Military Career
At the age of 13, Light volunteered for the Royal Navy, in which he served for two years. He then travelled through Europe and India before joining the 4th Dragoons regiment of the British Army in 1808. After courageous service in Spain against Napoleon's forces from 1809 to 1814, during the Peninsular War, he went on to serve in various parts of Britain as a Captain. He married E. Perois in Ireland in 1821. In 1823 he returned to Spain to fight French invasion in the Spanish Army as a lieutenant colonel. He was badly wounded and spent the next six years travelling Europe and the Mediterranean, accompanied by his second wife Mary Bennet (due to a lack of information his first wife is presumed dead).
Between 1830 and 1835 he helped Mohammad Ali, founder of modern Egypt, to establish a Navy. Here Light met Rear Admiral Sir John Hindmarsh, who served under him and succeeded him as captain of the Nile.
Read more about this topic: William Light
Famous quotes containing the words military and/or career:
“His ugliness was the stuff of legend. In an age of affordable beauty, there was something heraldic about his lack of it. The antique arm whined as he reached for another mug. It was a Russian military prosthesis, a seven-function force-feedback manipulator, cased in grubby pink plastic.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)
“John Brown’s career for the last six weeks of his life was meteor-like, flashing through the darkness in which we live. I know of nothing so miraculous in our history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)