was mentioned for gallantry and promoted. Lyons then served as a flag-lieutenant, to Rear-Admiral Drury, aboard HMS Minden (74 guns). In 1810, he served in the 18-gun sloop notably at the capture, from the Dutch, on 9 August 1810, of Banda Neira in the Moluccas during the Invasion of the Spice Islands: Lyons was involved in the assault on Fort Belgica. Lyons destroys Fort Marrack In 1811, a planned British attack on the fortified port of Fort Marrack, in the Sunda Strait of Batavia, Dutch East Indies, was postponed after the Royal Navy received intelligence that Dutch reinforcements had arrived. Lyons with only 34 men attacked the fort anyway and destroyed its 180-strong garrison and 54 guns. Lyons was on 25 July dispatched to land Dutch prisoners on the island. On his return journey, on 30 July, he decided to launch a surprise midnight attack on the Dutch fort with the 34 men who accompanied him. Lyons stormed and captured the Dutch battery, and dispersed its Dutch garrison of 180 men and two boat-crews, and gunned down the Dutch reinforcements as they arrived, and then dismantled the fort and destroyed its 54 guns with dynamite so that they could not be used on the British Fleet. This action was praised by the Royal Navy as 'the most outstanding example of individual bravery in the wars which followed the French Revolution'. Lyons's Commander-in-Chief, Commodore Broughton, acknowledged Lyons's 'gallantry and zeal' but criticised Lyons because 'the attack was made contrary to orders'. but Lyons was nevertheless for this action mentioned in dispatches and proposed for early promotion to the rank of Commander, which he received on 21 March 1812. Marriage and issue After his attack on Marrack, Lyons's health deteriorated and he returned to Britain. In 1814, he was promoted to captain and commanded the sloop in the fleet that escorted the French King Louis XVIII and other allied sovereigns from England to France. On 18 July 1814, at Southwick, Hampshire, he married Augusta Louisa (1792–1852), daughter of Captain Josias Rogers of the navy. He was unemployed until 1828, whilst he and his wife had two sons and two daughters: Anne Theresa Bickerton Lyons (1815–1894), who married Philip Hartmann Veit von Würtzburg, Baron von Würtzburg, in Bavaria, in 1839. Richard Lyons, 1st Viscount Lyons (1817–1887). Eminent diplomat who served during the American Civil War, in which he solved the Trent affair, and