Brisbane was promoted to commander and given command of one of the captured Dutch ships, the sloop Sireene, which the Royal Navy renamed Daphne. When she reached Plymouth in September 1797 the Navy paid offDaphne and Brisbane was put on half-pay. Brisbane remained on half-pay until 1800; he married Jemima Ann Ventham shortly before he returned to sea in command of HMS Cruizer. Cruizer was attached to Sir Hyde Parker's Baltic fleet on commissioning and Brisbane came under the direct command of Admiral Horatio Nelson, who used Cruizer to take soundings and make charts of the approaches to Copenhagen prior to the British attack on the city at the Battle of Copenhagen. Brisbane impressed his superiors in this duty and in 1801 was made a post-captain and commanded HMS Saturn under Admiral Thomas Totty until the admiral's death.[2]
In late 1811, Brisbane took command of Vengeur, and stayed with her for a year. He then transferred to the command of the newly built HMS Pembroke in the Channel Fleet. In 1813 he returned to the Mediterranean Sea, where he remained for the rest of the war.[2]
A squadron under his command, composed of Pembroke in company with Alcmene and Aigle on 11 April 1814 captured Fortune, Notre Dame de Leusainte, and a settee of unknown name, at Fort Maurigio, in the Gulf of Genoa, near Monaco. The squadron silenced the fort's guns, and attacked 20 vessels; 4 were captured, and the cargoes of another 15 taken off ships whose crews scuttled them.[3][4][5][Note 1]
In 1825, Brisbane was made commander-in-chief of the East Indies Station and sailed there as commodore, arriving in 1826 and taking part in the latter stages of the First Anglo-Burmese War, in which he had some success in riverine operations. During the campaign however he contracted a fatal illness and died from it aboard HMS Warspite in Sydney in 1826.[1][9]
Brisbane is remembered as a popular and capable commander whose expertise was focused on coastal and riverine operations, which he conducted with success throughout his career.[2]
^Clarke, James Stanier; McArthur, John (1814). "Naval History of the present year, 1814". The Naval Chronicle: Volume 31, January-July 1814: Containing a General and Biographical History of the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom with a Variety of Original Papers on Nautical Subjects, Volume 31 (Reprint 2010 ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 506. ISBN9781108018708.
Marshall, John (1823). "Sir James Brisbane, Knt." . Royal Naval Biography. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown. pp. 936–937 – via Wikisource.