William Brown was born in 1764, the second son of John Suffield Brown, a local landowner and Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Leicestershire. Aged 13 he joined the navy by 1777 and was a
captain's servant. After two years of service in the American Revolutionary War in
Apollo she returned to the Channel Fleet, where William was lucky to escape with a wounded hand after being shot by a sharpshooter in the rigging of a French frigate they had engaged, the shot having passed through the brim of his hat.
Apollo subsequently joined Admiral Rodney's fleet for the relief of Gibraltar and Menorca when she participated in the Moonlight battle. William was then with Lord Robert Manners in HMS
Resolution for two years and was present at the Battle of the Saints. He accompanied his wounded captain in HMS
Andromache to return to England and was with Manners when he died. He was an efficient officer who passed for
lieutenant in 1788 and was made commander of the 18-gun sloop during the Spanish armament in 1790. In the first year of the
French Revolutionary Wars he was in command of HMS
Fly. By his promotion to captain, Brown had already seen extensive service in the
Mediterranean and in the
Channel Fleet, Brown was made a
post captain and given the
frigate . and was attached to
Lord Howe's force during the
Atlantic campaign of May 1794. At the culminating battle on the
Glorious First of June, Brown acted as a repeater for Howe's signals to emphasise them to captains further away from the flagship. Late in the action he also helped tow wrecked ships out of the battleline. Late in 1794, Brown married Catherine Travers, who died in 1795 shortly after the birth of their son John William Brown. Following his wife's death, Brown took service at sea in command of HMS Alcmene under Admiral
John Jervis and had to have a mutineer executed by the crew off Cadiz. After two years of service with Lord St Vincent (as Jervis had become), he retired to a
Lisbon hospital in 1797. He recovered by the spring of 1798 and was given command of the
ship of the line by Lord St Vincent from March 1798, but was superseded by Captain John Peyton, who had been appointed by the First Lord at the same time. In 1799, Brown took passage to
Gibraltar to command the frigate , but on arrival was instead made captain of the 80-gun . Brown took this ship to serve with
Nelson off
Malta and Nelson switched Brown with Thomas Masterman Hardy on . == Napoleonic Wars ==