Sir Sidney Smith was an admiral in the Royal Navy. In terms of contemporary public fame, he was second only to Nelson; however, today he is little known, so, it's entirely understandable that you are not aware of him. His fame mostly came from stopping Napoleon's invasion of Syria, and his move towards the east, at the Siege of Acre, 1799.

My interest in Sir Sidney mostly comes as a result of my investigation into Austrian military air guns.

There is only a couple of monographs on the Austrian military airgun with the first and most important being the 1891, Die österreichlsche Militar-Repetir Windbüchse des vorigen Jahrhunderts by August Haller. The last line of this text reads,

"Noteworthy is also the fact, that still in the year of 1813 the air gun was used by the Russian Colonel Fügner."

There are so few accounts of airgun use during the Napoleonic wars, I've tried to investigate how the Russian Colonel managed to acquire what turned out to be an air cane, which he is described as using to execute a French officer by Lowenstern.

In investigating Fügner I came to take a look at Smith because part of Fügner's history was that he was part of the Anglo/Russian invasion of Naples in 1805 and stayed on after the Russian army left. In that particular timeframe is when Sir Sidney Smith arrived as commander of the of the Royal Navy in and around Naples. There is, as far as I been able to find, nothing on Fügner in Italy, but In investigating Smith, it became apparent that Smith was not your regular Royal Navy Admiral, in fact he was exceptional and unique. Besides instigating guerrilla war in Calabria, Smith was heavily involved in intelligence gathering and worked with the British Secret Service. One of Smith's intelligence tactics was having agents dress as a local or as a French official and work behind enemy lines. Which is the exact same technique that Fügner is described as using in 1812 Russia. So, I am reasonably sure that Fügner had contact with Smith and was trained in Smith's form of intelligence gathering. Naples was also a good location for Fügner to have picked up an English air cane (actually very powerful large bore pneumatic airguns,) since at that point Naples/Sicily was one of the few entry points for British manufactured goods into the Continent.

In researching Smith, it became apparent that he was not treated well or fairly by the English army generals regarding the Calabrian insurrection. Also, Napoleon, who hated Smith for stopping him at Acre, even mentioned him in regards to Naples as the "infamous" Sir Sidney Smith in his 29th Bulletin of the Armee, 1806, Berlin. That got me even more interested to understand what actually went on in 1806.

There are a number of books available online:

https://archive.org/details/memoirsofadmiral01howauoft

https://books.google.com/books?id=aiY6AAAAcAAJ&

An interesting article: The British Secret Service and the Escape of Sir Sidney Smith from Paris in 1798

Of the modern texts on Smith, probably the best is "Beware of Heroes" by Shankland. The most modern writer covering Smith is Tom Pocock, but Pocock is a narrative writer and skips over the details and inserts fluff instead, so, I just cannot recommend him.

Besides the English generals and Napoleon disrespecting Smith, modern fans of N. have picked up on their idol's treatment of Smith and dismiss the Admiral at every opportunity. Which just makes Smith all the more interesting.

As an true blue American, I have generally have little regard for Georgian Navy Admirals (Captain Bligh and all of that); but Smith is an exception. He was completely different from all of his contemporaries. To me, just the fact that he was a rebel navy admiral, dismissed by the all-powerful powers that be, makes him an interesting subject.