instructions; in case something should happen to him, the ship would still have able, informed direction. Once action was joined, Bellerophon rapidly found herself sandwiched between the Spanish and the French , both pouring fire into the British. Cumby advised his captain to remove his jacket because it made him a target for French snipers, but Cooke refused and sent Cumby below to direct the gunnery. A few minutes later, hearing the rush of battle above, Cumby ran up the ladders to the deck where he met the mortally wounded Overton who informed Cumby of Cooke's death in hand-to-hand combat with a French boarding party. Cooke's last words had been Tell Lieutenant Cumby never to strike! Realising that he was now in command of the ship, Cumby then withdrew his men from the poop deck and into the waist of the ship, where the threat from enemy grenades was not as high. He then ordered the guns trained on the French boarding parties, which they annihilated. This enabled Cumby to board the Aigle, at one point picking up a lit grenade to extinguish it, and capture the vessel. Proclaimed a hero after the battle, Cumby was rewarded with promotion to Post Captain and given the , another Trafalgar veteran. With this he conducted numerous raids on the coast of Santo Domingo from 1807 to 1809. His service in the Caribbean culminated in his command of the squadron that blockaded the city of San Domingo. The operation was so successful that the city surrendered in short order, and Cumby was highly praised by his opponents for his gentlemanly behaviour following the surrender. Cumby spent more years at sea, but none rivalled the period 1805–1809. From 1811 until 1815 he commanded . In 1812 he was ordered to the Davis Strait to protect the whale fishery, and in 1813 was on convoy duty in the Atlantic. From 1814 to 1815 he was in the Channel. Cumby had no further service, nevertheless, his reputation for solid service led to further rewards: command of the Royal yacht , and appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath on 26 September 1831, on the occasion of King William IV's Coronation Honours. In 1837, he was appointed Superintendent of Pembroke Dockyard; but he died in the same year in his office in Pembroke Dock, aged 66, and was buried in the Park Street graveyard at