Career
He entered the Royal Naval Academy in 1786 at the age of 12 and graduated in 1788. Austen then joined HMS Perseverance, who was sailing for the East Indies under Captain Isaac Smith. He was promoted to midshipman in December 1789. He joined the 64-gun third-rate Crown and then the 38-gun Minerva in November 1791. He was promoted to lieutenant in December 1792, while still in the East Indies. He returned to England at the end of 1793. In March 1794 he joined Lark, a brig that was part of a fleet that evacuated British troops from Ostend and Nieuwpoort after the French captured the Netherlands. In 1795, Lark was part of a squadron that escorted Princess Caroline of Brunswick to England.
On the outbreak of Napoleonic Wars he was appointed to raise and organise a corps of Sea Fencibles to defend a strip of the Kentish coast. He subsequently married a local Ramsgate girl, Mary Gibson. In spring 1804 he was appointed to Leopard, a 50-gun Fourth Rate.
In October 1805, as Captain of HMS Canopus, a French ship of the line captured in the Battle of the Nile (as the Franklin), Austen was temporarily detached from Admiral Nelson's fleet for convoy duty in the Mediterranean and missed the Battle of Trafalgar. However, Austen did command the Canopus the following year in the Battle of San Domingo, leading the lee line of ships into the battle. He served throughout the whole Napoleonic Wars until 1814. Austen was transferred to the North America and West Indies Station in 1844 and was promoted an Admiral of the Red in 1855.
Austen's rapid early promotions were largely due to the patronage of the powerful Warren Hastings, who was a friend of the Austen family and was alleged to be the natural father of Frank's cousin (and later sister-in-law), Eliza de Feuillide.
Read more about this topic: Francis Austen
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