St. Mary’s, Byfleet. Sacred Beauties (1819) recounted Bible stories in verse and a later prose work, The Rainbow of the Mind (1846) was a dialogue asserting the immortality of the soul against modern materialists. (William R. O’Byrne, A Naval Biographical Dictionary[1849], 1009-10; John Marshall, Royal Naval Biography [1832], 3.3: 397-99; ancestry.co.uk 8 Jun. 2022; Spenserians; SJC 7 Jan. 1830; Army and Navy Gazette 3 Nov. 1860; London Gazette various issues) AA