Henry Ashworth (Royal Navy officer)

Henry Ashworth (1785–1811) was a British lieutenant in the Royal Navy.

Ashworth was born in London in December 1785. In November 1799, he entered on board the 38-gun frigate HMS Hussar, under the immediate patronage of the first lieutenant, and four years later was serving as midshipman on board the same ship when she was lost on Île de Sein, near Brest, on 8 February 1804. Whilst a prisoner of war, Ashworth made several remarkable attempts to recover his freedom, and at last, having escaped from Bitche in December 1808, he succeeded in passing through Germany to Trieste, where he went on board the English frigate L'Unité. In the following October, he was promoted to lieutenant, and was serving in that rank in HMS Centaur of 74 guns, on the coast of Spain, when the French took Tarragona, on 28 June 1811, and drove a number of the panic-stricken inhabitants, literally, into the sea. Ashworth had command of one of the boats sent to rescue these drowning wretches, and, whilst so employed, received a wound, of which he died a month later on 25 July 1811, at Menorca.[1]