The Battle of Saint Kitts.

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Also known as the Battle of Frigate Bay, was a naval battle that took place on 25 and 26 January 1782 during the American Revolutionary War between a British fleet under Rear-Admiral Sir Samuel Hood and a larger French fleet under the Comte de Grasse.





Background.

When Hood returned to the West Indies in late 1781 after the Battle of the Chesapeake, he was for a time in independent command owing to Rodney's absence in England. The French Admiral, the Comte de Grasse, attacked the British islands of Saint Kitts and Nevis, with 7000 troops and 50 warships, including the 110 gun Ville de Paris. He started by besieging the British fortress on Brimstone Hill on 11 Jan. 1782. Hood hoping to salvage, the situation made for St Kitts, departing Antigua on 22 Jan. with 22 ships of the line compared to De Grasse's 36.

Action.



Battle of St Kitts by Thomas Maynard.

The British fleet on 24 January consisted of twenty-two sail of the line, and was close off the south-east end of Nevis. They ran into and captured the French 16-gun cutter Espion which carried a large amount of ammunition for the besieging French forces at Brimstone Hill.
At daybreak on 25 January, the French fleet was discovered having stood to the southward of Basseterre, consisting of one 110 gun ship, twenty-eight two-decked ships, and two frigates. Hood stood towards the French fleet with the apparent intention of bringing on action, and effectively drew the French fleet off the land. No sooner had Hood effected this maneuver he was aided by a favourable change in wind and was able to guide his fleet within the anchorage of Basseterre, which the French admiral had just quit. Hood ordered his fleet in an L formation and then ordered his fleet to lay anchor. Comte de Grasse, in frustration made three distinct and vigorous attacks upon the British fleet on 26 January but was repulsed with great damage to his ships.
The Pluton, commanded by D'Albert de Rions, lead the French line, "receiving the crashing broadside of ship after ship until the splintered planking flew from her off side and her rigging hung in a tangled mass." Chauvent goes on to describe the battle as "...a sulphurous hell, with cannon vomiting forth flame and death." The entire battle lasted from 7 AM to 6:30 PM, with the major action in the afternoon.

Aftermath.

Damages on both sides were heavy, though the French suffered higher casualties. However, Hood was unable to stop the French and could only observe the land action. After the successful French siege of Brimstone Hill fortress, St. Kitts and Nevis surrendered on 12 February. Hood left on the 14th and joined forces with the recently arrived Admiral George Rodney.

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Order of battle.

Britain.

Admiral Sir Samuel Hood's fleet
Ship	Rate	Guns		Commander		Casualties						Notes
Killed		Wounded		Total
Van
HMS St Albans	Third rate	64	Captain Charles Inglis		0		0		0
HMS Alcide	Third rate	74	Captain Charles Thompson		2		4		6
HMS Intrepid	Third rate	64	Captain Anthony James Pye Molloy		2		0		2
HMS Torbay	Third rate	74	Captain Lewis Gedoin		0		0		0
HMS Princessa	Third rate	70	Rear-Admiral Francis Samuel Drake Captain Charles Knatchbull		2		4		6		Flagship of van
HMS Prince George	Second rate	98	Captain James Williams		1		3		4
HMS Ajax	Third rate	74	Captain Nicholas Charrington		1		12		13
Centre
HMS Prince William	Third rate	64	Captain George Wilkinson		0		3		3
HMS Shrewsbury	Third rate	74	Captain John Knight		3		7		10
HMS Invincible	Third rate	74	Captain Charles Saxton		0		2		2
HMS Barfleur	Second rate	98	Rear-Admiral Sir Samuel Hood Captain Alexander Hood		9		24		33		Flagship of centre
HMS Monarch	Third rate	74	Captain Francis Reynolds		2		2		4
HMS Belliqueux	Third rate	64	Captain Lord Cranstoun		5		7		12
HMS Centaur	Third rate	74	Captain John Nicholson Inglefield		0		12		12
HMS Alfred	Third rate	74	Captain William Bayne		2		20		2
Rear
HMS Russell	Third rate	74	Captain Henry Edwyn Stanhope		8		29		37
HMS Resolution	Third rate	74	Captain Lord Robert Manners		5		11		16
HMS Bedford	Third rate	74	Rear Admiral Edmund Affleck Captain Thomas Graves		2		15		17		Flagship of Rear
HMS Canada	Third rate	74	Captain William Cornwallis		1		12		13
HMS Prudent	Third rate	64	Captain Andrew Barclay		18		36		54
HMS Montagu	Third rate	74	Captain George Bowen		7		23		30
HMS America	Third rate	64	Captain Samuel Thompson		1		17		18
Attached frigates
Van
HMS Eurydice	Sixth rate	20	Captain George Wilson		0		0		0
Centre
HMS Pegasus	Sixth rate	28	Captain John Stanhope		0		0		0
HMS Fortunee	Sixth rate	28	Captain Hugh Cloberry Christian		0		0		0
HMS Lizard	Sixth rate	28	Captain Edmund Dod		0		0		0
HMS Champion	Sixth rate	20	Captain Thomas Wells		1		1		2		To repeat signals
HMS Convert	Fifth rate	32	Captain Henry Harvey		0		0		0
HMS Triton	Sixth rate	28	Captain John M’Lawrin		0		0		0
Rear
HMS Sibyl	Sixth rate	28	Captain John Norton		0		0		0
HMS Solebay	Sixth rate	28	Captain Charles Everitt		0		0		0
Total recorded casualties: 72 killed, 244 wounded

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Captain Charles Inglis.





Inglis was born c. 1731, the fourth son of Sir John Inglis and his wife Anne, the daughter of Adam Cockburn. He embarked on a naval career, at first joining the 40-gun HMS Ludlow Castle under Captain George Brydges Rodney, in 1745, and the next year went with Rodney to the 60-gun HMS Eagle. Rodney carried out several successful cruises, capturing four ships from a French convoy in June 1747, and fighting under Rear-Admiral Edward Hawke at his clash with Desherbiers de l'Etenduère's fleet at the Second Battle of Cape Finisterre on 25 October 1747. Inglis saw action on both of these occasions. Eagle was heavily engaged with the French 70-gun Neptune in the latter engagement and suffered considerable damage. She was paid off in August 1748 on the conclusion of the peace, and Inglis was left without a ship. He remained unemployed until 1750, when he joined the 50-gun HMS Tavistock, at that time under the command of Captain Francis Holburne. Inglis's biographer, P. K. Crimmin noted that like Inglis, Holburne was a lowland Scot, and that Inglis may have been benefiting during this time from a network of patronage that included John Cockburn, Inglis's uncle and a Lord of the Admiralty between 1727 and 1732 and again during 1742 and 1744, and Sir John Clerk, a friend of the family with considerable political influence.

Inglis passed his lieutenant's examination on 6 February 1755, having by now spent ten years serving in the navy. He was appointed to the 74-gun HMS Monarch, at that time under the command of Captain Abraham North, and by April 1756 had been transferred to HMS Magnanime, also of 74 guns, under Captain Wittewronge Taylor. Inglis followed Taylor to his next two commands, the 90-gun HMS Marlborough, and then on 3 June 1757, the 84-gun HMS Royal William. He was then promoted to commander and received his first independent command on 17 June 1757, that of the 14-gun sloop HMS Escorte. Inglis was initially assigned to support Hawke's September 1757 Rochefort expedition, which ultimately failed to take the town. His next appointment was to the newly completed bomb vessel HMS Carcass in June 1759, which was assigned to support the attack on Le Havre the following month, conducted by Inglis's old commander, George Brydges Rodney. The expedition succeeded in its aim of destroying a large number of flat-bottomed boats which had been assembled in the port, thus frustrating a planned invasion attempt. Carcass is next recorded as having sailed to the Mediterranean in May 1759, though she was back in England by the following year, being paid off at Sheerness in September 1760.

Captaincy.

At some point after this Inglis was advanced to post-captain, and on 15 December 1761 he was given command of the 80-gun HMS Newark. She hoisted the broad pennant of Commodore Sir Peircy Brett in January 1762, and sailed for Mediterranean that month to reinforce Admiral Sir Charles Saunders's squadron in anticipation of the entry of Spain to the war. There was no fleet action, and Newark was still in the Mediterranean in 1762, when she supported the re-occupation of Menorca. The island was eventually returned to the British under the terms of the Treaty of Paris. Inglis sailed Newark back to Britain with the fleet after the peace, and paid her off in August 1763. Her decommissioning once again left Inglis without a ship, and it was not until September 1770 that the Falklands Crisis brought an opportunity for further employment.
As tensions between Britain and Spain over ownership of the Falkland Islands increased, the Royal Navy hastily commissioned and prepared for service a number of ships in the anticipation of war. Inglis's old commander, now Admiral Holburne, was a member of the Board of Admiralty, and may have had a hand in arranging his appointment to one of these ships, the 28-gun HMS Lizard. The appointment was short-lived; the Spanish backed down after failing to gain French support for their claims and the threat of war passed. The navy demobilised many of its ships, and Inglis returned to half-pay.

American War of Independence.

Once again Inglis was reliant on a war to return him to service. He commissioned the 50-gun HMS Salisbury in August 1778 and sailed for Jamaica in January 1779. On 12 December she was sailing in the Bay of Honduras, when at daybreak a large ship was sighted ahead. Inglis gave chase, a pursuit which lasted all day until Salisbury came in range at 6.30pm. The fleeing ship hoisted Spanish colours and an action began, which last until 8.30pm when the Spanish ship had her mainmast shot away. Having sustained heavy casualties and suffered considerable damage, she struck her colours. She was found to be the 50-gun privateer San Carlos, carrying stores and 397 men. Four men were killed on Salisbury and fourteen wounded, five mortally. Inglis continued off North America until the summer of 1780, when he returned to England, paying Salisbury off in August that year.

Inglis's next command was the 64-gun HMS St Albans, which he took over in November 1780, sailing in April the following year with Vice-Admiral George Darby's fleet to the relief of Gibraltar. He was with Admiral Robert Digby's squadron later that year, before being sent to the Leeward Islands to join Sir Samuel Hood at Barbados. He served with Hood during the Battle of Saint Kitts, when Hood attempted to relieve the island and repulsed several attacks by the Comte de Grasse on 25 and 26 January 1782. Inglis was again in action with the French on 9 April, when Hood's fleet clashed with de Grasse's in the Dominica Channel, and fought at the Battle of the Saintes on 12 April, where the main British fleet under Inglis's old captain, now Admiral Sir George Rodney, decisively defeated de Grasse. St Albans had six men wounded during this engagement. Inglis sailed to North America in late July 1782 with Rodney's successor, Admiral Hugh Pigot. He was back in the West Indies by November, and was given command of a squadron of four ships cruising independently there. The squadron, consisting of St Albans, the 64-gun HMS Prudent, the 74-gun HMS Magnificent and the sloop HMS Barbados, was sent from Gros Islet Bay on 12 February to investigate reports of a French squadron, consisting of Triton, Amphion and several frigates, having sailed from Martinique.
On 15 February 1783 the frigate Concorde was sighted by the 74-gun HMS Magnificent, under Captain Robert Linzee. Magnificent was close enough to identify the mysterious ship as a frigate by 18:00, and by 20:00 as darkness fell Concorde opened fire on her pursuer with her stern guns. Magnificent overhauled the French ship by 21:15, and after fifteen minutes forced her to strike her colours. Magnificent took possession of Concorde, the latter being described as carrying 36 guns and 300 men, and being under the command of M. le Chevalier du Clesmaur. Shortly after surrendering the Concorde's maintopsail caught fire, forcing the crew to cut away the mainmast to extinguish it. Prudent and St Albans came up two hours later and Magnificent towed Concorde to St. John's, Antigua. Concorde was afterwards brought into the navy as HMS Concorde.

Later life.



Inglis sailed St Albans back to Britain in July 1783 and paid her off on the conclusion of the war. He saw no further service at sea, though he continued to be promoted on the basis of his seniority, being made rear-admiral of the blue on 21 September 1790. He died on 10 October 1791, at his brother's seat near Edinburgh.

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Captain Charles Thompson.



His father is thought to have been Norborne Berkeley, later Baron Botetourt, of Stoke Gifford, Gloucestershire, governor of Virginia, his mother was Margaret Thompson. (Charles was illegitimate). He, his mother and sister Elizabeth Thompson were all beneficiarys in Norborne Berkeley's will. He married Jane, daughter and heiress of Robert Selby of Bonnington, near Edinburgh in 1783, by whom he had issue: Norborne Charles (1785–1826) who joined the navy but was court martialed for insubordination; Charles Robert (1788–1801) who died at sea aged 13; Elizabeth (1790-, Jane (1794–1815) who died in Portugal aged 21, and is buried at the English Cemetery, Lisbon; and Henry (1796–1868).

Naval service.

His first service at sea was on a merchantman, but he soon joined the Royal Navy on HMS Nassau in 1755, just before the outbreak of the Seven Years' War. In the following five years he served on that ship then on HMS Prince Frederick and (under Captain Samuel Barrington) HMS Achilles. He passed his examination for lieutenant in 1760 and was commissioned as the fifth lieutenant of HMS Arrogant on 16 January 1761, serving on her in the Channel Fleet and then in the Mediterranean. When peace came, this ship was paid off and Thompson transferred to the sloop HMS Cygnet, serving on her on the North American station from August 1763 to her paying-off in July 1768 in South Carolina (with no transport provided to get her officers back to England, though they were later paid £39 0s. 6d each for the journey).
Thompson was back in North America as HMS Salisbury's first lieutenant from May 1770, and there Commodore James Gambier promoted him to commander in February 1771, commanding the sloop HMS Senegal and then (after 3 months) appointed acting captain of HMS Mermaid. He took the later ship back to England in December 1771 and, though his acting captaincy was not confirmed by the admiralty, they did on 7 March 1772 promote him to full captain, commanding HMS Chatham.

Service in the West Indies.

Thompson sailed to the West Indies commanding HMS Chatham, the flagship of Vice-Admiral William Parry, and later moved to the frigate HMS Crescent. He returned to England in 1774, and then went back to the West Indies in command of the HMS Boreas in early 1776 (capturing the 20 gun French ship Le Compas). He accompanied a merchant convoy to England in October 1777, before yet again going out to the West Indies in 1780. Sir John Laforey was appointed commissioner of the shipyard at Antigua in 1780, but Thompson refused to recognize this authority, leading to a long feud. In the Caribbean, Thompson was moved by Sir George Rodney to the 74 gun HMS Alcide, commanding her throughout the American War of Independence, including at the battles of the Chesapeake, St Kitts, under Sir Samuel Hood). In April 1782, Thompson was present in the rear division at the Battle of the Saintes. Sir George Rodney's decisive victory over the French in the Caribbean. He sailed Alcide back to England at the end of the War.

Later service.

In 1787 Thompson commanded HMS Edgar at Portsmouth, and in 1790 HMS Elephant (during the crisis of the Spanish armament). When the War of the First Coalition broke out in 1793 he was put in command of HMS Vengeance, as part of Sir John Jervis and Lieutenant-General Sir Charles Grey's expedition against France's West Indian possessions, participating in the capture of Martinique (directing the boat attacks on Fort Royal) and Guadeloupe as a commodore. Also during this time in the Indies, Laforey and Thompson's feud reignited over Laforey conduct as commander-in-chief at the Leeward Islands, thus providing an excuse for First Lord of the Admiralty to recall Laforey but causing alarm amidst the other Admiralty commissioners (Sir Charles Middleton resigned over the affair). In the course of promotions through seniority, Thompson was promoted to rear-admiral of the blue on 12 April 1794, and sailed back to England the following year (with HMS Vanguard as his flagship) to be made vice admiral on 1 June 1795 (with his flag in HMS London).

Mediterranean service.

Thompson was next put in command of a detached squadron as part of the British blockade of Brest, before being transferred to HMS Britannia, in which he served in the Mediterranean. In the Britannia he acted as second in command at the battle of Cape St Vincent, disregarding Jervis's signal to tack to counter a Spanish attacking move and thus nearly losing the battle. This angered Jervis but he chose not to bring the issue into the public sphere, and so later that year Thompson's and Jervis's contribution to the battle were rewarded with a baronetcy and an earldom respectively whilst still on station. Continuing on the station for a time, Thompson's next disagreement with Jervis (over the latter's insistence on hanging two mutineers on the Sabbath on Sunday 9 July 1797) gave Jervis sufficient justification to insist that the Admiralty recall Thompson. After Thompson's death, Jervis wrote of him as a ‘gallant man, but the most timid officer’, and drew attention to his having ‘the manner of a rough seaman’ which Thompson cultivated by his habit of dressing casually in a sailor's frock and straw hat.
On his recall, Thompson was then given a post in the Brest-blockade fleet which he held until 1798 despite failing health, his health eventually forcing him to strike his flag and return to England early in 1799, where he died later that year.

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Captain Anthony James Pye Molloy.



Early years and American War of Independence.


Molloy was born c. 1754 and embarked on a naval career. He was the nephew of another Royal Navy officer, Thomas Pye, who later became an admiral. He rose through the ranks and was promoted to his first commands during the American War of Independence, commanding the bomb vessel HMS Thunder off North America from June 1776.^. He was with Peter Parker's squadron at the Battle of Sullivan's Island on 28 June 1776, and was succeeded as commander of Thunder by Commander James Gambier in April 1778.^.
Molloy was promoted to post-captain on 11 April 1778, and given command of the 64-gun HMS Trident, flying the broad pennant of Commodore John Elliot.^. Trident sailed for North America on 16 April, and Molloy was present with Lord Howe's force at Sandy Hook on 22 July 1778, where the comte d'Estaing was successfully repulsed without an action being fought.^[4] Molloy was present at Howe's next encounter with the comte d'Estaing, during the Battle of Rhode Island in August that year, and on Elliot's return to Britain in December, Molloy took Trident to join Vice-Admiral John Byron's forces in the West Indies.^. Trident was part of Byron's fleet at the Battle of Grenada on 6 July 1779 and then at the Battle of Martinique on 17 April 1780. Molloy followed this up with service in the two actions off St Lucia on 15 and 19 May 1780, before handing over Trident to Captain John Thomas.
Molloy's next ship was the 64-gun HMS Intrepid, which he commissioned in 1781. He was with Sir George Brydges Rodney during the Dutch West Indies campaign in early 1781, and was present at the capture of Sint Eustatius on 3 February, and at the Battle of Fort Royal on 29/30 April. He returned to North America with Sir Samuel Hood's fleet, and was present at the Battle of the Chesapeake on 5 September 1781. Molloy was commended for his efforts during the battle, being described as having 'behaved most gallantly', and for having assisted HMS Shrewsbury. Molloy returned to the West Indies with Hood, arriving there on 5 December 1781. He took part in the Battle of St. Kitts on 25 and 26 January 1782. Having served in many of the naval engagements of the American War of Independence, Molloy sailed to Jamaica in May that year, and then back to Britain with a convoy, where he paid Intrepid off in August.

Peace.

Molloy commissioned the 74-gun HMS Carnatic as the Chatham guardship in March 1783, and remained with her until 1785, when she was moved to Plymouth. He is recorded as commissioning the 74-gun HMS Fortitude in October 1787, though she was paid off again in December 1787. He briefly commanded the Plymouth guardship, the 74-gun HMS Bombay Castle, until she was paid off to be fitted for sea again the following year.^] His last command during the peace was the 74-gun HMS Ganges, which he recommissioned in December 1792.

French Revolutionary Wars.

Molloy and Ganges were part of the fleet under Lord Howe which encountered and then pursued Pierre Jean Van Stabel's squadron in the Atlantic on 18 November 1793. Molloy left Ganges in late 1793, commissioning the newly built 80-gun HMS Caesar in December that year. Molloy was attached to Lord Howe's fleet, hunting for the French convoys during the Atlantic campaign of May 1794. When the French fleet, under Louis Thomas Villaret de Joyeuse, was sighted, Howe ordered an attack, with Molloy leading the column into battle at the Glorious First of June. Caesar sustained casualties of 18 men killed and 71 wounded, but in the aftermath Molloy was strongly criticised by Howe for failing to obey orders and break the French line.

Court martial.

Accordingly a court martial was convened aboard HMS Glory at Portsmouth on 28 April 1795, and Molloy was charged with 'his failure to cross the enemy's line, in obedience to the signal of the admiral', and 'that he did not use his utmost endeavours to close with and defeat the enemy.'
Speaking for the prosecution was Rear-Admiral Sir Roger Curtis, the captain of the fleet during the battle. Molloy argued that the ship had been thrown into confusion after a ball had struck the stern-beam and left her unmanageable, but after three weeks of deliberations, the charges were found to have been proved. The court tempered the findings with the observation that his courage was unimpeachable, but nevertheless he was sentenced to be dismissed from his ship.

Family and later life.

Molloy never again held another command. He had married Juliana Laforey, one of the daughters of Admiral Sir John Laforey, and the couple had at least three children, Charles, John and Mary. Mary married Sir John Beresford, another naval officer. Molloy died at Cheltenham on 25 July 1814, having sustained a fall down some stairs at Montpelier House and injured his back. He was 60 years old.

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Captain Lewis Gedoin.




Gidoin was commissioned lieutenant on 19 January 1755 and promoted commander in September 1759, at which time he had been captaining the storeship Port Royal 12 for six months and would continue to do so until July 1761. From April 1762 he had the brig Zephyr 10 off the coast of Portugal, and in July 1763 recommissioned the Jamaica 10, going out to New England in November 1763 and spending most of his time on that station before paying her off in February 1767.

He was posted captain of the Surprise 20 for purposes of rank only on 26 May 1768, and during the Falklands Islands dispute of 1770-1 he was the captain of the impress service at Falmouth.

Having been recommissioned at Chatham in March 1776, Gidoin took the Richmond 32 out to North America in September. He commanded her in Vice-Admiral Lord Howe’s fleet during 1777-8, serving in the North River and the Philadelphia Campaign of August-November. After wintering in the Chesapeake the Richmond was present in the defence off New York in July 1778 and operations off Rhode Island in August. He captured the rebel privateer Black Prince on 15 August and remained on that station over the ensuing winter before returning to England.
In May 1779 Gidoin was detached from Portsmouth in command of a small frigate squadron to protect the Channel Islands from a French threat, rendezvousing with the Experiment 50, Captain Sir James Wallace, who defeated a French squadron in Cancale Bay on 13 May.

Transferring to the Torbay 74 which had began recommissioning in December 1779, he arrived in the Leeward Islands during July 1780 and was present at the occupation of St. Eustatius from 3 February 1781, and in the Battle of Fort Royal off Martinique on 29 April when his command was badly damaged. After repairs at Jamaica the Torbay sailed for North America but did not arrive in time to participate in the Battle of the Chesapeake on 5 September. Continuing in the Torbay, Gidoin fought at the Battle of St. Kitts on 25-26 January 1782 but did not suffer any casualties, and at the Battle of the Saintes on 12 April 1782, where she lost ten men killed and twenty-five wounded and helped bring about the surrender of the French flagship.

On 17 October 1782 he was in company with the London 98, Captain James Kempthorne, when they fell in with the French Scipion 74 and Sibylle 40 off San Domingo. The London was faster in the chase and brought the Frenchmen to action at long-range, eventually going yardarm to yardarm with the Scipion. The French sail of the line then managed to rake the London which fell across the Torbay, preventing her from getting to close action. The Scipion was able to make good her escape but sank in Samana Bay after striking a rock the next morning.
Gidoin was promoted rear-admiral on 12 April 1794 and vice-admiral on 1 June 1795.

He died in the ensuing winter, being buried at St. George’s Church, Modbury, Devon on 15 February 1796.

He married Mary Legassicke on 15 November 1763 and lived at Modbury then Mothecombe in South Devon. Rear-Admiral James Walker was his protégé.

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Rear-Admiral Francis Samuel Drake.




Francis was baptised on 14 September 1729, at Buckland Monachorum, Devonshire. He was the fourth son of Sir Francis Henry Drake, 4th Baronet, and Anne Heathcote. He was the younger brother of Sir Francis Henry Drake, 5th Baronet, the last in the line of baronets descending from Sir Francis Drake, 1st Baronet, nephew of the Elizabethan naval hero Sir Francis Drake. He served for a time as lieutenant aboard the 44-gun HMS Torrington and the 60-gun HMS Windsor. He was promoted to command the 10-gun sloop HMS Viper on 30 March 1756, during the Seven Years' War, and achieved the rank of post-captain later that year with a posting to command the 20-gun HMS Bideford on 15 November. On 11 March 1757 he was appointed, in succession to his second brother, Francis William Drake, to the 50-gun HMS Falkland. He commanded the Falkland for the next five years. He was present in the West Indies during the operations under Commodore John Moore between 1757 and 1758, and then went to St. Helena to escort the homeward-bound trade in the spring of 1759. He served on the south coast of Brittany that autumn with the squadron under Captain Robert Duff, and was present at the defeat of the French at the Battle of Quiberon Bay on 20 November 1759.
Drake then served in the Saint Lawrence River with Commodore Swanton in the summer of 1760; with Lord Colville on the coast of North America, and with Sir James Douglas at the Leeward Islands in 1761 during the Invasion of Dominica, continuing there under Sir George Rodney in 1762 during the Invasion of Martinique, when he was moved into the 50-gun HMS Rochester, which he commanded until the end of the war.

Peace and American War of Independence.

Drake was appointed to command the 70-gun HMS Burford in 1766, and moved from there to the 74-gun HMS Torbay between 1772 and 1775. Torbay was the guardship at Plymouth during this time. With the outbreak of the American War of Independence, Drake was appointed to command the 74-gun HMS Russell in the spring of 1778. The Russell was one of the squadron which sailed for America under the command of Vice-Admiral John Byron. The Russell was badly damaged in a gale which scattered the squadron, and Drake was forced to return to England for repairs. He therefore did not sail to America until the spring of 1779. During that year and the early part of 1780, Drake operated as part of the fleet under the command of Vice-Admiral Mariot Arbuthnot.
Drake was then sent to join Rodney in the West Indies, and accompanied him to the coast of North America, and back again to the West Indies, where he received a commission as rear-admiral, dated 26 September 1780. He then hoisted his flag in the 70-gun HMS Princessa; took part under Rodney in the operations against the Dutch Islands, including the Capture of Sint Eustatius, and was detached under Sir Samuel Hood to blockade Martinique, where, with his flag in HMS Gibraltar, he was warmly engaged in the Battle of Fort Royal against with De Grasse on 29 April 1781. In August, with his flag again in the Princessa, he accompanied Hood to North America, and commanded the van at the Battle of the Chesapeake on 5 September, with the fleet under Sir Thomas Graves. The Princessa was heavily damaged in the battle, forcing Drake to shift his flag temporarily to the 74-gun HMS Alcide.
He afterwards returned with Hood to the West Indies, took part with him in the Battle of Saint Kitts in January 1782, and on 12 April, by the accident of position, commanded the van of the fleet under Sir George Rodney in the Battle of the Saintes. He was made a baronet on 28 May 1782 for his conduct on this occasion. He continued in the West Indies until the end of the war, after which he had no further service.

Later life.

On 12 August 1789 was appointed a junior lord of the admiralty, but died shortly afterwards, o

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Captain Charles Knatchbull.





1747-1826. He was born on 23 May 1747, the son of the Reverend Wadham Knatchbull, a prebendary of Durham and rector of Chilham, Kent, and his wife, Harriet Parry.
In May 1769 Knatchbull was appointed a midshipman aboard the Dunkirk 60, Captain Walter Stirling, flying the broad pennant of Commodore Arthur Forrest at Jamaica. In August 1770 he removed on the same station to the Lowestoffe 32, Captain Robert Carkett, as her acting second lieutenant, and when he was officially commissioned lieutenant on 9 November 1770 he was listed as belonging to the Dunkirk, although by 1771 he was back with the Lowestoffe and Captain Carkett. In March 1772, whilst still on the Jamaican station, he joined the schooner Earl of Northampton as her commander. In the early part of 1773 he returned to England aboard the Achilles 60, Captain Richard Onslow, which vessel was paid off in April.
Knatchbull was promoted commander on 11 August 1779, and having succeeded Captain Walter Stirling aboard the Gibraltar 80 after his old commander had gone home with despatches following the capture of St. Eustatius on 3 February 1781 he was posted captain on 13 May. He thereafter flew the flag of Rear-Admiral Francis Samuel Drake and saw action at the Battle of Fort Royal on 29 April before transferring with that officer to the Princessa 70. He subsequently fought at the Battle of Chesapeake Bay on 5 September where his ship suffered casualties of six men killed and eleven wounded, at the Battle of St. Kitts on 25 January 1782, and at the Battle of the Saintes on 12 April. The Princessa sailed for North America with Admiral Hugh Pigot’s fleet in July, returning to the Leeward Islands towards the end of the year by which time Captain Lambert Brabazon had assumed command. Knatchbull returned to England in command of the Nymphe 32, which was paid off in June 1783.
Having resigned from the service he did not see any further employment, and he died on Christmas Day 1826.
He married his first cousin, Frances Knatchbull, the daughter of Major Norton Knatchbull, on 31 July 1785 but did not have any issue. He inherited Babington House, near Frome in Somerset, which was extended under his occupancy in the 1790’s.

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Captain James Williams.






Having been promoted from the lower deck, Williams was commissioned lieutenant on 22 April 1769.
He was serving aboard Rear-Admiral Hon. Robert Digby’s flagship Prince George 98, Captain Philip Patton, at the Moonlight Battle on 16 January 1780, and was sent to take possession of the battered and disabled San Julian 70. This vessel was later wrecked on the bar of el Puerto de Santa Maria, although her crew of five hundred, as well as the seventy members of the prize-crew, survived. He was exchanged and sailed from Gibraltar to England aboard the cutter Alert before returning to the Prince George.
Williams was promoted commander on 12 June 1780 upon joining the bomb Infernal 8 and being attached to the Channel fleet. He was posted captain on 1 January 1781, and after rejoining the Prince George 98 with the flag of Rear-Admiral Hon. Robert Digby he served in the Channel Fleet’s relief of Gibraltar on 12 April.
In September the Prince George went out to North America, and she was with Rear-Admiral Thomas Graves’ fleet that sailed for the Chesapeake but was too late to prevent the surrender of the British Army at Yorktown. . She then sailed south with the Leeward Islands fleet, and Williams commanded her as a private ship at the Battle of St. Kitts on 25 January 1782, where she lost one man killed and three wounded, and at the Battle of the Saintes on 12 April, suffering nine men killed and twenty-four wounded on the latter occasion. After losing a mast in the action she had to be taken in tow by the Triton. He retained the Prince George into the following year and she was paid off at Chatham in July 1783.
Williams died in April 1792 at Bideford in Devon, and left at least one son, James Williams, who joined the Army and lived in nearby Barnstaple.

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Captain Nicholas Charrington.




1744-1803. Born on 20 October 1744, he was the third son of Rev. Nicholas Charrington, originally of Horley, Surrey, who served as the4 vicar of Aldenham in Hertfordshire for fifty years, and of his wife Elizabeth.
Charrington was commissioned lieutenant on 6 June 1773, and on 15 February 1781 was promoted commander with his appointment to the St. Eustatius prize Stormont 14, which he commissioned for the service in the Leeward Islands.
He was posted captain on 27 July 1781, and being appointed to the Ajax 74 he sailed with her from the Leeward Islands to North America in the following month with the fleet under the command of Rear-Admiral Sir Samuel Hood. The Ajax fought at the Battle of Chesapeake Bay on 5 September, losing seven men killed and sixteen wounded, before returning with the fleet to the Leeward Islands at the end of the year and fighting at the Battle of St. Kitts on 25 January 1782, where she lost one man killed and twelve wounded, and the Battle of the Saintes on 12 April, where she suffered casualties of nine men killed and forty wounded.
After remaining at Jamaica for the rest of the war and occasionally flying the flag of Rear-Admiral Joshua Rowley, Charrington relinquished the command when the Ajax was paid off at Chatham in August 1783. He then briefly commanded the Torbay 74 before leaving her when she too was paid off in October.
Charrington became a superannuated admiral in 1801 and died on 22 February 1803.

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Captain George Wilkinson.




He came from a Cumbrian family.
Wilkinson was commissioned lieutenant on 9 January 1760, and he was to remain in this rank for a long twenty years.

He was promoted commander with effect from 27 May 1780, and he commanded the Spanish prize San Vincente 14 which had been captured by Admiral Sir George Rodney’s fleet from Commodore Don Juan de Yardi’s convoy off Cape Finisterre on 8 January. Having gone out to the Leeward Islands with Rodney, his command drove ashore on 10 October when the Great Hurricanes hit St. Lucia, but she was successfully refloated.

Wilkinson was posted captain on 14 May 1781, and he joined another ex-Spanish vessel, the Prince William 64, which fought at the Battle of St. Kitts on 25 January 1782 where she suffered casualties of three men wounded, and the Battle of the Saintes on 12 April where she did not suffer any casualties but helped force the surrender of the Ardent 64.

He briefly commanded the Prothee 64 following the latter battle, but having removed to the captured French flagship Ville de Paris 110, he lost his life on 16 September with eight hundred other men when she disappeared without trace in a hurricane whilst returning to Europe with Rear-Admiral Thomas Graves’s convoy.

In 1767 he married Rebecca Lucock of Cockermouth and the couple had four children. His wife, who was awarded a pension of £100 and half-pay following his death, died in 1801.

Wilkinson was described as an experienced seaman who had made two dozen voyages to and from the West Indies, and was thus well-suited to sail the Ville de Paris to England.

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Captain John Knight.




John Knight was born in Dundee in February 1747, the son of Rear-Admiral John Knight and his wife Jean Hay. In 1758, aged 11, he followed his father into service with the Royal Navy aboard HMS Tartar, participating in the Raid on Cherbourg that year during the Seven Years' War. Knight remained with his father for five more years, until moving at the end of the war in 1763 to HMS Romney on the North American station. Off North America, Knight participated in surveying operations and although he returned to Europe some years later, he went back to North America in 1775 at the start of the American Revolutionary War.

Serving on the sloop HMS Falcon, Knight witnessed the Battle of Bunker Hill while anchored off Boston, and in 1776 he was captured in an attack on an American schooner. He was exchanged in December 1776 and given the independent hired vessel HMS Haerlem to conduct raiding operations along the Eastern Seaboard. In 1777 he was aboard Lord Howe's flagship HMS Eagle, and his knowledge of the coast played a vital part in Howe outmanoeuvring the French fleet of d'Estaing. The same year he married a woman named Prudence Reynolds in America, with whom he would have eight children, and in February 1778 he returned to Britain.

In 1780, Knight returned to the Americas again aboard HMS Barfleur and participated in the Battle of Fort Royal and the Battle of the Chesapeake, briefly becoming post captain in command of HMS Shrewsbury in 1782 before returning to Barfleur as captain and fighting at the Battle of St. Kitts and the Battle of the Saintes. At the end of the war, Knight remained in command of Barfleur and was given personal responsibility for the naval education of the young Prince William who served aboard.

After the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars, Knight had periods in command of Barfleur in the Channel Fleet and HMS Victory in the Mediterranean, before taking over HMS Monatgu with the North Sea fleet. At the Nore Mutiny in 1797, Montagu was heavily involved, but Knight resumed command once the uprising had collapsed, and in October he was engaged at the Battle of Camperdown against the Dutch fleet. In 1798 he commanded a squadron off Ireland and the following year was in command of the blockade squadron off Brest. He also remarried, his first wife having died sometime previously, to a widow named Love Pickman Oliver. In 1801 Knight was promoted to rear-admiral, and in 1805 during the Napoleonic Wars he was named as commander at Gibraltar, where he remained for another ten years until the war's end in 185 when he retired from the Navy as a full admiral and a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath.

He settled with his family at Woodend House in Soberton, Hampshire, and died there in June 1831.

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Captain Charles Saxton.





Charles Saxton was born in 1732, the youngest son of Edward Saxton, a merchant of London and Abingdon, and his wife Mary, née Bush. The family's country estate was Circourt Manor at Denchworth in Berkshire (now Oxfordshire).
Saxton entered the navy in January 1745, becoming a captain's servant aboard the 50-gun HMS Gloucester, under the command of Captain Charles Saunders. Saxton spent the next three years aboard the Gloucester, before joining the 58-gun HMS Eagle under Captain Richard Collins, while the Eagle was the guard ship at Plymouth. From her he moved to the 60-gun HMS St Albans where he served on the Guinea coast with Captain John Byron. After a period of time on this service he was promoted to lieutenant on 2 January 1757, and went to the East Indies to serve in the fleets under Vice-Admiral Charles Watson, and then Vice-Admiral George Pocock, during the Seven Years' War.

Saxton returned to England in 1760 and was briefly assigned as lieutenant to the 64-gun HMS Modeste early that year, though on 11 October 1760 Saxton received a promotion to commander. He was apparently in command of one of the yachts sent to escort HMY Royal Charlotte, carrying Duchess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz from Cuxhaven to Harwich for her marriage to George III. Saxton was promoted to post captain on 28 January 1762, and appointed to command the 74-gun HMS Magnanime, flying the broad pennant of Commodore Lord Howe, and subsequently forming part of the fleet under Sir Edward Hawke. The commission was apparently an uneventful one, the French having been decisively defeated by Hawke at the Battle of Quiberon Bay in 1759, and after the Seven Years' War had concluded, Saxton paid off the Magnanime.

Interwar years.


Saxton remained in active employment after the war, commissioning the 32-gun HMS Pearl in March 1763 and taking her out to the Newfoundland station in May. In 1764 he was sent by Commodore Hugh Palliser to reconnoitre French activities in the Gulf of St Lawrence, and to deter any claims they might make there. He remained with the Pearl until 1766, when he paid her off. He appears to have held no further commands until October 1770, when he commissioned the 40-gun HMS Phoenix during the period of the Falklands Crisis, when it was feared that war might break out with Spain. In the event, the crisis passed without breaking into open hostilities and Saxton paid Phoenix off in January 1771. In July 1771 he married Mary Bush.

American War of Independence.


Another period without active employment then passed for Saxton, before the outbreak of the American War of Independence. He commissioned the 74-gun HMS Invincible and in 1780 was part of the Channel Fleet under Francis Geary, and later George Darby. Saxton sailed to the West Indies in November 1780 and there became part of Sir Samuel Hood's squadron. He seems to have been present at the capture of Sint Eustatius on 3 February 1781, but a bout of ill-health compelled him to leave his ship for some months, and Invincible was under the temporary command of Captain Richard Bickerton at the Battle of Fort Royal on 29/30 April 1781.

Invincible went on to form part of Francis Samuel Drake's squadron at the Invasion of Tobago in May 1781, after which time Saxton was well enough to resume command, and to sail with her to North America with Sir Samuel Hood's force. He was with Hood's squadron, as part of the larger fleet under Sir Thomas Graves, at the Battle of the Chesapeake on 5 September, though Hood's force in the rear took little part in the action. Saxton then returned to the West Indies with Hood's force and was present at the Battle of Saint Kitts on 25/26 January 1782. Again his ship was only lightly engaged, and suffered casualties of only two of her men wounded. Hood then despatched Invincible to Jamaica to be refitted, after which Saxton sailed in July 1782 to join Admiral Hugh Pigot off the American coast. He was off New York from September until October 1782, and in November took part in the blockade of Cape François. He was present with Edmund Affleck's squadron at Puerto Cavello in February 1783, and on 19 February Invincible retook the 44-gun HMS Argo, which two French frigates had captured shortly before.

Post-war and administrative career.

Saxton returned to England in mid-1783 and paid Invincible off. Again left without a ship, it was not until 1787 that he received another post. Tensions mounted with France that year, and Saxton was appointed to a commission with the purpose of examining the working of the impress system, with Saxton responsible for London. Again the crisis passed without breaking into open war, and in 1789 Saxton became commissioner of the navy at Portsmouth. It was an important posting at an important time, Portsmouth being the navy's principal dockyard, and Saxton oversaw operations during the expansion of the navy. A contemporary biographer noted that "he continued to fill [the office] with the highest reputation, as well on account of his ability, as to the attentive diligence to the duties of his situation, and his unblemished integrity."

Saxton was created baronet of Circourt on 19 July 1794. He remained as commissioner at Portsmouth throughout the French Revolutionary Wars, and part of the Napoleonic Wars. He was described by J. K. Laughton as "a low-profile commissioner who disliked administrative innovations". He retired in 1806 with a pension of £750 a year, with a remainder of £300 per annum to his wife if she survived him.

Sir Charles Saxton died in November 1808.

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Rear-Admiral Sir Samuel Hood.





The son of Samuel Hood, vicar of Butleigh in Somerset, and prebendary of Wells and Mary Hoskins, daughter of Richard Hoskins, Esquire, of Beaminster, Dorset. In 1740 Captain (later Admiral) Thomas Smith was stranded in Butleigh when his carriage broke down on the way to Plymouth. The Rev Samuel Hood rescued him and gave him hospitality for the night. Samuel and his older brother Alexander were inspired by his stories of the sea and he offered to help them in the Navy. The Rev Samuel Hood and his wife would not allow any more sons to join the Navy as "they might be drowned". Their third son Arthur William became Vicar of Butleigh but died of fever in his 30s. Another son was drowned in the local river Brue as a boy.

Early career.

Samuel entered the Royal Navy in 1741. He served part of his time as midshipman with George Brydges Rodney on the Ludlow and became a lieutenant in 1746. He had opportunities to see service in the North Sea during the War of the Austrian Succession. In 1754, he was made commander of the sloop Jamaica and served on her at the North American station.^] In July 1756, while still on the North American station, he took command of the sloop Lively.

Seven Years' War.
At the outbreak of the Seven Years' War in 1756, the navy was rapidly expanded which benefited Hood. Later that year Hood was promoted to post captain and given command of the Grafton. In 1757, while in temporary command of Antelope (50 guns), he drove a French ship ashore in Audierne Bay, and captured two privateers. His zeal attracted the favourable notice of the Admiralty and he was appointed to a ship of his own, Bideford. In 1759, when captain of the Vestal (32), he captured the French Bellone (32) after a sharp action. During the war, his services were wholly in the Channel, and he was engaged under Rodney in 1759 in the Raid on Le Havre, destroying the vessels collected by the French to serve as transports in the proposed invasion of Britain.
He was appointed in Commander-in-Chief, North American Station in July 1767. He returned to England in October 1770and commissioned the building of Catherington House in the village of Catherington in Hampshire in 1771. In 1778, he accepted a command which in the ordinary course would have terminated his active career, becoming Commissioner of the dockyard at Portsmouth and governor of the Naval Academy.

American Revolutionary War.

In 1778, on the occasion of the King's visit to Portsmouth, Hood was made a baronet. The war was deeply unpopular with much of the British public and navy. Many admirals had declined to serve under Lord Sandwich, the First Lord of the Admiralty. Admiral Rodney, who then commanded in the West Indies, had complained of a lack of proper support from his subordinates, whom he accused of disaffection. The Admiralty, anxious to secure the services of trustworthy flag officers, promoted Hood to rear-admiral on 26 September 1780,^] and sent him to the West Indies to act as second in command under Rodney, who knew him personally. He joined Rodney in January 1781 in his flagship Barfleur, and remained in the West Indies or on the coast of North America until the close of the American Revolutionary War.
The expectation that he would work harmoniously with Rodney was not entirely justified. Their correspondence shows that they were not on friendly terms; but Hood always did his duty, and he was so able that no question of removing him from the station ever arose. The unfortunate turn for the British taken by the campaign of 1781 was largely due to Rodney's neglect of Hood's advice.

Battle of the Chesapeake.

When Rodney decided to return to Britain for the sake of his health in the autumn of 1781, Hood was ordered to take the bulk of the fleet to the North American coast during the hurricane months. Hood joined Admiral Thomas Graves in the unsuccessful effort to relieve the army at Yorktown, when the British fleet was driven off by the French Admiral, the Comte de Grasse, at the Battle of the Chesapeake.
When he returned to the West Indies, he was for a time in independent command, as commander-in-chief of the Leeward Islands Station, owing to Rodney's absence in England. De Grasse attacked the British islands of St Kitts and Nevis with a force much superior to Hood's squadron. Hood made an unsuccessful attempt in January 1782 to save them from capture, with 22 ships to 29, and the series of bold movements by which he first turned the French out of their anchorage at Basseterre of St Kitts and then beat off their attacks, were one of the best accomplishments of any British admiral during the war.

Battle of the Saintes.

On 12 April 1782 Hood took part in a British fleet under Rodney which defeated a combined French and Spanish fleet which was planning an invasion of Jamaica. The French commander De Grasse, who had been responsible for the victory at Chesapeake was captured and taken back to Britain as a prisoner.

Battle of the Mona Passage.

Eventually Hood was ordered to chase and with his division of 12 ships he captured 4 ships at the Mona Passage on 19 April 1782 thus completing the defeat. While serving in the Caribbean Hood became acquainted with, and later became a mentor to Horatio Nelson who was a young frigate commander. Hood had been a friend of Nelson's uncle Maurice Suckling. In 1782 Hood introduced Nelson to the Duke of Clarence, the future King William IV who was then a serving naval officer in New York.

Peace.

Hood was made an Irish peer as Baron Hood of Catherington in September 1782. During the peace, he entered the British Parliament as Member for Westminster in the election of 1784 where he was a supporter of the government of William Pitt the Younger. He became Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth in 1786, and after being promoted to vice-admiral on 24 September 1787, retired from the Portsmouth Command in 1789. He was appointed to the Board of Admiralty under John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham, brother of the Prime Minister, in July 1788 and became First Naval Lord in August 1789. He became Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth again in June 1792.

French Revolution.

Following the outbreak of the French Revolutionary War, Hood became Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean Fleet in February 1793. In August 1793 French royalists and other opponents of the revolution took over the town and invited Hood, whose fleet was blockading the city, to occupy the town. Hood, without time to request for instructions from the Admiralty in London, moved swiftly to take command of the port.
There were two main reasons for the British move. It was hoped that Toulon could be a centre of French resistance to Paris, and also to take possession of the French Mediterranean fleet of fifty eight warships, which lay in the harbour. It was hoped that depriving the French revolutionaries of their maritime resources would cripple the revolution. He occupied Toulon on the invitation of the French royalists, in co-operation with the Spaniards and Sardinians. In December of the same year, the allies, who did not work harmoniously together, were driven out, mainly by the generalship of Napoleon. Hood ordered the French fleet burned to prevent them falling back into the hands of the revolutionaries.

Corsica.

Hood then turned to the occupation of Corsica, which he had been invited to take in the name of the King of Britain by Pasquale Paoli, who had been leader of the Corsican Republic before it was subjugated by the French a quarter of a century previously. The island was for a short time added to the dominions of George III, chiefly by the exertions of the fleet and the co-operation of Paoli. While the occupation of Corsica was being effected, the French at Toulon had so far recovered that they were able to send a fleet to sea. Nelson was recorded as saying that Hood was "the best Officer, take him altogether, that England has to boast of".) In October, he was recalled to England in consequence of some misunderstanding with the admiralty or the ministry, which has never been explained. Richard Freeman, in his book, The Great Edwardian Naval Feud, explains his relief from command in a quote from Lord Esher's journal. According to this journal, "... [Hood] wrote 'a very temperate letter' to the Admiralty in which he complained that he did not have enough ships to defend the Mediterranean." As a result, Hood was then recalled from the Mediterranean. He was promoted to full admiral on 12 April 1794.

Later career.


Samuel Hood was created Viscount Hood of Whitley, Warwickshire in 1796 with a pension of £2000 per year for life (about £300,000 a year in 2010 terms). In 1796, he was also appointed Governour of the Greenwich Hospital, a position which he held until his death in 1816. He served as Tory Member of Parliament for Westminster from 1784 to 1788 and from 1790 to 1796, and was Member for Reigate between 1789 and 1790.
He died in Greenwich on 27 January 1816 and is buried in Greenwich Hospital Cemetery.

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Captain Alexander Hood.





He entered the Royal Navy in 1767, and accompanied Captain James Cook in his second voyage of exploration from 1772 to 1775.^[1][a][b] During the American Revolutionary War,^[c] under Admirals Richard Howe and George Rodney, when he had command of the cutter Ranger in March 1780, he distinguished himself in the West Indies, and in July 1781 was promoted to captain. Shortly thereafter, he was given command of the 98-gun second rate ship of the line, HMS Barfleur. It was not uncommon for an extremely junior captain to find himself commanding a large ship-of-the-line, if that ship were the flagship of an experienced admiral, who would be able to keep a close eye on the new captain. In this case, the Barfleur was the flagship of his cousin, Admiral Sir Samuel Hood. On 5 September they took the Barfleur into battle at the Battle of the Chesapeake, where the ship served as flagship of the Van of Sir Thomas Graves' fleet. At the Battle of the Saintes on 12 April 1782, Hood was in command of one of Rodney's frigates, HMS Champion. Later, again under his brother's command, he proceeded to the Mona Passage, where he captured the French corvette Cérès, a former British warship that the Navy took into service as HMS Raven. Hood became close friends with the commander of his prize, the Baron de Peroy, and during the peace of 1783–1792 paid a long visit to France as his former prisoner's guest. Also married Elizabeth Periam on 11 July 1792.
In the early part of the French Revolutionary Wars, ill health kept him at home, and it was not until 1797 that he went afloat again. His first experience was bitter; his ship, the 74-gun third-rate Mars, was unenviably prominent in the Spithead mutiny.
On 21 April 1798 Mars fought the Battle of the Raz de Sein with the French ship Hercule in the dusk near the Pointe du Raz on the coast of Brittany. Hercule attempted to escape through the Passage du Raz but the tide was running in the wrong direction and she was forced to anchor, giving Hood the chance to attack at close quarters. The two ships were of equal force, both seventy-fours, but Hercule was newly commissioned; after more than an hour and a half of bloody fighting at close quarters she struck her flag, having lost over three hundred men. On Mars 31 men were killed and 60 wounded. Among the dead was Captain Hood, mortally wounded in the thigh - he had been cut in the femoral artery. He is said to have died just as the sword of the French captain L'Hériter was being put in his hand.
Hood has a house named after him at The Royal Hospital School, Suffolk.

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Captain Francis Reynolds.





1739-1808. He was born on 28 March 1739 at Strangeways, Manchester, the second son of Francis Reynolds, heir to a South Sea Company director, and of Hon. Elizabeth Moreton, eldest daughter of the 1st Lord Ducie. He was the nephew of Matthew, 2nd Lord Ducie.

Having served under Captain Lord Richard Howe aboard the Magnanime 74, Reynolds was commissioned lieutenant on 28 April 1758, seeing further service on the Melampe 36, Captain William Hotham, in the North Sea.
He was promoted commander on 21 November 1760, joining the Weasel 16 in the Channel and taking the privateer Duc de Bourbon on 18 October 1761. He was posted captain of the Garland 24 on 12 April 1762, serving off the coast of France and, prior to being paid off at the peace, off Africa.
In April 1763 he recommissioned the Flamborough 24, going out to the Mediterranean in August and commanding the Faversham 44 in the Mediterranean from 1764. He later had the frigate Quebec 32 in the Leeward Islands from the summer of 1769 until paid off in August 1772.

He recomissioned the Augusta 64 in the autumn of 1776, going out to North America in the following March. During the Philadelphia campaign of August-November 1777 this vessel was destroyed by fire at Mud Island on 23 October, with Reynolds being personally saved by Captain Andrew Snape Hamond’s barge from the Roebuck. At the court-martial into the loss of Augusta presided over by Captain George Ourry aboard the Somerset 64 off Billingsport on 26 November Reynolds was acquitted of any failure in her loss. He returned to England shortly afterwards aboard the transport Dutton with Vice-Admiral Lord Howe’s dispatches.

His next command was the Jupiter 50, which he joined in August 1778. Off Cape Finisterre on 20 October, and being in company with the Medea 28, Captain James Montagu, he fell in with the French Triton 64 commanded by the Comte de Ligondés. A ferocious night time engagement took place over the next couple of hours in squally weather, but the Medea was forced out of action within thirty minutes, and the difficulties of fighting in the darkness prevented Reynolds from driving home a victory. The French vessel suffered thirteen killed and thirty wounded including her commander who had been obliged to leave the deck, the Jupiter three killed and eleven wounded, three of them fatally. Curiously stories later surfaced in the press that the Jupiter had surrendered and had been carried as a prize to Brest.

On 26 May 1779, having left for the Mediterranean with the trade two months earlier and then undertaken a cruise, the Jupiter again found herself in action off Cape Finisterre. On this occasion she fell in with a French convoy escorted by men-of war including sail of the line under the command of Admiral La-Motte Picquet. Even so, Reynolds pitched into the middle of the enemy in the hope that he could take a prize and gain intelligence of their destination. Despite coming under hot fire from the Blanche 32 and personally sustaining splinter wounds he did manage to capture one vessel and put a prize crew aboard before being driven off without his capture by seven of the enemy.

He later commanded the Jupiter in the Channel fleet retreat of August 1779 and subsequently saw service in the North Sea. On 3 October, having been sent to the River Shannon with a squadron of frigates to bring home an East India convoy, and being in company with the Apollo 32, Captain Philemon Pownall, and the Crescent 28, Captain Charles Hope, he took two French cutters off the Lizard, these being added to the navy under their own names, Pilote and Mutine.

Towards the end of 1780 Reynolds was appointed to the Monarch 74, joining Rear-Admiral Sir Samuel Hood’s reinforcements going out to the West Indies at the end of October in the place of Captain Adam Duncan who did not wish to serve on that station on account of his health. He was present at the capture of St. Eustatius on 3 February 1781 and was selected by Admiral Sir George Rodney to take three vessels in pursuit of the Dutch sail of the line Mars 60 and a richly-laden thirty-strong convoy which had departed the island the day before. On 4 February he brought the Mars to action and she struck after her senior officer, Rear-Admiral Willem Crul, was slain. On 29 April 1781 the Monarch fought at the Battle of Fort Royal, and on 5 September was present but barely engaged at the Battle of Chesapeake Bay.

Returning to the West Indies with Hood, Reynolds commanded the Monarch 74 at the Battle of St. Kitts on 25-26 January 1782, and at the Battle of the Saintes on 12 April 1782 where his casualties of sixteen men killed and thirty-three wounded were amongst the highest in the fleet. Having sailed to North America in September under the orders of the new Leeward Islands commander-in-chief, Admiral Hugh Pigot, he returned to England in the following summer and was paid off.

Reynolds was MP for Lancaster from 1784 and following the death of his brother Thomas he acceded to the reformed title of the 3rd Lord Ducie of Tortworth on 11 September 1785, whereupon he resigned from the navy and parliament.

He assumed the additional name of Moreton in 1786, and died at Tortworth, Glocestershire, on 19 August 1808.

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Captain James Cranstoun, 8th Lord Cranstoun.




(1755 – 1796) was an officer of the Royal Navy.

The third son of James Cranstoun, 6th Lord Cranstoun, he succeeded to the title on 1 August 1778 on the death of his elder brother William Cranstoun, 7th Lord Cranstoun.


Cranstoun reached the rank of Lieutenant on 19 October 1776 and Captain on 31 January 1780. He commanded HMS Belliqueux at the Battle of St. Kitts in January 1782 and after the Battle of the Saintes in April was sent home with the despatches (in which he was mentioned) bearing news of the victory. From 1791 to 1793 he was Captain in HMS Assistance and in 1795 commanded HMS Bellerophon under Admiral Cornwallis at the First Battle of Groix
.

He was appointed Governor of Grenada in 1796 but before taking up his appointment he died at Bishop's Waltham on 22 September that year, as a result of lead-poisoning in cider. He was buried at the Royal Garrison Church, Portsmouth.


Lord Cranstoun was married on 19 August 1792 to Elizabeth, youngest daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Lewis Charles Montolieu and sister-in-law of Alexander Murray, 8th Lord Elibank and of James Bland Burges (later Sir James Bland Lamb, 1st Baronet). They had no children, so the title passed to Lord Cranstoun's nephew. Lady Cranstoun died on 27 August 1797, aged twenty-seven.

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Captain John Nicholson Inglefield.





(1748–1828) was an officer in the British Royal Navy.
John Nicholson Inglefield was the son of a ship's carpenter, Isaac Inglefield, and his wife, a sister of the ship designer Thomas Slade, (later Sir Thomas Slade). According to Captain Inglefield himself his paternal family was of Lancashire origin and distantly connected to that of the Englefields.

Under the patronage of his maternal uncle, Thomas Slade, Inglefield joined the navy as a boy of 11 in 1759. In April 1766 he was rated able seaman aboard the Launceston: in May 1768 he was made lieutenant and moved into HMS Romney under the command of Sir Samuel Hood. This connection was to prove the most significant of Inglefield's career. Although Inglefield returned to the Launceston in October, by July 1769 he was back with Hood aboard the Romney and from that time forward his career was closely associated with his friend's. With him Inglefield left the Romney in December 1770, served in HMS Marlborough and HMS Courageux, and in 1778 in HMS Robust with Hood's brother Alexander. Aboard the Robust he was present at the First Battle of Ushant on 27 July.

On 27 December 1773 at Baughurst, Hampshire, Inglefield married Ann Smith, daughter of a gentleman of Greenwich named Robert Smith. They had three daughters and one son, Samuel Hood Inglefield, who also went on to a distinguished naval career and was the father of Sir Edward Augustus Inglefield.

In June 1779 Inglefield was promoted to command of the brig-sloop HMS Lively and in the October of the following year was promoted to post captain and posted to HMS Barfleur of 90 guns, in which his patron, Sir Samuel Hood, hoisted his flag. As captain of the flagship, Inglefield sailed to the West Indies and took part in the skirmish with the French fleet off Martinique in 1781. In August of the same year Hood transferred him to HMS Centaur (74 guns), which Inglefield commanded in three actions against the French, culminating on 12 April 1782 at the Battle of the Saintes.

It was however aboard the Centaur that Inglefield suffered the most harrowing episode of his career when, sailing for England with the convoy under Rear-Admiral Sir Thomas Graves, his ship along with the others was struck by a hurricane. The Centaur, an ageing ship, was severely damaged. Thrown upon her beam ends, dismasted in order to right herself and with her rudder gone, she eventually foundered despite the most strenuous efforts of Inglefield and the crew over several days. Inglefield and eleven others escaped aboard the pinnace, though otherwise the ship's complement of some six hundred men was lost. Subsisting on a few bottles of French cordials, some spoilt bread, ship's biscuit and rainwater wrung out into a bailing cup, the survivors successfully navigated to Faial Island in the Azores after sixteen days of the most terrible privation that saw one of them, Thomas Matthews, die the day before they reached land. On returning to England and the court martial usual in such cases, the survivors were acquitted. Inglefield's spare and unsensational description of this disaster, Captain Inglefield's narrative concerning the loss of the 'Centaur' was published shortly afterwards. A dramatic painting of the incident in which those on the pinnace, thrusting off from the foundering Centaur, pulled aboard a fifteen-year-old midshipman who had thrown himself from the wreck, was later made into a popular print.

For three years Inglefield was given a home posting aboard the guardship HMS Scipio in the Medway. In 1786 however he and his wife were publicly involved in a marital dispute which led to a permanent breach. After accusing his wife of making advances towards a manservant, Inglefield demanded a separation. Denying the accusation, Mrs Inglefield sued him for desertion. Although she won her case in court, the marriage was irretrievably damaged and they appear never to have cohabited again.

In 1788 Inglefield was posted to HMS Adventure (44 guns) which, joined later by HMS Medusa (44 guns), also under his command, patrolled the West Coast of Africa. In 1792 he served as one of the judges at the court-martial of the mutineers from HMS Bounty, who had been captured on Tahiti. In 1793 he was serving in the Mediterranean aboard the frigate HMS Aigle (36 guns) and in 1794 was appointed captain of the fleet (chief of staff to the commander-in-chief). Towards the end of 1794 he returned to England with Samuel, now Viscount, Hood and was thereafter a resident commissioner of the Navy Board, serving in Corsica, Malta, Gibraltar and Halifax, Nova Scotia. A commissioner's post was considered equivalent to the rank of rear admiral, but was only given to officers who had ended their active service. In 1799 he was placed on the list of retired captains.

He died in Greenwich, Kent before 7 February 1828 when his will was proved. In his will he bequeathed his estate of some £8,300, apart from three annuities to relatives, to his two surviving children, Samuel Hood Inglefield and Lady Ann Hallowell-Carew, wife of Sir Benjamin Hallowell-Carew.

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Captain William Bayne.




He was an officer of the Royal Navy. He saw service during the Seven Years' War and the American War of Independence, being killed in action in a brief engagement prior to the Battle of the Saintes.

Seven Years' War.

Bayne became a lieutenant on 5 April 1749; in 1755 he served in that rank on board HMS Torbay, in North American waters, with Admiral Edward Boscawen, and in November 1756 was advanced to the command of a sloop of war. In 1760 he was promoted to post captain and given command of the 44-gun HMS Woolwich, and served in that ship at the reduction of Martinique in 1762, and continued there aboard the frigate HMS Stag, under the command of Vice-Admiral George Brydges Rodney.

American War of Independence.

After this he had no command till 1778, when he was appointed to the newly built 74-gun HMS Alfred, and served in the Channel Fleet through 1779 and 1780. He afterwards went to the West Indies as part of the squadron with Sir Samuel Hood, and was present in the action off Fort Royal in Martinique on 29 April 1781, and in the action off the Chesapeake on 5 September. Owing to the faulty system of tactics then in vogue and almost compulsory, the Alfred had no active share in either of these battles, the circumstances of which were afterwards much discussed.
On returning to the West Indies the Alfred was with Sir Samuel Hood at the Battle of Saint Kitts, where she accidentally fouled the frigate HMS Nymphe, cutting her down to the water, and losing her own bowsprit. This delayed the fleet at the very critical moment when Hood had proposed an unexpected attack on the French at anchor. No blame was attached to Captain Bayne for the accident, which was mainly due to the darkness of the night. Bayne quickly refitted his ship and resumed his station in the line, which won him credit, as did his distinguished conduct in the battle. When the fleet was reunited under the flag of Sir George Rodney, the Alfred continued under the immediate orders of Sir Samuel Hood, and with other ships of Hood's division was engaged in the partial action with the French on 9 April 1782, just prior to the Battle of the Saintes. It was little more than a distant interchange of fire between the respective vans; but one shot carried off Captain Bayne's leg about mid-thigh. Before a tourniquet could be applied, he was dead. To his memory, jointly with that of Captains William Blair and Lord Robert Manners, who were killed in the battle three days later, a national monument was placed in Westminster Abbey.

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Captain Henry Edwyn Stanhope.





1754-1814. He was born on 21 May 1754, the only son of Hon. Edward Francis Stanhope and his wife Catherine Brydges, the daughter of the Marquess of Caernarfon. He was a distant cousin of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Francis Austen, Rear-Admiral Charles Austen, and the novelist Jane Austen.
Stanhope was educated at Winchester College and Oxford University before entering the navy aboard the Rose 20, Captain Benjamin Caldwell, in May 1768 and serving on the North American station. After a short spell aboard the Romney 50 with the commander-in-chief, Commodore Samuel Hood, he returned to the Rose and thence to England. In the summer of 1772 he went out to the Leeward Islands under the flag of Vice-Admiral William Parry aboard the Chatham 50, Captain Charles Thompson, but his employment was terminated by illness and he returned home to pursue his academic studies.

In March 1775 he sailed for North America aboard the Otter 14, Captain Matthew Squire, seeing action at the Battle of Bunker Hill before becoming an acting-lieutenant of the Glasgow 20 Captain Tyringham Howe. A short period of independent command followed when he was ordered to take a prize brig into Boston, and having used her to capture a schooner he then commandeered a sloop and captured a further two prizes which he carried into Newport, Rhode Island. Here he removed to the Rose 20 once more, which ship was now under the command of Captain James Wallace, and being placed in command of her tender he fought an inconclusive ninety-minute action with the privateer Hancock 14 that saw many of his crew incapacitated.

Whilst at Newport Stanhope accepted an order from his previous commander, Captain Howe, to go ashore in search of deserters from the Glasgow, during the course of which dangerous assignment he was assailed with a cutlass and taken prisoner. Having been initially incarcerated at Providence and from thence on parole to Northampton in Massachusetts, he engineered his escape with the future Rear-Admiral George Gregory when the conditions of their parole were altered. The two were re-captured at Middleton in Connecticut to be imprisoned once more at Northampton, but Stanhope escaped again nine months later with Robert Arnold, the master of the sloop Falcon, and after walking some seven hundred miles and living for weeks in disguise at Marblehead they eventually took a cartel to Halifax. Stanhope returned to England in March 1777, having been appointed an acting-lieutenant of the Liverpool 28, Captain Henry Bellew.

He was commissioned lieutenant on 10 March 1777, joining the Nonsuch 64, Captain Walter Griffith, in which he went out to North America once more, and where the galley Pigot 8 under his command led a force otherwise consisting of six boats under Captain Samuel Reeve that captured a rebel galley north of the Bristol Ferry on Rhode Island. He had this vessel but a short time as she was set alight at Newport on 5 August 1778 to prevent capture by the French during their attempt with rebel forces to occupy Rhode Island. Stanhope was then charged with taking despatches to Vice-Admiral Lord Howe by Major-General Sir Robert Pigot, a feat he heroically achieved by rowing a whale boat through the enemy fleet, hailing their flagship in French, and thereafter making good his passage to New York in most trying circumstances. On arrival at Sandy Hook he was taken aboard the Monmouth 64, Captain Thomas Collingwood, and in October returned to England aboard the storeship Leviathan, Captain John Brown.

In April 1779 he became the senior lieutenant of the Portland 50, Captain Anthony Hunt, going out to Newfoundland with the flag of Rear-Admiral Richard Edwards, and on 6 August 1779 he was promoted commander by Edwards and instructed to commission the ex-American privateer Trepassey 14, a vessel that he considered inadequate for service. Upon applying to the admiral for a transfer his senior’s response so aggrieved him that he requested a court-martial, the result of which was described as ‘highly honourable’ to him. Taking passage aboard the Fairy 14, Stanhope returned to England in the autumn of 1780.

In the spring of 1781 he took passage out to the Leeward Islands aboard the cutter Ranger, Lieutenant Alexander Hood, and after falling in with Admiral Sir George Rodney’s fleet he was appointed to the fireship Salamander by that officer when they arrived at Barbados. He was posted captain of the Terrible 74 on 16 June 1781 before joining the Russell 74 shortly afterwards, which ship he fought at the Battle of St. Kitts on 25-26 January 1782. In the following month, suffering from ill health and apparently unlikely to survive, he exchanged with Captain James Saumarez into the fireship Tisiphone and returned to England with despatches.

He had recovered in time to command the Mercury 28 from September 1782, being engaged in convoy duty and paying her off before recommissioning her once more in April 1783 and sailing to Nova Scotia on 27 June with news of the peace. He spent the next three years on the Halifax station, during the course of which he and his officers were insulted and threatened by a mob when visiting Boston. He paid the Mercury off in July 1786, and returned to his academic studies.

After nearly a decade of unemployment, Stanhope joined the Ruby 64 at Spithead in September 1794, serving in the Channel before going out to the Cape in the following spring under the orders of Commodore John Blankett. On 19 June 1795 he was brought to a court martial on charges proffered by Lieutenant William Fitzwilliam Owen of wasting stores, behaving in a fraudulent and oppressive manner unbecoming the conduct of an officer, and of neglecting to supply his ship with the necessary slops. The court found the charges ‘frivolous, malicious and ill-founded’, and Stanhope was acquitted. Owen was then brought to a court-martial for his own behaviour and sentenced to be dismissed the service, although he was later re-instated and rose to flag rank. Stanhope subsequently served at Vice-Admiral Sir George Keith Elphinstone’s capture of the Dutch ships in Saldanha Bay on 17 August 1795 before leaving for home with despatches in October and arriving back in England in February 1796.

In June 1797 he joined the newly-launched Neptune 98 which was being fitted out at Woolwich, and he flew the broad pennant of Commodore Sir Erasmus Gower during the Nore mutiny before that officer assumed command on 27 September. Following the resolution of the insurrection he sat on the court martials of a number of the Nore mutineers. He then briefly commanded the Spanish prize San Damaso 74 before she was laid up in November, and in June 1798 he joined the brand new Achille 74, serving with the Channel fleet. By now he was severely afflicted with a bilious colic which obliged him to retire ashore six months later, and he was employed thereafter in the command of the Cornwall and later the Devonshire Sea Fencibles.

Stanhope became a rear-admiral on 1 January 1801, was further promoted to vice-admiral on 9 November 1805, and flew his flag from that year in the River Thames aboard the Matilda 28, Lieutenant Thomas Dorsett Birchall, and, briefly, the Sybille 44, Captain Robert Winthrop.

He was second-in-command to Admiral Lord Gambier in the expedition which forced the submission of Copenhagen on 7 September 1807, flying his flag aboard the Pompée 74, Captain Richard Dacres, and he was created a baronet in respect of this service on 13 November. Returning to home waters he flew his flag at Greenwich aboard the Thisbe 28, Commander William Rogers, before joining the Namur 90, Captain Alexander Shippard, as commander-in-chief at the Nore in 1811. He also sat on the court-martial of Admiral Lord Gambier following the Battle of the Basque Roads on 11 April 1809.

Stanhope was promoted a full admiral on 12 August 1812 and died at Clifton, Gloucestershire on 20 December 1814.

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Captain Lord Robert Manners.



Educated at Eton, he entered the Royal Navy in 1772. As the son of one of the greatest soldiers of the time, and grandson of a duke, he expected rapid advancement in rank. However, Lord Sandwich, the First Lord of the Admiralty, resisted his promotion to lieutenant until he had served for six years, as regulations demanded. He was so promoted on 13 May 1778 aboard HMS Ocean, and saw action in July at the First Battle of Ushant. He was moved to Victory, flagship of Admiral Keppel, on 17 September 1778.

Shortly after his promotion to lieutenant, Manners again began to appeal to the Admiralty for preferment. He was moved into Alcide on 15 July 1779, in the fleet of Admiral Rodney, then bound for Gibraltar. The urgings of the other Lords of the Admiralty, who reminded Sandwich of the political danger to himself and the North Ministry should they arouse the enmity of the Manners family, finally wore him down, and he wrote to Rodney on 8 December, asking him to contrive a promotion for Manners. Rodney lacked Sandwich's reservations about Manners, who proved a talented officer despite his ambition. The day after the Battle of Cape St. Vincent (17 January 1780), he promoted Manners captain and made him flag-captain of Resolution under Sir Chaloner Ogle, newly promoted commodore. Soon after on 24 February Manners led part of the squadron which intercepted a French convoy off Madeira and captured the French 64 gun ship of the line Protée along with three transports.

In March, he was returned as Member of Parliament for Cambridgeshire in absentia in a boisterous contest, but would never take his seat.

Resolution returned to England soon after, and went out to North America with Admiral Graves. Under Admiral Rodney, Manners took her to the West Indies; Ogle was promoted rear-admiral and returned home during this period. Resolution went north to fight in the centre at the Battle of the Chesapeake (5 September 1781), and then returned to the West Indies with Rear-Admiral Hood to fight at St Kitts in January 1782.

At the Battle of the Saintes (12 April 1782), Resolution was in the centre of the line and saw heavy action. During the battle, one of Manners' arms was broken, and both legs wounded, one so severely as to require amputation. Being of a strong constitution, it was hoped he might survive, and he was sent back to England aboard the frigate Andromache. However, tetanus set in, and he died on 23 April 1782 and was buried at sea.

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Rear Admiral Edmund Affleck.





Affleck was born on 19 April 1725 the ninth son of the politician Gilbert Affleck (1684?–1764) of Dalham Hall. Affleck entered the navy at an early age, and during reign of George II, served in the several capacities of lieutenant, master and commander, and post captain. In 1778 was given command of the 74 gun HMS Bedford and he briefly joined Vice-Admiral John Byron in North America before having to return for repairs. Affleck was with Sir Charles Hardy the following year.

At the end of that year Affleck sailed with Admiral Sir George Rodney to relieve Gibraltar, and his ship was the first in action with the fleeing enemy at the encounter off Cape St. Vincent on 16 January 1780. During the action the Bedford engaged the Princesa 70 for an hour, resulting in the striking of the Spanish ships’ colours. The Bedford briefly returned to England with Rear-Admiral Hon. Robert Digby’s squadron, assisting in the capture of the Protée 64 and three storeships on 24 February. She then went out to North America under the orders of Rear-Admiral Thomas Graves, arriving in July after a two month passage to reinforce the commander-in-chief, Vice-Admiral Marriot Arbuthnot, at Gardiner’s Bay.

The following January, having been detached under Graves to attempt the interception of some French transports, the Bedford was dismasted in a gale which saw another vessel, the Culloden 74, driven ashore. Affleck demonstrated great skill in re-masting the Bedford with the Culloden’s spars and by 10 March 1781 she was able to sail with Arbuthnot’s squadron in search of the French force under Commodore des Touches. Unfortunately at the Battle of Cape Henry on 16 March the commander-in-chief’s poor tactics found the Bedford un-engaged at the rear of the line of battle.

Affleck rejoined the Bedford in the autumn of 1781 with the honorary rank of commodore, and with Graves as his flag captain he sailed in November under the orders of Rear-Admiral Sir Samuel Hood for the Leeward Islands. He distinguished himself during the repulse of the French fleet at the Battle of St. Kitts on 25 / 26 January 1782, taking a good deal of punishment on behalf of his consorts at the rear of the line, and earning great praise from Hood who knew that the French had singled the Bedford out for special attention.

He was briefly employed in New York, then being threatened by American rebels under George Washington. Surviving correspondence indicates Sir Edmund and General Washington to have been in contact regarding the treatment of prisoners of war. It was not, however, until the year 1782 had become — as it might be historically stated — a memorable epoch in the maritime annals of England, and that valour, ability, and boldness in battle, had retrieved for the nation its naval name, that opportunity had been afforded to Affleck to acquire celebrity and establish his professional fame.

About this period, his broad pennant (the commodore's symbol of office) was flying on board HMS Bedford, attached to the fleet then employed in the West Indies, under the orders of Sir Samuel Hood. In the cautious and somewhat speculative encounter which took place in Basse-terre Roads, between Hood and the celebrated Count de Grasse, it fell to the lot, or — as he would have said himself — good fortune of Affleck, who each day commanded the rear division of the British line, to sustain the brunt of the enemy's attack. His conduct on this occasion drew from the commander-in-chief, a public expression of praise.

"The enemy," says Sir Samuel, in his official dispatches, "gave the preference to Commodore Affleck, but he kept up so noble a fire, and was so well supported by his seconds, Captain Cornwallis and Lord Robert Manners, that the loss and damage sustained in those ships were very trifling, and they very much preserved the other ships in the rear."

In furthering the fond aspirations of Affleck, time was anything but tardy. On the 9 and 12 April ensuing, opportunity was again afforded him to increase his laurels. In the well-known conflicts that took place on those different days between Rodney and the Count de Grasse, and particularly in the memorable battle of the 12th, the commodore, in bringing up the rear of the centre division of the British fleet, manifested the noblest bearing.

For the services rendered to his country in this glorious achievement, his sovereign conferred on him in 1782 the dignity of baronet of Britain; and out of compliment to his gallantry and general conduct, the electors of Colchester returned him the same year to represent that borough in parliament, which he did until his death. In turn, he attained his flag rank (in 1784), but in the capacity of admiral was never employed afloat.
In 1784 he bought Fingringhoe Hall in Essex.

He died at his London house on 19 November 1788.

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Captain Thomas Graves.





Thomas Graves was born circa 1747, the third son of Reverend John Graves of Castle Dawson, County Londonderry, by his wife Jane Hudson. He was a nephew of Admiral Samuel Graves and a first cousin once removed of Admiral Thomas, Lord Graves. Graves' three brothers all served as captains in the navy, becoming admirals on the superannuated list.



Thomas entered the navy at a very early age, and served during the Seven Years' War with his uncle Samuel on board HMS Scorpion, Duke, and Venus. After the peace he was appointed to HMS Antelope with his cousin Thomas, whom he followed to the HMS Edgar, and by whom, in 1765, while on the coast of Africa, he was promoted to be lieutenant of HMS Shannon. It is stated in Foster's ‘Peerage’ that he was born in 1752, a date incompatible with the facts of his known service: by the Regulations of the Navy he was bound to be twenty years old at the date of his promotion, and though the order was often grossly infringed, it is highly improbable that he was only thirteen: it may fairly be assumed that he was at least eighteen in 1765.

Arctic seas and North America.

In 1770 Graves was lieutenant of HMS Arethusa, and in 1773 was appointed to HMS Racehorse with Captain Constantine Phipps for the voyage of discovery in the Arctic Seas. In the following year he went out to North America with his uncle Samuel, and was appointed by him to command HMS Diana, one of the small schooners employed for the prevention of smuggling. She had thirty men, with an armament of four 2-pounders, and on 27 May 1775, being sent from Boston into the Charles River, was attacked by a large force of insurgents, whose numbers swelled till they reached a total of something like two thousand men, with two field-pieces. It fell calm, and towards midnight, as the tide ebbed, Diana ran aground, and lay over on her side, when the colonial forces succeeded in setting her on fire, and the small crew, after a gallant defence, were compelled to abandon her, Graves having been first severely burnt, as well as his brother John, then a lieutenant of the flagship HMS Preston, who had been sent in one of the Preston's boats to the Diana's support.

Promotion and further service.

After this Graves continued to be employed in command of other tenders in the neighbourhood of Boston and Rhode Island until, on the recall of his uncle, he rejoined Preston and returned to England; but was again sent out to the North American station in the same ship, commanded by Commodore William Hotham. In 1779 he was promoted to the command of the sloop HMS Savage on the West Indian and North American stations, and in May 1781 he was advanced to post rank. In the temporary absence of Commodore Edmund Affleck, he commanded HMS Bedford in the Battle of the Chesapeake on 5 September, and continuing afterwards in Bedford, as Affleck's flag captain, was present in the engagement at St. Kitts on 26 January 1782, and in the Battle of the Saintes on 9 and 12 April, in which last the Bedford had a very distinguished part.

In the following autumn Graves was appointed to the frigate HMS Magicienne, in which, on 2 January 1783, he fought a very severe action with the French Sibylle, which was encumbered with a second ship's company which she was carrying to the Chesapeake. Both frigates were reduced to a wreck, and so parted; the Magicienne to get to Jamaica a fortnight later; the Sybille to be captured on 22 January 1783 by Hussar under Thomas McNamara Russell.

Years of peace and the French Revolutionary Wars.

During the peace Graves spent much of his time in France, and in the early years of the French Revolutionary Wars had no employment. It was not until October 1800 that he was appointed to command the 74-gun HMS Cumberland, in the Channel Fleet, under the orders of Lord St. Vincent. This was only for a few months; for on 1 January 1801 he was promoted to be Rear-Admiral of the White Squadron, and in March hoisted his flag on board the 64-gun HMS Polyphemus, one of the fleet proceeding to the Baltic with Sir Hyde Parker.

Flag rank and later life.

Graves afterwards shifted his flag to HMS Defiance, and in her was second in command under Rear-Admiral Horatio Nelson at the Battle of Copenhagen on 2 April 1801. For his services on this important occasion he received the thanks of Parliament, and an appointment as Knight Commander of the Bath. Towards the end of July the fleet left the Baltic, and on its return to England Graves, who had been in very bad health during the greater part of the campaign, retired from active service. HMS Foudroyant, captained for a time by Christopher Nesham, carried his flag in the Bay of Biscay from October 1804 to February 1805. He became a vice-admiral on 9 November1805 and admiral on 2 August 1812.

He died at his residence at Woodbine Hill, Honiton, on 29 March 1814.

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Captain William Cornwallis.




1744-1819. He was born in Suffolk on 20 February 1744, the fourth son of Charles, 1st Earl and 5th Lord Cornwallis, and of his wife, Elizabeth, the daughter of Viscount Townshend. He was the younger brother of Charles, 1st Marquess Cornwallis, who surrendered a British army at Yorktown in 1781 with grave consequences for the outcome of the American War of Revolution, and who later became governor-general of India. A cousin was Captain James Cornwallis.

Having spent two years at Eton, Cornwallis entered the navy in 1755 aboard the Newark 80, Captain John Barker, serving in North American waters under Vice-Admiral the Hon. Edward Boscawen. He was present at the reduction of Louisbourg in 1758 aboard the Kingston 60, Captain William Parry, and a year later fought at the Battle of Quiberon Bay aboard the Dunkirk 60, Captain Hon. Robert Digby. In December 1760 he moved to the Neptune 90, Captain Broderick Hartwell, serving in the Mediterranean as the flagship of Vice-Admiral Charles Saunders, and on 5 April 1761 was commissioned a lieutenant of the Thunderer 74, Captain Charles Proby, which ship captured the French Achille 64 off Cadiz on 17 July.

On 12 July 1762 he was given command of the sloop Wasp 8, moving to the Swift 14 in October, and the Prince Edward 44 at Jamaica when posted captain on 20 April 1765. This ship was paid off in April 1766, but a month later he was appointed to the frigate Guadeloupe 28 which he commanded for the next seven years, initially in the Mediterranean and, after being recommissioned in early 1769, on the Newfoundland station. He went out to Jamaica in April 1770 and also commanded her in home waters. During September 1774 he commissioned the Pallas 36, going out to West Africa in December, and in 1776 sailed for the West Indies. Returning from Jamaica with one hundred and four vessels in convoy in September, their passage was so disrupted by bad weather and indiscipline that only eight vessels reached the Channel in company of the Pallas. Following a number of claims from furious merchants Cornwallis was exonerated of any blame for this catastrophe.

In the early months of 1777 he took the three year-old Isis 50 out to North America, in which vessel he distinguished himself in the Philadelphia campaign from August to November. Vice-Admiral Lord Howe sent him home with despatches in March 1778 aboard the Chatham 50, and he commissioned the new Medea 28 in May before being appointed to the Lion 64 on 5 August in place of the dying Captain Lord William Campbell. This ship went out to the Leeward Islands under the orders of Commodore Joshua Rowley with a convoy in December, arriving off St. Lucia on 12 February 1779. Cornwallis subsequently fought at the Battle of Grenada on 6 July 1779, during which action the Lion was badly mauled and had to flee before the wind to Jamaica with only her foremast standing, having suffered fifty-one casualties. Cornwallis soon established a house on that island, taking a freed slave, Cuba Cornwallis, as his ‘housekeeper’.

On 20 March 1780 the Lion was sailing the Windward Passage near the Bahamas in company with the Bristol 50 and Janus 40 when they were intercepted off Monte Christi by two French sail of 74 guns, one of 64, one of 50, and a frigate. The enemy decided to hold over the action until the next day, but after bombarding the British for approximately three hours from distance they suddenly turned tail. Cornwallis then gave chase, being joined by the Ruby 64 and two frigates that had arrived on the scene, but he was unable to bring the superior enemy to further action. On 20 June he encountered the French General Comte de Rochambeau in convoy with his troops off Bermuda. Suffering a disadvantage of two 74’s, two 64’s, a 50 gun ship and a frigate to the Chevalier Ternay d’Alsac’s seven sail of the line and several frigates, he skilfully withdrew under desultory enemy fire. The French commander was moved afterward to write in praise of Cornwallis’ skill in avoiding an action.

He returned home towards the end of the year with the Jamaica convoy, spending a good deal of the voyage personally nursing the sick Captain Horatio Nelson who had taken ill during the San Juan expedition, and had been brought aboard the Lion as a passenger. Having had his command refitted and coppered at Portsmouth, he participated in Vice-Admiral George Darby’s relief of Gibraltar on 12 April 1781, and in June was appointed to the Canada 74 in succession to Captain Sir George Collier. Whilst at sea his crew refused to fight as they had not received a backlog of pay, but they soon changed their tune when Cornwallis threatened to place them alongside an enemy. In August the Canada sailed to North America as part of Rear-Admiral Hon. Robert Digby’s force, and there transferred to Rear-Admiral Sir Samuel Hood’s Leeward Islands-bound fleet.

On 25/ 26 January 1782 he fought at the Battle of St. Kitts, affording great support to the beleaguered rear in the approach to the anchorage and suffering one man killed and twelve wounded. He subsequently fought in the centre at the Battle of the Saintes on 12 April 1782, where he received the surrender of the Hector 74 and brought the mighty French flagship Ville de Paris 104 to action, thereby allowing ships of Hood’s division to come up and capture her. His zeal in pursuing the fleeing French ships was contrary to that of his commander-in-chief, and in consequence he was quite critical of Admiral Sir George Rodney’s conduct. During the battle the Canada lost twelve men killed and thirty-three wounded.

At the end of July 1782 the Canada left for England with the prizes from the battle in convoy under the orders of Rear-Admiral Thomas Graves, suffering hurricane damage in the storm of 16 September which claimed the Ville de Paris and many other vessels, and eventually arriving home in October. Many years later Cornwallis responded publicly to Graves’ accusation that he had ensured the safety of the Canada without thought for the flagship by stating that at the time the Canada was also in a sinking condition.

Cornwallis was appointed to the year-old Ganges in January 1783 but left her in the following month. In March he joined the yacht Royal Charlotte which he retained until his appointment for two months to the Robust 74 in October 1787, the year in which he also enjoyed an elevation to the honorary rank of colonel of marines.
At the end of the 1788 he was appointed commodore and commander-in-chief in India where his brother was the governor-general, sailing with his flag in the Crown 64, Captain James Cornwallis, and with a small squadron of two frigates and two sloops in company. Such was the anxiety amongst the junior officers of the fleet for active service that he was inundated with requests for employment. After arriving in the summer of 1789 he joined the war against Tippoo Sahib, and this led to difficulties with the French in that part of the world when the old enemy declared that his force exceeded that agreed between the great powers. Matters came to a head on 19 November 1791 when his frigates overpowered the French frigate Résolue 32 after a brief engagement. He also had to deal with several petty affairs, such as that over Captain Isaac Schomberg’s dispute with the Madras authorities on 13 September 1790.

In November 1791 Cornwallis shifted his broad pennant to the Minerva 38, commanded by the young, and at that time poorly regarded, Captain John Whitby, and on 1 February 1793 he was promoted rear-admiral. Following the French declaration of war in 1793 he reduced Pondicherry in a joint operation with army forces under Colonel James Braithwaite on 23 August. By now his squadron had been reduced to the Minerva and three armed Indiaman, but apart from a failed sortie by the frigate Sybille 44 the French failed to arrive in force, and before leaving for England on 12 January 1794 Cornwallis had captured all their ports in India.

Whilst entering the Channel on her return to European waters the Minerva ran in with a French frigate squadron, and after giving information of their position to Commodore Sir John Borlase Warren Cornwallis had the satisfaction to hear of this officer’s victory over the enemy on 23 April 1794. He raised his flag aboard the Excellent 74, Captain John Whitby, in the Channel in May 1794, and on 22 June departed with twelve sail of the line in escort of the East India convoy before taking up his cruising ground in the Bay of Biscay. After being promoted vice-admiral on 4 July he moved to the Caesar 80 for several months from August, prior to joining the new Royal Sovereign 100 in December, both vessels being commanded by Captain John Whitby, although he did not replace Captain Henry Nicholls aboard the latter vessel until March 1795. Meanwhile, on 3 December 1794 Cornwallis had been one of three admirals sent aboard the Culloden 74 in an attempt to bring her men back to duty after they had mutinied against their captain, Thomas Troubridge.

On 8 June 1795, whilst cruising with five sail of the line, two frigates and a sloop off the French coast, he chased a small French squadron of three sail of the line and six frigates into Belleisle. He then took a Dutch ship after seeing off two more French frigates the same day, and captured eight merchantmen shortly afterwards. Nine days later, on 17 June, his five sail of the line and two frigates fell in with Vice-Admiral Villaret-Joyeuse’s twelve sail of the line, two of 50 guns, and nine frigates off the Penmarcks, and he was obliged to conduct a brilliant withdrawal over the next twelve hours. His exceptional skill and endeavour in what popularly became known as ‘Cornwallis’ Retreat’ was rewarded with the thanks of both houses of parliament.

In February 1796 he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Leeward Islands, and he set sail on 1 March with a small squadron, only to return to port on the 15th after the Royal Sovereign had been fouled by a Hessian transport which sank with the loss of one hundred and forty two men. The Board of Admiralty took a dim view of his refusal to shift his flag into the frigate Astrea 32, Cornwallis citing reasons of ill-health and the discomfort that a move to a smaller unknown ship would bring. He was subsequently court-martialled on 7 April with Admiral Lord Howe acting as president of the court, and he was censured for not having shifted his flag, although the court’s admonition was tempered by his action being termed a ‘mistake’. Feeling somewhat aggrieved, Cornwallis nevertheless struck his flag and saw no further service under that administration.

On 14 February 1799 he was advanced to the rank of admiral, and in February 1801 succeeded Admiral Lord St. Vincent as commander-in-chief of the Channel fleet with his flag aboard the Ville de Paris 110, Commander Tristram Robert Ricketts, which officer was replaced in June by Captain John Whitby but then rejoined in September. Cornwallis’ initial captain of the fleet was Captain John Sutton, this officer being replaced on his return from the Baltic in October 1801 by Captain William Domett, who then remained with Cornwallis until the peace.
After the renewal of hostilities on 16 May 1803 Cornwallis returned to the Channel command of forty sail of the line, many of which were detached along the French coast. Initially he flew his flag aboard the Dreadnought 98, Captain Edward Brace, moving to the Ville de Paris 110 on 9 July, with his flag-captains being Tristram Robert Ricketts from 1803, Thomas Le Marchant Gosselin from February to June 1804, William Champain briefly, and thereafter John Whitby. Rear-Admiral William Domett was his captain of the fleet until 1804, Vice-Admiral Charles Nugent held the post in 1805, and Lieutenant Francis Beauman was his flag-lieutenant from 1803-5.

Cornwallis kept Vice-Admiral Honoré Ganteaume bottled up in the port of Brest for three years, using Ushant as his rendezvous when he was blown off station, Cawsand Bay near Plymouth for taking in stores, and Torbay in the event of really rough weather, as in December 1803 when the stores were sent overland from Plymouth. His blockade would become recognised as being as vital as Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar, although it took its toll on Cornwallis’ health. From July-August 1804 it was necessary for him to temporarily relinquish the command to Vice-Admiral Sir Charles Cotton, and between 20 March and 6 July 1805 he convalesced in England with Admiral Lord Gardner temporarily replacing him at sea. This was not his only convalescence however, for in January 1805 he sprained his foot and was confined to his cabin whilst a storm blew the Ville de Paris four hundred miles off her station. Nevertheless, after putting into Plymouth his flagship was back off Brest the next day in order to prevent the Brest fleet replicating the breakout of the Rochefort squadron which had occurred on 11 January.

Cornwallis was a key player in the Trafalgar campaign, when he carefully made his dispositions to thwart Napoleon’s intentions. Even so, some said that the detachment of Vice-Admiral Sir Robert Calder after the Battle of Finisterre on 22 July 1805 was a mistake, given that Cornwallis’ weakened fleet could have been overwhelmed by Vice-Admiral Pierre Villeneuve’s arrival and the release of the Brest fleet. On 22 August Cornwallis was superficially injured during an action with the Brest fleet when it did try to break out and join up with Villeneuve, necessitating a further short period of convalescence. On 22 February 1806, being in poor health and somewhat frustrated with perceived political intrigues against him, he struck his flag for good at Spithead to be replaced by Admiral the Earl of St. Vincent who had long coveted his position as commander-in-chief of the Channel fleet.
Cornwallis was awarded the G.C.B. on 2 January 1815 and died in Hampshire on 5 July 1819, being buried at Milford-on-Sea.

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Captain Andrew Barclay.



c1741-90. He was the youngest son of James Barkley from Banff, Cromarty, and of his wife, Jean Morrison, although his parent’s names were also spelled ‘Barclay’ and ‘Morison’.

Barkley was commissioned lieutenant on 27 October 1758, and in April 1763 was appointed to the cutter Hunter 4, serving off the Isle of Wight into the following year. He was promoted commander on 31 May 1766 and charged with recommissioning the Wolf 8, retaining her for the next three years in home waters and seeing some service off Cornwall.

He was posted captain on 30 May 1770, and that August sailed for North America in command of the Salisbury 50, retaining her in Boston with the broad pennant of Commodore James Gambier until the end of the following year when she was paid off at Plymouth. In January 1773 he commissioned the Portland 50, taking her out to Jamaica in March where she had been designated the flagship of Vice-Admiral Sir George Rodney. The admiral’s flag-captain Captain Samuel Marshall then exchanged with him from the previous flagship Princess Amelia 80 which vessel Barkley paid off in September after returning to England.

From 1774 Barkley commanded the Scarborough 20, going out to North American waters from Portsmouth. At the start of the following year he entered the Savannah River in command of a small squadron with the intention of obtaining supplies, but when the locals refused to sell him any he took possession of two dozen rice boats and despite an American attempt to set fireships upon his anchorage he carried them out to sea. In the summer of 1777 the Scarborough was at Halifax, sailing with a convoy to New York in June, before returning north.
Commanding the French prize Blonde 32 to which he had removed earlier in the year, Barkley took several privateers including the Washington on 31 May 1778, the Resolution on 7 May 1779 and the Hannibal on 18 September 1780. In the same vessel he participated in Commodore Sir George Collier’s expedition to the Penobscot in the summer of 1779, and the campaign to take Charleston on 11 May 1780. He later led a small squadron that occupied Wilmington and captured a dozen American ships in January 1781.

In September 1781 he removed to the the dull sailing Prudent 64 which he commanded at the action off St. Kitts on 25 to 26 January 1782, having to rely on a rescue from her consorts to avoid capture. He subsequently fought at the Battle of the Saintes on 12 April, where the Prudent was unable to join the action. She did however capture the privateers Marquis de Castries on 25 April and Roebuck on 17 October. On 15 February 1783 the Prudent joined the St. Albans 64, Captain Charles Inglis and Magnificent 74, Captain Robert Linzee, in a duel with the French frigates Concorde 36 and Amphion 36 that saw the former taken by the Magnificent.

Captain Barkley died at Bath, where he had a splendid residence, on 30 January 1790.

He married the heiress Elizabeth Willis of Digswell, Hertfordshire but had no issue. Curiously his widow then married a nephew, John Barkley, ostensibly because the family wished to retain the childless couples’ substantial wealth

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Captain George Bowen.




He was of Welsh descent, the cousin of Captain George Bowen who died in command of the Trusty in 1800.



Bowen was commissioned lieutenant on 13 March 1773 and promoted commander on 19 November 1779, in which rank he commissioned the ex-sloop Druid 16 as the fireship Blast and took her out to the Leeward Islands in May 1780.



He was posted captain on 14 February 1781, and commanded the Ajax 74 on a temporary basis from May to July. He then joined the Montagu 74 in succession to Captain John Houlton and fought at the Battle of Chesapeake Bay on 5 September, suffering casualties of eight men killed and twenty-two wounded, and thereafter sailing in December from New York to Barbados with Rear-Admiral Sir Samuel Hood’s squadron. He commanded the same vessel at the action off St. Kitts on 25 January 1782, requiring rescue from the French attack, and at the Battle of the Saintes on 12 April where his command suffered casualties of fourteen men killed and twenty-nine wounded. He then returned to England with the victorious commander-in-chief, Admiral Lord Rodney, having in company the Flora 32, Captain Samuel Marshall, and arriving at Bristol on 21 September. His command was paid off in November.



In May 1783 Bowen recommissioned the Flora 36, retaining her but for four months, and thereafter he remained unemployed bar the brief command of the Bellona 74 around the turn of the 1790’s.



In June 1793 he assumed command of the Belliqueux 64, going out to Jamaica in March 1794. Following the death of Captain Lewis Robertson on 3 July he removed to the Veteran 64, remaining in the Leeward Islands for but a short time before returning home.



In August 1795 he joined the Canada 74, flying the flag of Rear-Admiral Sir Roger Curtis at Spithead from the following month, and receiving members of the French Royal family on board. She then went out to the Leeward Islands with Rear-Admiral Sir Hugh Christian’s force in early 1796 and was present at the capture of St. Lucia in June.



Having removed to the Jamaican station in the summer of 1796, Bowen left the Canada when she returned home for repairs that winter, and until June 1798 he commanded the Carnatic 74 on the same station. Here he presided over the court-martials of several mutineers from the Hermione and earned the praise of the commander-in-chief, Vice-Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, for his strict sentencing, including that of a blind seaman for execution.


Following her repairs at Plymouth in the summer of 1798 he took command of the Captain 74, retaining her in home waters until promoted rear-admiral on 14 February 1799. He headed the list of admirals promoted vice-admiral on 9 November 1805, and became an admiral on 31 July 1810.



Bowen died at Shrewsbury on 1 July 1823.

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Captain Samuel Thompson.




1718-1813. He was born on 13 August 1718, and became the father of Vice-Admiral Norborne Thompson.
Having seen early service in the employment of the East India Company, Thompson joined the navy in 1739 aboard the Cumberland 80, Captain James Stewart, and was commissioned lieutenant on 25 July 1744. Serving on the Strafford 60, Captain James Rentone, he was present at the capture of Port Louis, Hispaniola, on 8 March 1748, in which operation his captain was killed. Remaining with that vessel under Captain David Brodie, Thompson fought in Rear-Admiral Charles Knowles’ action with a Spanish squadron off Havana on 1 October 1748. The Strafford was paid off in July of the following year.

During 1755 Thompson served in home waters aboard the Elizabeth 70, Captain John Montagu. He subsequently went out to Halifax aboard the Grafton 70, Captain Thomas Cornewall, bearing the broad pennant of Commodore Charles Holmes, and he was promoted commander of the sloop Jamaica 10 on 14 February 1757, which vessel he paid off after returning to England in the following year.

After a period as the regulating captain at Southampton, Thompson was posted captain of the Flamborough 20 on 4 November 1760, serving in the Channel before sailing to Tenerife in March 1761. He was present in Commodore Hon. Augustus Keppel’s expedition to Belleisle later in the same year, and retained the command until the peace of 1763.

After the ending of hostilities Thompson recommissioned the Lark 32 in March 1763, patrolling the Newfoundland Fishery and serving with her until the beginning of 1766. When the Lark was later ordered out to the West Indies Thompson secured an appointment to the newly commissioned Triumph 74, flying the flag of Admiral Sir Edward Hawke at Chatham. Upon paying this vessel off he joined the Rippon 60, which was based at Portsmouth in the summer of 1767. After sailing for Boston in August 1768 he saw service off Virginia and returned from North America in the autumn of 1769. From October 1771 he commanded the Levant 28, going out to the Mediterranean from Portsmouth in January 1772 and leaving her a couple of years later.

In October 1775 Thompson recommissioned the Nore guardship Conquestador 60, which he retained for the next three years. After joining the America 64 in June 1779 he commanded her in the Channel fleet retreat of August, and joined Admiral Sir George Rodney’s fleet when it sailed to relieve Gibraltar at the end of the year. His command was despatched home with those prizes taken from the St Sebastian convoy taken on 8 January and thus he did not see action at the Moonlight Battle off Cape St. Vincent a week later.

In the summer of 1780 the America went out to North America with Rear-Admiral Thomas Graves’ reinforcements, where she took the privateers Ranger on 11 October, Mercury on 27 October, and Adventure on 7 November. She fought in the Battle of Cape Henry on 16 March 1781, but being stationed at the rear of the line saw little action, suffering only three men wounded. Similarly at the Battle of Chesapeake Bay on 5 September the America’s position in the line did not afford Thompson the opportunity to distinguish himself.

He next sailed for the Leeward Islands with Rear-Admiral Sir Samuel Hood and fought at the Battle of St. Kitts on 25 January 1782, sustaining casualties of one man killed and seventeen wounded. At the Battle of the Saintes on 12 April the America shared broadsides with the French line before Thompson wore ship without orders to re-engage. He then wore again and assumed his original position when no signal of affirmation was received from the commander-in-chief. His ship sustained a great deal of damage during the action, and although his casualties were listed as one lieutenant killed and another lieutenant wounded it is probable that the actual figure was far higher.

The America sailed to North America once Admiral Hugh Pigot had assumed the command of the fleet later in the year, and she remained under Hood’s orders watching the French at Boston before returning to the West Indies. She eventually returned to England in June 1783 to be paid off at Portsmouth.
Thompson became a superannuated rear-admiral in 1788, and was one of the two officers particularly mentioned in a Parliamentary debate following Lord Howe’s decision to superannuate a large number of captains due for promotion in favour of more worthy officers further down the list. The dispute forced Howe’s resignation from his position as first lord of the Admiralty on 16 July 1788.

Thompson died on 13 August 1813 at Titchfield, Hampshire, on the occasion of his 95th birthday.

He was described as brave and an excellent seaman. In the early 1760’s he enjoyed the patronage of the Duke of York, whilst in turn he was the patron of his nephew, Captain James Sanders.

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Captain George Wilson.




He was born at Redgrave, Suffolk, on 4 March 1756 to a family that originated from Westmoreland, the third son of Hon. Thomas Wilson who served as chief judge of Dominica, and of his wife, Lucinda Holt. His maternal uncle, Rowland Holt, represented Suffolk for many years in parliament.

Wilson first went to sea in 1769 aboard the frigate Alarm 32, Captain John Jervis, remaining with that vessel under Captain John Stott for a further two years following Jervis’ departure. He afterwards served aboard the guardship Barfleur 90, Captain Sir Peter Parker, at Portsmouth.

In 1775 he went out to North America with Commodore Molyneux Shuldham and saw service on the cutter Gaspée, Lieutenant William Hunter, and the armed ship Lord Howe, Captain Thomas Pringle. On returning to England he was accepted onto the Foudroyant 80 by Captain Jervis, in which ship he remained for the next five years, being promoted lieutenant on 28 January 1776 and fighting at the Battle of Ushant on 27 July 1778.
In 1779 Wilson joined Admiral Sir George Rodney’s flagship Sandwich 90 as her third lieutenant, participating in the capture of the Caracas convoy, and the Moonlight Battle off Cape St. Vincent on 16 January 1780. He was posted captain without having been employed in the rank of commander on 1 February, and placed in command of the prize Guipuscoana 64 which he got safely to England.

In the spring of 1781 he commissioned the new frigate Eurydice 24, and after going out to the Leeward Islands he was present at the Battle of St. Kitts on 25-26 January 1782 and the Battle of the Saintes on 12 April. Following death of Captain Robert Barbor in June Rodney promoted him into the Fame 74, in which he went north to America with the fleet in July, returned to the Leeward Islands in October, and sailed home at the peace, being paid off in July 1783.

Wilson was not re-employed until the Nookta Sound dispute of 1790 when he commissioned the new frigate Inconstant 36, paying her off at Woolwich in September 1791 after spending a great deal of time pressing homeward bound seamen for the Russian rearmament.

He again went on half-pay before joining his final command, the thirty-three year-old Bellona 74 in 1793.Attached to the Channel fleet, he participated in the autumn cruise of 1793 and the chase of Rear-Admiral Vanstabel’s squadron on 18 November, but he missed the Battle of the Glorious First of June in 1794 when his ship formed part of Rear-Admiral George Montagu’s detached squadron.

At the end of 1794 the Bellona went out to the Leeward Islands with Rear-Admiral Benjamin Caldwell, and on 5 January 1795, being in company with the frigate Alarm 32, Captain James Carpenter, she fell in with a French 50-gun ship, a 36-gun frigate, two corvettes and ten transports off Désirade. The French warships quickly formed line of battle to receive Wilson’s attack, so despatching his consort in chase of the transports he fought his way up the enemy line. Unfortunately he only managed to force the surrender of the troopship Duquesne 44 carrying four hundred men, at which point the rest of the French line fled. Ordering the Alarm to remain with the prize, Wilson set off in pursuit but was forced to call off the chase later that evening. He was later accused of mismanagement and failing to take advantage of a great opportunity.

Continuing to serve in the Leeward Islands, he captured the privateer schooner Bellone on 11 May 1795, and subsequently assisted at the capture of Trinidad on 18 February 1797 and in the unsuccessful assault upon Puerto Rico later that year.

The Bellona returned to England in April 1797, but her arrival at Spithead was greeted by a Channel Fleet in a state of mutiny following the outbreak on 16 April. Wilson was ordered to delay the de-commissioning of the Bellona in case she was required to fight under the flag of Vice-Admiral John Colpoys against his own mutinous flagship, the London 98, but when that threat passed he paid his ship off and retired to his country estate.
Wilson was never employed again, but in due course he was promoted rear-admiral on 14 February 1799, vice-admiral on 23 April 1804 and admiral on 25 October 1809.

He died at Redgrave Hall, Suffolk, on 6 March 1826 and was buried in Redgrave Church.

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Captain John Stanhope.





1744-1800. He was born in September 1744, the eldest son of Ferdinand Stanhope, who was a descendent of the 1st Earl of Chesterfield, and of his wife, Mary Phillips.



Stanhope was commissioned lieutenant on 15 October 1762.



He was further promoted commander on 4 June 1774, joining the sloop Raven 14 which he commanded in the Mediterranean before sailing for North America in July 1775. Arriving with despatches at Boston in October, he served off Georgia in the following year, was present at the occupation of New York in July, and served in the expedition up the Hudson River to attack two rebel forts in the second half of 1777. On returning to England from the West Indies later that year he captured the American ship Vengeance and took her into Gibraltar. He paid the Raven off in November 1778.



Stanhope was posted captain on 5 March 1779, and joining the Garland 24 he commanded her in the North Sea that year as well as undertaking convoy duty to and from Newfoundland. He had the Pegasus 28 from the summer of 1780 in which he went out to the Leeward Islands in January 1781, and after participating in the defence of St. Lucia against the French fleet in May he helped put down a mutiny aboard the Santa Monica 36, Captain John Linzee, on 16 July at English Harbour, Antigua. On 25 September he assisted the Cormorant 12, Commander James Kempthorne, in the capture of the American privateer Deane 16 off Long Island, and then returning to the Leeward Islands he was at the Battle of St. Kitts on 25-26 January 1782, and at the Battle of the Saintes on 12 April, although his vessel was not engaged. The Pegasus was paid off in the spring of 1783.



Stanhope commanded the frigate Arethusa 38 in 1790 for the Nookta Sound dispute, but during the peace was not otherwise employed.



He recommissioned the Vanguard 74 in February 1793 following the commencement of the French Revolutionary War and participated in the chase of Rear-Admiral Pierre Jean Vanstabel’s squadron during the Channel fleet cruise of October-December, as well as in the capture by several vessels of the French corvette Blonde on 27 November. He left the Vanguard at the end of the year.



He did not see any further service but was promoted a rear-admiral on 1 June 1795 and a vice-admiral on 14 February 1799.

On 27 September 1784 he married Caroline Dent, the daughter of Captain Cotton Dent, and had issue three sons, Lieutenant-Colonel Philip John Stanhope, Admiral Henry Stanhope and Captain Charles George who served in the army, as well as two daughters.


Stanhope died on 1 December 1800 at Salisbury.

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Captain Hugh Cloberry Christian.





He was the only child of Lieutenant Thomas Christian of Hook Norton in Oxfordshire, an ex-naval officer who made his fortune as a privateer captain, and of his wife Anne Hughes who remarried after her husband’s early death and earned fame as the poet Anne Penny. He was the father of Vice-Admiral Hugh Hanway Christian, and a distant relation of both the mutineer Fletcher Christian and Captain Brabazon Christian.

Christian entered the navy during 1761 and saw early service in the Channel and the Mediterranean before he was commissioned lieutenant on 21 January 1771, having passed his examination four years earlier.

During 1776 he commanded a sloop attendant to the Leeward Islands station, in which capacity he was despatched by Vice-Admiral James Young at the request of Captain Andrew Snape Hamond to collect from the islands a number of merchant ships with supplies for the army before escorting them to New York. On arrival in North America he was rewarded by being taken on board the Eagle 64, Captain Henry Duncan, the flagship of Vice-Admiral Lord Howe.

In January 1778, retaining the rank of lieutenant, Christian commanded the sloop Kingfisher 16 which was fired to prevent her capture by the French on 30 July during the early stages of their campaign to take Rhode Island in co-operation with the American rebels.

After returning to England he was posted captain on 8 December 1778 and appointed to the Suffolk 74, bearing the broad pennant of Commodore Joshua Rowley. In February 1779 he arrived with the promoted Rear-Admiral Rowley’s reinforcements in the Leeward Islands, taking part in the Battle of Grenada on 6 July where his ship suffered casualties of seven men killed and twenty-five wounded.

In March 1780 he transferred to the captured French frigate Fortunée 40, which had been taken by Rowley’s squadron following Rear-Admiral Sir Hyde Parker’s skirmish with the French on 18 December 1779. He sailed north to America with the fleet later in the year, returning to the Leeward Islands thereafter before taking his command home to Portsmouth for a refit and coppering in the winter of 1780. He was back in the Leeward Islands fleet with the Fortunée by mid-1781, being present at the Battle of Chesapeake Bay on 5 September, taking the privateer Columbia on 16 October, and being present at the Battle of St. Kitts on 25/26 January 1782. Thereafter he served with the fleet that sailed to North America under Admiral Hugh Pigot, returning home with that force in April 1783 and being paid off in July.

Christian saw no further employment until June 1787, when upon the threat of war with the Netherlands he commissioned the brand new Colossus 74, commanding her afterwards as a guard-ship at Portsmouth until 1790. He was briefly flag captain to Admiral Lord Howe aboard the Queen Charlotte 100 from August during the Nookta Sound dispute of 1790 before rejoining the Colossus.

In February 1793 he re-assumed the position of flag-captain to Howe aboard the Queen Charlotte, taking part in the Channel fleet cruises of 14 July to 10 August and in the chase of Rear-Admiral Vanstabel’s squadron on 18 November. He left active service in the following spring to undertake a role as a commissioner, being responsible for the French prizes from the Battle of the Glorious First of June at Spithead in July, and assuming the chairmanship of the newly formed Transport Board in Dorset Court, Westminster during August. He resigned this post on 1 June 1795 after being promoted rear-admiral.

In October 1795 Christian was appointed commander-in-chief of the Leeward Islands with instructions to capture the French and Negro-controlled islands, a posting that so infuriated the influential Admiral Sir Charles Middleton that he resigned from the Admiralty Board in protest at such a junior admiral being given this important role. Hoisting his flag at Spithead aboard the Prince George 98, Captain James Bowen, in command of a two hundred strong convoy including eight sail of the line and the transports of Lieutenant-General Sir Ralph Abercromby’s sixteen thousand troops, Christian first attempted to set sail on 16 November. This was a month after the requisite departure time, but even so he had not been a day at sea when his force was overtaken by a violent storm. Several ships foundered or were driven ashore and the remainder of the fleet straggled back to Spithead, the Prince George and many others having been rendered unfit for the voyage to the West Indies. Christian thereupon shifted his flag with Captain Bowen into the Glory 98 and tried to sail again, but his departure on 9 December led to his convoy being blown apart in the winter storms although some ships did manage to get through to the Leeward Islands. Returning to Spithead on 29 January 1796, Christian waited two months before setting out for the final time on 20 March with his flag aboard the Thunderer 74, Captain Bowen. In the meantime he had been created a K.B. on 17 February.

Finally arriving at Barbados on 21 April, Christian enjoyed a particularly successful campaign with Lieutenant-General Sir Ralph Abercromby during April to June, capturing St. Lucia on 24 May, St. Vincent on 11 June, and Grenada shortly afterwards, and with these objectives being achieved despite the high degree of sickness in the combined force. It was therefore somewhat surprising that he was superseded by Rear-Admiral Henry Harvey in the summer, and he returned to England aboard the frigate Beaulieu 44, Captain Lancelot Skynner, in October.
In September 1797 he was appointed second in command to Rear-Admiral Thomas Pringle at the Cape, taking passage aboard the frigate Virginie 44, Captain Anthony Hunt, and sharing the company of the Earl of Mornington who was bound for India to become governor-general. Having arrived at the Cape in January 1798 he shifted his flag to the Sceptre 64, Captain Valentine Edwards, and in May to the Tremendous 74, Captain John Clarke Searle, whilst he also assumed command of the station when Pringle returned home in the summer. Apart from assisting in the formation of a force to tackle Tippoo Sahib in Mysore he was little employed before his sudden death on 23 November 1798. The peerage and title of Lord Ronaldsway had already been confirmed upon him, but news of his ennoblement was only received at the Cape after his death.

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Captain Edmund Dod.





Dod was commissioned lieutenant on 26 February 1760, and whilst in this rank he commanded the schooner Diligent 10 at Halifax in 1776 before she was wrecked on the Gannet Rocks in the Bay of Fundy whilst escorting transports with forage for the cavalry on 17 May 1777. Having been exonerated of any blame for her loss he was appointed to the prize American brig Cabot 14 by Vice-Admiral Lord Howe in June 1777, taking his crew with him and reading himself in on 8 August at Halifax. He was subsequently promoted commander on 12 November 1778.



Dod fought under the orders of Captain Sir James Wallace at the Battle of Cancale Bay on 13 May 1779 where a small French force was driven inshore and defeated. As a reward he was posted captain on 18 May, being ordered to commission the Siren 24 at Sheerness and remaining with her until November of the following year. He then commanded the Lizard 28 which patrolled the North Sea during 1780 in search of the American privateer captain, John Paul Jones.



After going out to the Leeward Islands in March 1781 the Lizard saw service as a repeating frigate at the Battle of Fort Royal on 29 April 1781, and she later visited Jamaica. She captured the French cutter Espion 16 off St. Kitts, and was present although not involved in the action at the Battles of St. Kitts on 25/26 January 1782 and the Saintes on 12 April 1782. After returning home she was paid off in September at Deptford.



During the peace, from October 1787 until the late summer of 1790, Dod commanded the frigate Lowestoft 32, seeing duty in the Channel and Mediterranean.



In September 1792 he commissioned the new Charon 44, going out to Africa that November and paying her off in September 1793. He recommissioned the Dictator 64 in the same month, again being employed off Africa and she eventually returned home from the West Indies during 1794.



Dod recommissioned the Atlas 98 in the spring of 1795, and on 7 April 1796 sat on the court-martial of Vice-Admiral Hon. William Cornwallis which investigated that officer’s failure to sail for the Leeward Islands. He then served in Rear-Admiral Henry Harvey’s small squadron that was detached from the Channel fleet to search off Cape Clear for a Dutch squadron that eventually capitulated in Saldanah Bay on 17 August. In December the Atlas went aground at Spithead during the Christmas Day gale that disrupted the sailing of the Channel fleet to meet the French threat to Ireland, this accident being symptomatic of that particular fleet’s failings. He nevertheless continued with her through to his elevation to flag rank.



On 20 February 1797 he was promoted rear-admiral, being immediately senior on the list to Sir Horatio Nelson, and he was created a vice-admiral on 1 January 1801 and an admiral on 18 April 1808.



Admiral Dod died on 22 December 1815 at Bedford Circus, Exeter, Devon.

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Captain Thomas Wells.



1759-1811. Heralding from a family of long-established Thames shipbuilders, he was the eldest of three sons of William Wells, a director of the Royal Hospital at Greenwich, and of his wife, Susanna Neave.

Having joined the navy in 1774, Wells was commissioned lieutenant on 14 January 1780 and promoted commander of the Swallow 14 on 7 February 1781. On 7 July he was despatched by Admiral Sir George Rodney from the Leeward Islands to New York with the advice that reinforcements were to be sent to Chesapeake Bay. Arriving on the 20th after Rear-Admiral Thomas Graves had already set sail for Boston, he was ordered to seek out the admiral but before he could do so his command was attacked by four rebel privateers on 6 September and driven aground on Long Island. This unfortunate occurrence resulted in the loss of vital despatches that would have affected the crucial Battle of Chesapeake Bay on 5 September.

In March 1782 he took the Fury 14 out to the Leeward Islands, and on 30 April was posted captain. In August he joined the Champion 24, serving in the Leeward Islands and at Jamaica for over a year.

After remaining unemployed throughout the initial years of the peace Wells commissioned the new Iris 32 in June 1790 during the Nookta Sound dispute, before paying her off later that year.

In April 1793 he recomissioned the Concorde 36 for service in the Channel prior to joining the eighteen-pounder Melampus 36 in early 1794 following the incapacitation of Captain Isaac Coffin. On 23 April he was present with Commodore Sir John Borlase Warren’s frigate squadron which fell in with the French Engageante 36, Résolue 36, Pomone 44 and Babet 20 off the Channel Islands, the Concorde unsuccessfully chasing the Résolue and Engageante and being described as slow in doing so.

Commanding the Defence 74 in succession to Captain James Gambier from October 1794, Wells briefly flew the flag of Rear-Admiral Robert Man and was present at Vice-Admiral William Hotham’s action with the French on 13 July 1795, having arrived with Man’s reinforcements from England the month before. He thereafter remained in the Mediterranean until 1796, being sent with Rear-Admiral Man to pursue Rear-Admiral Joseph de Richery’s squadron when it attacked Newfoundland. Having returned home the Defence was present at the Spithead Mutiny from 16 April 1797, and the ship remained disaffected for some time afterwards with nineteen men being sentenced to death on 18 September. In March 1798 Wells left the Defence.

From the spring of 1799 he commanded the Glory 98 in the Channel, forming part of Rear-Admiral Sir Charles Cotton’s reinforcements to the Mediterranean during the Brest fleet’s breakout from 25 April, and then returning to the Channel. Captain John Draper held the temporary command of the Glory from June 1801, and she was paid off in March 1802.

From January to April 1804 Wells commanded the Windsor Castle 98, joining the Channel Fleet off Brest, and having transferred to the Glory once more he went ashore upon being promoted rear-admiral on 23 April. His next official duty was as a pallbearer at Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson’s funeral on 9 January 1806.

Wells was commander-in-chief at the Nore with his flag in the Zealand 64, Captain Robert Fancourt, from May to December 1807, then the Namur 74, Captains Richard Jones and Alexander Shippard, until 1811. During this period a court-martial on 11 August 1809 admonished and reprimanded Captain Keith Maxwell of the Nymphen 36 for disrespect towards Wells.

He was promoted vice admiral on 28 April 1808.

On 19 December 1784 Wells married Sarah Bridget, the sister of Vice-Admiral Sir Thomas Fremantle, and the family settled at Holmewood in Huntingdonshire. In 1805 he inherited Bickley Hall in Kent upon his father’s death, but then sold it on to his brother. In 1807 he had unmarried daughters living with him, whilst a son who was born in 1788, William Wells, served with him aboard the Glory and rose to the rank of captain.

Wells was apparently a difficult man, for when he assumed command of the Defence a number of his predecessor’s officers left, and the new captain brought with him many who were considered rustic and uncouth. During his court martial in 1809 Captain Maxwell declared Wells to be ‘cruel and oppressive’.

He died in Holmewood House in 1811 before he was able to take up his promotion to full Admiral.

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Captain Henry Harvey.





(July 1743 – 28 December 1810) was a long-serving officer of the British Royal Navy during the second half of the eighteenth century. Harvey participated in numerous naval operations and actions and especially distinguished himself at the Glorious First of June in command of HMS Ramillies. His career took him all over the world, particularly on the North American station and in the West Indies where he commanded numerous ships and, later in his career, squadrons during the course of three different wars. Harvey was a member of a distinguished naval family, his brother was killed in action in 1794, three of his sons entered the navy and one of them was later raised to admiral himself.

Early career.

Henry Harvey was born in Eastry, Kent in 1743, the second son of Richard and Elizabeth Harvey. With his elder brother John Harvey, Henry was educated in France during the 1740s and in 1751 joined the Royal Navy, a service his brother also joined three years later. Harvey was encouraged into service by the distantly related Sir Peircy Brett, whose patronage supported Harvey throughout his career. Harvey's first ship, aged only eight, was the sixth-rate HMS Centaur aged eleven in 1754, Harvey was transferred to HMS Nightingale. It is not clear how much time Harvey actually spent aboard these ships, as it was common practice at the time for the children of naval families to be entered on a ship's books to gain experience pending their actual entry into the service, an illegal practice known as "false muster".
By 1757, and aged 15, Harvey was certainly at sea, making junior lieutenant aboard the fourth-rate HMS Hampshire in the English Channel, the West Indies and along the North American coast during the Seven Years' War. A capable and well supported officer, Harvey was soon promoted to first lieutenant aboard the frigate HMS Hussar, which was wrecked at Cape François, Cuba in 1762, resulting in Harvey spending the next year as a prisoner of war. During the voyage home on parole aboard HMS Dragon, Harvey made close friends with Lieutenant Constantine Phipps, who later became a Lord of the Admiralty.

Polar exploration.

The end of the war that same year gave Harvey the opportunity to return to the sea as first lieutenant of the frigate HMS Mermaid off North America. In 1764 he was given his first independent command with the schooner HMS Magdalen, employed in anti-smuggling operations at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River. His success in the role was such that in 1768 Harvey was given the revenue cutter HMS Swift on similar duties in the English Channel, a role he continued in until 1771 when he was placed in reserve on half-pay. In 1773 an opportunity for adventurous service arrived with the offer of a position on Phipps's ship HMS Racehorse in which Harvey's friend was planning to explore the North Pole. The expedition also included a young Horatio Nelson. Although the journey did not reach the Pole, it did explore the seas north of Svalbard and scientifically discover the polar bear amongst other achievements.

American Revolutionary War.

With a promotion resulting from the expedition enabling further advancement, Harvey commanded the sloop HMS Martin at the Siege of Quebec in the American Revolutionary War of 1776. His knowledge of the St. Lawrence river and Canadian coastline gave him an advantage in this work and as a result he was raised in 1777 to command the frigate HMS Squirrel on convoy duty. December 1778 saw a transfer to the 32-gun frigate HMS Convert and in the following year Harvey was engaged in the relief of besieged Jersey and later unsuccessful efforts to intercept the raiding squadron of John Paul Jones. During 1779, Convert was employed escorting a convoy to Quebec and in December was attached to Sir George Rodney's fleet in the West Indies. Through 1780 and 1781, Convert served as a fleet scout and was present during the Battle of the Saintes in 1782, although the ship was too small to serve in the battleline. Shortly after the battle, Harvey was detached from the fleet for convoy duties back to England.



After a period of unemployment, Harvey was given command of the frigate HMS Pegasus for service on the North America station in 1786, but was disappointed to discover that his first lieutenant was Prince William Henry and that Harvey was expected to turn over the captaincy to his subordinate as soon as the ship was at sea. Controlling his disappointment, Harvey conducted the affair with "such discretion as secured to him the lasting friendship of His Royal Highness". Within weeks, Harvey had been transferred to HMS Rose and, aboard her, joined Pegasus in peacetime manoeuvres off the North American station until the ship was paid-off in 1789. In 1788, Harvey eldest son, also named Henry, had drowned in a shipboard accident whilst serving as a midshipman in Rose. Following the ship's paying-off, Harvey returned to half-pay. He was not on the beach for long however, because of the Spanish armament during the Nootka Crisis of 1790. Along with many ships officers and crews he was brought back into service. As an experienced and well-connected officer, Harvey was given a ship of the line, first HMS Alfred, then HMS Colossus and by 1794, after the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars, he was given command of HMS Ramillies.

French revolutionary wars.

Ramillies was present with Admiral Lord Howe's fleet at the battle of the Glorious First of June in 1794 and in her Harvey distinguished himself by rescuing the stricken HMS Brunswick commanded by his brother John. Brunswick had become entangled with the French Vengeur du Peuple and both ships were in danger of sinking when Ramillies arrived, raking Venguer twice and driving her off her opponent and into clear water, in which she first surrendered and later sank. John Harvey died of wounds received in the action a month later and days after his death his brother was promoted to flag rank as a rear-admiral. Harvey first commanded a squadron in the North Sea, but in June 1795 with his flag in HMS Prince of Wales, Harvey participated in the minor victory of the Battle of Groix, where three French ships were taken. Over the winter of 1795/96, Harvey remained in the area as floating support for Sir John Borlase Warren's invasion at Quiberon Bay. Following the expedition's failure early in 1796, Harvey helped evacuate the British and French Royalist force before it was destroyed by the Republican Army.



In April 1796, Harvey was made commander-in-chief of the Leeward Islands Station and in 1797 captured Trinidad from the Spanish, taking several warships as prizes and landing Sir Ralph Abercromy's army to take the whole island. A similar attempt on Puerto Rico later in the year failed in the face of well-prepared Spanish defences. By 1799 Harvey was contemplating retirement and passed the station to Lord Hugh Seymour, returning to England and raising his flag in HMS Royal Sovereign as second-in-command of the Channel Fleet until the Peace of Amiens in 1801. Harvey retired from the Navy a vice-admiral invested in the Order of the Bath as a Knight Companion. He settled with his wife Elizabeth (neé Boys) in Walmer, Kent and in 1804 was promoted as a full admiral in retirement.

He died peacefully in 1810, survived by his wife and three of his five children, including his sons Richard and Thomas. Thomas Harvey later became an admiral in his own right.

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Captain John M’Laurin.



M’Laurin entered the navy after serving in the merchant marine. In 1762 he was employed on the Lisbon station as the master of the Hornet 10, Commander George Johnstone, and having been made prize-master of a captured French vessel he sailed to the Leeward Islands with news of the declaration of war with Spain, allowing Rear-Admiral George Rodney to launch a pre-emptive attack on their possessions.

He was commissioned lieutenant on 19 April 1779, and he commanded the Rattlesnake 12 in Commodore George Johnstone’s squadron off Portugal where he assisted the Tartar 28, Captain Alexander Graeme, take the Spanish frigate Santa Margarita 34 on 11 November. In May 1780, somewhat parallel to the events of 1762, he arrived in the Leeward Islands with intelligence gleaned from Commodore Johnstone at Lisbon for Admiral Sir George Rodney regarding the intentions of a Spanish fleet sent to the Caribbean.

As a reward M’Laurin was posted captain on 5 June 1780, and in November he assumed command of the Triton 28. He was present at the capture of St. Eustatius on 3 February 1781, at the Battle of St. Kitts on 25-26 January 1782, and had the same vessel at the Battle of the Saintes on 12 April.

M’Laurin died on 18 June 1792.

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Captain Charles Everitt.






1754-1807. He was the youngest son of Captain Michael Everitt and his wife, Elizabeth Gayton. An elder brother was Captain Michael John Everitt, and he was the nephew of both Admiral Clark Gayton and Vice-Admiral George Gayton.

Known as Everitt until 1788, he was commissioned lieutenant on 20 October 1772 and was appointed to the Boreas 28, Captain Charles Thompson, on 19 February 1776, going out to Jamaica where his uncle commanded the station. That officer’s patronage allowed his elevation on 27 May to the command of the schooner Racehorse 10, and on 10 July he assumed the temporary command of the sloop Atalanta 14 upon the death of Commander Thomas Underwood.

He was promoted to the sloop Badger at Jamaica as her commander on 11 November 1776, of which vessel his elder brother Michael was a lieutenant, sailing to England for a refit in the following April before returning to Jamaica. The day after his arrival he was posted captain on 7 September 1777 with an acting order for the ancient flagship Antelope 50 from his uncle who still retained the role of the commander-in-chief at Jamaica. This vessel returned home in the following April.

Whilst commanding the Arethusa 32, which he had joined earlier that year, Everitt attacked the French frigate Aigrette 32, Captain La Bretonnière, off Ushant on 18 March 1779, but was forced to break off the action after two hours when an enemy ship of the line approached. That night the Arethusa was wrecked after hitting a rock near the island of Molène. Thirteen men who escaped in one of the boats eventually made Fowey, but the remainder were taken prisoner and confined at Brest. His first lieutenant at this time was the future admiral and Prince of Boullion, Phillip d’Auvergne.

In September 1780 Everitt commissioned the Solebay 28, capturing the privateer Comtesse Bezançois 20 in company with the Portland 50, Captain Thomas Lloyd, on 9 December 1780, and the Marquise de Seignelay a day later. In March 1781 he went out to North America where he captured a further couple of American privateers, and was present at the Battle of Chesapeake Bay on 5 September 1781. A few days later he recaptured the sloop Savage which under Commander Charles Stirling had been taken by the Americans shortly before. Once again he lost a ship when the Solebay was wrecked after grounding off Nevis prior to the Battle of St. Kitts on 25 January 1782, the frigate being burned to prevent its recovery by the French. He returned to England with Rear-Admiral Sir Samuel Hood’s despatches in March, and in November of that year commissioned the new Serapis 44, paying her off in the ensuing April.l.
In August 1794 Calmady recommissioned the Blenheim 90 for service in the Channel, leaving her upon his promotion to rear-admiral on 23 October. He was advanced to vice-admiral on 14 February 1799 and admiral on 23 April 1804.

Calmady died on 15 March 1807 and was buried in the Calmady family vault at Wembury, South Devon.

In September 1783 he became the second husband of the heiress, Pollexfen Calmady of Langdon in Wembury, and he took her surname as his own in 1788. Prior to 1783 he had lived at Headley Park in Hampshire. The couple had three children, two of whom survived infancy.

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France.

Admiral the Comte de Grasse's fleet
Ship	Guns	Commander
Ville de Paris	104	François Joseph Paul de Grasse M. La Velleon
Auguste	80	Louis Antoine de Bougainville
Duc de Bourgogne	80	M. Espinouse
Couronne	80	Claude Mithon de Genouilly
Languedoc	80	M. d'Arros
Magnanime	74	Comte l'Basque
Northumberland	74	M de St. Cezaire
Pluton	74	M. d'Albert de Rions
Glorieux	74	Comte d'Escars
César	74	M. de Marigny
Hercule	74	M. la Clochetterie
Zélé	74	Chev. Gras Preville
Palmier	74	M. de Mortilly
Hector	74	M. le Vicomte
Souverain	74	M. de la Glendevis
Conquérant	74	M. de la Grandiere
Sceptre	74	Louis-Philippe de Vaudreuil
Citoyen	74	Comte d'Ethy
Destin	74	M. de Goimpy
Neptune	74	M. Destouches
Bourgogne	74	M. Champmartin
Dauphin Royal	70	M. Montpereux
Marseillais	74	Henri-César de Castellane Majastre[6]
Diadème	74
Éveillé	64	Comte Tilly
Réfléchi	64	Chev. de Boades
Jason	64	Chev. de Villages
Ardent	64	M. Groullon
Caton	64	Comte Fremont

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Admiral François-Joseph de Grasse.




He was born and raised at Bar-sur-Loup in south-eastern France, the last child of Francois de Grasse Rouville, Marquis de Grasse who earned his title and supported his Provençal family.

Naval career.

At the age of eleven (1734), de Grasse entered the Order of Saint John as a page of the Grand Master. He served as an ensign on the galleys in wars against the Turks and the Moors. In 1740 at the age of 17, he entered the French Navy.
Following Britain's victory over the French in the Seven Years War, de Grasse helped rebuild the French navy in the years after the Treaty of Paris (1763).

American War of Independence.

In 1775, the American War of Independence broke out when American colonists rebelled against British rule. France supplied the colonists with covert aid, but remained officially neutral until 1778. The Treaty of Alliance (1778) established the Franco-American alliance and France entered the war.
As a commander of a division, de Grasse served under Louis Guillouet, comte d'Orvilliers at the First Battle of Ushant from July 23 to 27, 1778. The battle, fought off Britanny, was indecisive.
In 1779, he joined the fleet of Count d'Estaing in the Caribbean and distinguished himself in the battles of Dominica and Saint Lucia during 1780 and of Tobago during 1781. He contributed to the capture of Grenada and took part in the three actions fought by Guichen against Admiral Rodney in the Battle of Martinique (1780).

Yorktown campaign.

De Grasse came to the aid of Washington and Rochambeau's Expédition Particulière, setting sail with 3,000 men from Saint-Domingue. De Grasse landed the 3,000 French reinforcements in Virginia, and immediately afterward decisively defeated the British fleet in the Battle of the Chesapeake in September 1781. He drew away the British forces and blockaded the coast until Lord Cornwallis surrendered, ensuring the independence of the United States of America.

Battle of the Saintes.

He returned to the Caribbean, where he was less fortunate and was defeated at the Battle of St. Kitts by Admiral Hood. Shortly afterward, in April 1782, he was defeated and taken prisoner by Admiral Rodney at the Battle of the Saintes. He was taken to London, and while there briefly took part in the negotiations that laid the foundations for the Peace of Paris (1783), which brought the war to an end.
He returned to France and published a Mémoire justificatif. In 1784, he was acquitted by a court-martial.

Later life.

He died at Tilly (Yvelines) in 1788; his tomb is in the church of Saint-Roch in Paris.
His son Alexandre Francois Auguste de Grasse published a Notice biographique sur l'amiral comte de Grasse d'après les documents inédits in 1840.

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Louis Antoine de Bougainville.





Bougainville was born in Paris, the son of a notary, on either 11 or 12 November 1729. In early life, he studied law, but soon abandoned the profession. In 1753 he entered the army in the corps of musketeers. At the age of twenty-five he published a treatise on integral calculus, as a supplement to De l'Hôpital's treatise, Des infiniment petits.
In 1755 he was sent to London as secretary to the French embassy, where he was made a member of the Royal Society.

Seven Years' War (French and Indian War)

In 1756 Bougainville was stationed in Canada as captain of dragoons and aide-de-camp to the Marquis de Montcalm. He took an active part in the capture of Fort Oswego in 1756 and the 1757 Battle of Fort William Henry. He was wounded in 1758 at the successful defence of Fort Carillon. He sailed back to France the following winter, under orders from the marquis to obtain additional military resources for the colony. During this crossing, he continued to learn about the ways of the sea, skills that would later serve him well. Having distinguished himself in the war against Britain, Bougainville was rewarded with the Cross of St Louis and promoted to colonel. When he returned to Canada the following year, he had gained few supplies. The metropolitan officials had decided that, "When the house is on fire, one does not worry about the stables

During the pivotal year of 1759 (see Seven Years' War and French and Indian War), Bougainville participated in the defence of fortified Quebec City, the capital of New France. With a small elite troop under his command, among which were the Grenadiers and the Volontaires à cheval, he patrolled the north shore of the St. Lawrence River, upstream from the city; he prevented the British several times from landing and cutting communications with Montreal. He did not have sufficient time, however, to rally his troops and attack the British rear when they successfully ascended the Plains of Abraham and attacked Quebec on 13 September.
Following the death of the Marquis de Montcalm and the fall of Québec on 18 September – after the colonel's aborted attempt to resupply the besieged city – Bougainville was dispatched to the western front by his new commanding officer, the Chevalier de Lévis. He attempted to stop the British advance from his entrenchments at Île-aux-Noix. He was among the officers who accompanied Lévis to Saint Helen's Island off Montreal for the last French stand in North America before the general capitulation of 1761. Of the war, Bougainville wrote in his journal: "It is an abominable kind of war. The very air we breathe is contagious of insensibility and hardness".
Shipped back to Europe along with the other French officers, all deprived of military honours by the victors, Bougainville was prohibited by the terms of surrender from any further active duty against the British. He spent the remaining years of the Seven Years' War (1761 to 1763) as a diplomat, helping to negotiate the Treaty of Paris. Under this France ceded most of New France east of the Mississippi River to the British Empire.

Îles Malouines settlement.


After the peace, the French decided to colonise the "Isles Malouines" (Falkland Islands). These islands were at that time almost unknown. At his own expense, Bougainville undertook the task of resettling Acadians who had been deported to France by the British because of their refusal to sign loyalty oaths.
On 15 September 1763, Bougainville set out from France with the frigate L'Aigle (Eagle) (captained by Nicolas Pierre Duclos-Guyot) and the sloop Le Sphinz (Sphinx) (captained by François Chenard de la Giraudais). This expedition included the naturalist and writer Antoine-Joseph Pernety (known as Dom Pernety), the priest and chronicler accompanying the expedition, together with the engineer and geographer Lhuillier de la Serre.
The expedition arrived in late January 1764 in French Bay (later renamed Berkeley Sound). They landed at Port Louis named after King Louis XV. A formal ceremony of possession of the Islands was held on 5 April 1764, after which Bougainville and Pernety returned to France. Louis XV formally ratified possession on 12 September 1764.
Although the French colony did not number more than 150 people, for financial motivations (Bougainville having paid for the expeditions) and diplomatic reasons (Spain feared that the Falklands would become a rear base to attack her Peruvian gold), Bougainville was ordered by the French government to dismantle his colony and sell it to the Spanish. Bougainville received 200,000 francs in Paris and an additional 500,000 francs in Buenos Aires. Spain agreed to maintain the colony in Port Louis, thus preventing Britain from claiming title to the islands. Spain had claimed dominion before the French settlement in association with its colonies on the mainland. On 31 January 1767 at Río de la Plata, Bougainville met Don Felipe Ruiz Puente, commanding the frigate La Esmeralda and La Liebre ("the Hare") and future governor of Islas Malvinas, to transfer possession and evacuate the French population.
Bougainville wrote:
"It was not before 1766, that the English sent a colony to settle in Port de la Croisade, which they had named Port Egmont; and captain Macbride, of the Jason frigate, came to our settlement the same year, in the beginning of December. He pretended that these parts belonged to his Britannic majesty, threatened to land by force, if he should be any longer refused that liberty, visited the governor, and sailed away again the same day."

Circumnavigation.


In 1766 Bougainville received from Louis XV permission to circumnavigate the globe. He would become the 14th navigator, and the first Frenchman, to sail around the world. Completion of his mission bolstered the prestige of France following its defeats during the Seven Years' War. This was the first expedition to circumnavigate the globe with professional naturalists and geographers aboard.
Bougainville left Nantes on 15 November 1766 with two ships: Boudeuse (captain : Nicolas Pierre Duclos-Guyot) and the Étoile (commanded by François Chenard de la Giraudais). This was a large expedition, with a crew of 214 aboard Boudeuse and 116 aboard Étoile.
Included in the party was the botanist Philibert Commerçon (who named the flower Bougainvillea) and his valet. The ship's surgeon later revealed this person as Jeanne Baré, possibly Commerçon's mistress; she would become the first woman known to circumnavigate the globe. Other notable people on this expedition were Count Jean-François de Galaup de la Pérouse (member of the crew); the astronomer Pierre-Antoine Veron; the surgeon of Boudeuse Dr. Louis-Claude Laporte; the surgeon of the Étoile Dr. François Vives; the engineer and cartographer aboard the Étoile Charles Routier de Romainville; and the writer and historian Louis-Antoine Starot de Saint-Germain.

Tahiti.


He saw islands of the Tuamotu group on the following 22 March, on 2 April saw the peak of Mehetia and visited the island of Otaheite shortly after. He narrowly missed becoming their discoverer; a previous visit and claim had been made by British explorer Samuel Wallis in HMS Dolphin less than a year previously. Bougainville claimed the island for France and named it New Cythera.
His expedition left Tahiti and sailed westward to southern Samoa and the New Hebrides, then on sighting Espiritu Santo turned west still looking for the Southern Continent. On 4 June he almost ran into heavy breakers and had to change course to the north and east. He had almost found the Great Barrier Reef. He sailed through what is now known as the Solomon Islands but, because of the hostility of the people there, avoided landing. He named Bougainville Island for himself.
The expedition was attacked by people from New Ireland so the French expedition made for the Moluccas. At Batavia, they received news of Wallis and Carteret who had preceded Bougainville in discovering Tahiti.

Return to France.


On 16 March 1769 the expedition completed its circumnavigation and arrived at St Malo. It had lost only seven of its 340 men, an extremely low level of casualties. This result was considered a credit to the enlightened management of the expedition by Bougainville.
Bougainville brought Ahutoru back to France, the first Tahitian to sail aboard a European vessel. In France, Bougainville introduced the Tahitian to high society, including introducing him to the King and Queen at Versailles. Bougainville also underwrote part of the costs for Ahutoru's return to Tahiti after a two year absence. Unfortunately, Ahutoru died enroute, of smallpox in Oct. 1771.

Voyage autour du monde.


In 1771, Bougainville published his travel log from the expedition under the title Le voyage autour du monde, par la frégate La Boudeuse, et la flûte L'Étoile (a.k.a. Voyage autour du monde and A Voyage Around the World). The book describes the geography, biology and anthropology of Argentina (then a Spanish colony), Patagonia, Tahiti and Indonesia (then a Dutch colony). The book was a sensation, especially the description of Tahitian society. Bougainville described it as an earthly paradise where men and women lived in blissful innocence, far from the corruption of civilisation.
Bougainville's descriptions powerfully expressed the concept of the noble savage, influencing the utopian thoughts of philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau before the advent of the French Revolution. Denis Diderot's book Supplément au voyage de Bougainville retells the story of Bougainville's landing on Tahiti, narrated by an anonymous reader to one of his friends. Diderot used his fictional approach, including a description of the Tahitians as noble savages, to criticise Western ways of living and thinking.

American Revolutionary War,


After an interval of several years, Bougainville again accepted a naval command and saw much active service between 1779 and 1782 during the American Revolutionary War, when France was as an ally of the rebels. He played a crucial part in the French victory at the Battle of the Chesapeake, which led to the eventual defeat of Great Britain.

Battle of the Saintes.


In the memorable engagement of the Battle of the Saintes, in which Admiral George Rodney defeated the Comte de Grasse, Bougainville, who commanded the Auguste, succeeded in rallying eight ships of his own division, and bringing them safely into Saint Eustace. He was promoted to chef d'escadre. When he re-entered the army, he was commissioned as maréchal de camp.
After the peace of 1783, Bougainville returned to Paris. He obtained the place of associate of the Academy. He proposed a voyage of discovery to the North Pole but did not gain the support of the French government.
Promotion and retirement.

In 1787, he became a member of the French Academy of Sciences. He obtained the rank of vice-admiral in 1791.
In 1794, having escaped from the Reign of Terror, he retired to his estate in Normandy. Returning to Paris, he was one of the founding members of the Bureau des Longitudes. In 1799, the Consul Napoleon made him a senator. He died in Paris on 31 August 1811.
He was married in 1781, and had four sons, including Hyacinthe de Bougainville, who all served in the French army or navy.

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Captain Charles Régis Coriolis d'Espinouse.






Like many of the senior officers of the French Royal Navy, Charles Régis Coriolis d'Espinouse came from a family of Provencal nobility. The family of Coriolis, lords of Espinouse to which it belongs descended from Jean de Coriolis, assessor of Aix in 1487. The stronghold of Espinouse was erected in marquisate in 1651.

His father was Pierre de Coriolis of Villeneuve, marquis of Espinouse, baron of Corbières, and mother Renée Charlotte Félicité of Ventimiglia, daughter of Charles François de Ventimiglia, count of Luc des Counts of MarseillesReceived a minority in the order of St. John of Jerusalem in 1737, May 29, he became a naval guard on July 1, 1741, lieutenant on February 11, 1756, captain of frigate in 1764, and captain of the ship on November 15, 1771.


He served during the American Revolutionary War. The minister of Marine Sartine sent him on a mission to Tunis in 1776 to seek the Envoy (ambassador) Bey and bring him to France. He arrived in Tunis on 17 September aboard the frigate L'Aurore, in the company of the boat L'Éclair, under the orders of Count de Forbin. For this and other service to France he was promoted brigadier of the armies of the King in 1778.

On May 8 of the same year, he left Toulon with a squadron of four ships of the line, placed under the orders of the Chevalier de Fabry. Coriolis of Espinouse next commands the Caton (64). September 27, returning from Constantinople, he waters in Malta with Caton.In the month of May 1779, Espinouse is ordered to Destiny (74), which is part of the fleet of 30 vessels under the orders of the Count d'Orvilliers leaving Brest for the Spanish coast, to join the Spanish fleet. With 65 ships, the French-Spanish fleet gathered back in the Channel with the intention to land in England. This operation proves a failure and the French fleet, having spent three months at sea waiting for the Spanish is decimated by scurvy.


He commanded Caesar (74), in the fleet under the orders of the Count of Grasse, who left Brest in March 1781, and set sail for the West Indies. On September 5, Caesar was the first ship of the White Squadron and contributed to the defeat inflicted on Chesapeake Bay on Admiral Graves' British fleet.Coriolis d'Espinouse is promoted to the rank of squadron Commander of the Navy during the promotion of January 12, 17825. On April 9, he took part in the battle of Saintes under the command of the Count of Grasse. On board the Duke of Burgundy (80), captain of Champmartin, he commanded the white and blue squadron. He is surrounded, in the line of battle of the Conqueror (74), Captain La Grandière, and Marseillais (74), Castellane-Majastre. At the end of the battle, the Count de Grasse is taken prisoner.

In 1784, the War Council charged with investigating the defeat admonished Bougainville while Vaudreuil received the support of his superior, released in the meantime. Coriolis of Espinouse is also admonished by the Council of War, along with the Knight of Village, captain of Janson and Renaud d'Allen, captain of the Neptune, for "not having done all that was possible to execute orders."

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M. d'Arros.



Jean-François d'Arros d'Argelos was the son of Jean d'Arros d'Argelos (1668-1753) and Jeanne Marthe Despoeis (? -1763). His parents marry in April 1717. From this union are born two sons and three daughters:
His father before him served in the King's Navy and reached the rank of Captain.

Career in the French Royal Navy.

Beginnings during the War of Austrian Succession.

Jean-François d'Arros began his maritime career as Marine Guard in the department of Rochefort7 in 17436 or March 20, 1744, at the age of 14 years. A ship-officer in 1747 or 1748, he campaigned in Canada under Dubois de La Motte during the War of the Austrian Succession. Promoted to the rank of sub-lieutenant artillery in 1751, he left for Santo Domingo, then in 1755 in Martinique. His father died in service on October 17, 1753, at the age of 43. He took part in the Seven Years' War and was promoted lieutenant on 15 May 1756 at the beginning of the conflict.

The baron was taken prisoner by the English. He was exchanged in 1759 for an English captive, but remained under house arrest until the end of the war in 1763. In 1761, following the reorganization of the port of Rochefort, Baron d'Argelos d'Arros obtained the equivalent of his rank in the Army: he became captain of artillery. He returned to the Navy and was given the knighthood of St. Louis in 1763.

He received command of the Crown in 1764, then La Barbue in 1765, bound for Martinique. It was in November 1765 that he took the command of two flutes La Libra and La Fortune, who also had to carry out a campaign in Martinique. During these two missions to the West Indies, the young officer received orders to clear the harbor of Fort Royal of wrecks stranded during the operations of the Seven Years' War. He was promoted captain of frigate in December 1766 and sailed to Martinique to take care of the house of his wife; he remaind there for two years. Jean-François d'Arros joined the Royal Navy Academy in 1769. Then he commanded the King's ships on the Isle de France in 1770 and 1771 at the time when a French expedition was visiting the Seychelles. Commissioned by Rosland and Biolière, the expedition paid tribute to him by giving his name to the small island, the island of Arros. He returned to France aboard L'Indien, accompanied by the Royal-Comtois regiment. On March 4th, 1774, he left with his wife for Martinique.

United States War of Independence.

He received a brevet de capitaine on 18 April 1772 or 1777, and took part - from the summer of 1778 - in the war of independence of the United States, after the entry into the war of France alongside the American insurgents. He commanded The Magnificent, 74 guns, in the fleet of the Earl of Orvilliers at the battle of Ouessant, July 27th, 1778. He later received the command of L'Auguste.The Baron d'Arros received, in 1780, the command of Languedoc, a ship of 80 guns, which joined the following year the squadron led by the Count of Grasse. The latter, made up of 36 warships, left Brest on March 22nd, 1781 with the mission of fighting the English fleet in both North America and the West Indies. He then passed Le Palmier, 74 guns, while Languedoc was temporarily entrusted to Duplessis-Parscau. On April 29th, he commanded Languedoc at the battle of Fort Royal against the British fleet of Admiral Hood. On September 5th, the French fleet inflicts a major check on the British squadron in front of Chesapeake Bay, making the capitulation of Yorktown inevitable, thus constituting one of the turning points of the American war of independence.

In 1782, the Baron d'Arros reclaims the command of Languedoc. On April 9 and 12, 1782, he was at the Battle of Saintes. His ship is then the sailor of the City of Paris, flagship of the fleet, ridden by the Count of Grasse. The historian Prosper Levot describes his action during this fight: "Languedoc was constantly stationed near the city of Paris, of which he was the sailor before, and in the afternoon he was attacked before the flagship. When the order to form in battle on the starboard tack was given, the captain baron d'Arros d'Argelos passed the Ville-de-Paris and placed himself on his left; his ship did not stop fighting until the Triumphant signaled to force sail and follow him. Two ships separated him from the admiral. " During this fight, the Count de Grasse is compelled to lower his flag and is taken prisoner.

In a memoir he publishes during his captivity, he accuses the Baron d'Arros of having failed in his duty. The Baron d'Arros, as well as Mr. Mithon de Genouilly who commanded La Couronne (the other sailor of the Ville-de-Paris) are transferred to the citadel of Port Louis upon their return to France on September 8, 1782, at the end of the campaign. He was later transferred to the castle of Ouessant. The Baron Arros is called to appear before the Council of War Lorient, following the unfortunate case of the Battle of Saintes. He manages to defend himself and is cleared of all charges.

"The Council [...] Discharge of any accusation the Sieur Baron d'Arros, captain of the ship, commanding the Languedoc and removes all memories, letters, writings in that they contain a detriment to his honor and his reputation. "

He was elevated to the rank of squadron commander of naval armies on August 20th, 1784, he was appointed honorary Academician of the Royal Academy of Marine the same year. He served until 1785, when he ended his career, then returned to Martinique.

He died in Arance, Béarn, September 9, 1791.
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M. d'Albert de Rioms.


Attachment 34637

François Hector d'Albert is the son of François d'Albert de Rioms (1702-1792) and his wife Catherine de La Chau. From this marriage are born four sons: a first young death, François Hector (in 1728), Jean Pierre Henry in (1733) and Joseph (in 1737).

Career in the Navy.

Albert de Rioms began as a naval guard at the company of Rochefort, in 1743, became a midshipman five years later, and a lieutenant in 1755. During the Seven Years' War, he was taken prisoner for the first time on the Esperance (commander: Viscount de Bouville), a second time on the ship Le Foudroyant, in the fight of Cartagena of February 28, 1758, delivered by the Marquis Duquesne, wanting to join Cartagena, La Clue, blocked by an English squadron commanded by Admiral Henry Osborne.

On June 11, 1761, he married Thérèse de Clerc de Ladevèze (1740-1823). From this union is born a daughter, Adeline of Albert de Rions (1770-1807).
Made a Knight of St. Louis in 1763, he was promoted to the rank of captain of frigate in 1771, after serving in either infantry or marine artillery, and took part in four naval campaigns.

The American Campaign.

Albert de Rions tries to help the flagship the City of Paris during the battle of Saintes, April 12, 1782. Captain of the ship in 1772, he served with brilliance in the war of America, under the orders of Count d'Estaing. In 1778, M. d'Albert, commander of the ship Sagittarius, 50 guns, contributes to the expedition of Newport, the attack on St. Lucia and was in July 1779 in the battle of Grenada, where the count d'Estaing defeated Admiral Byron's squadron. On 24 September that same year, at the Savannah headquarters, he captured the HMS Experiment, an English 50-gun ship, of the same strength as his own, carrying 650,000 francs. money minted. Suffren, who fights with him in Newport, does not cease to praise him afterwards.

In 1780, he was promoted brigadier of naval armies. In 1781, raising the ship the Pluto, (74 guns), and under him it plays a significant role in all the fights delivered by the squadron of the count of Grasse, namely: April 29, off Fort-Royal of Martinique, against the fleet of Admiral Hood; the capture of Tobago at the end of May; the following September 5th, in front of Chesapeake Bay, against Admiral Graves; January 25th and 26th, 1782, near Saint Christopher Island, against Admiral Hood. Finally, on April the 9th ​​and 12th, between Dominica and Guadeloupe, at the battle of Les Saintes and against Admiral Rodney , aboard Le Pluto, he distinguished himself by the remarkable act of holding in check four British ships, which he then conveys to the City of Paris, This defeat of the Saintes, where only a third of the French ships faced more than triple of English ships will give rise to a council of war, long and useless, where opposing officers and aristocrats prevail over the reform actions, and a faster reconstruction of the fleet for the conquest of India or Jamaica.During this council even more than naval combat, will be examined. The conduct of all senior officers coming under scrutiny: that of Count Albert de Rions earning deserved praise.

In India, Suffren offers him a captaincy, and, if necessary ,to act as his successor. The latter wrote to M. de Castries:

"I know only one person who has all the qualities one could desire, who is very brave, very learned, full of zeal and future, disinterested, a good sailor. Albert of Rions, and, even in America, send him a frigate. I will be better off, having it; for he will help me, and if I die, you will be assured that the good of the service will lose nothing; if you had given it to me when I asked you, we would be masters of India. "

Toulon and the Revolution.

Promoted Squadron commandore of the naval armies in 1784, he was made a Commander of Saint-Louis by patent of August 20, 1784 and received a pension of 3,000 livres on the budget of the order. He was appointed general manager of the port of Toulon and then commander of the navy in the port. When Louis XVI visited Cherbourg in 1786, Albert de Rions, on board the Patriote, showed him a simulation of a naval battle in the harbor. Raised in 1788, to the dignity of commander of St. Louis, he had resumed his service in Toulon, as lieutenant general of the navies, when, in December 1789, the first sparks of the French Revolution burst in this port . A strict observer of military discipline, he forbade the arsenal workers to wear the tricolor cockade, and to join the National Guard. Two carpenters having broken his orders, he had them taken to prison: this proved the signal for a general insurrection. The troops of the line refuse to defend M. d'Albert, who, at first ill-treated, is arrested (with MM du Castellet and Villages) by the seditious mob.

The National Assembly, invoked, decrees that no charge should be brought against these brave officers, and renders to their chief an honorable testimony.

The Assembly confined itself to ordering his release.

Shortly after, Louis XVI, more just, entrusted to him the command of a fleet of thirty ships of line, squadron, called "of the Ocean", which was gathered in Brest, to support the rights of Spain against England, in the Nootka Sound affair.

Mutiny broke out amongst the crews, when the publication of the Penal Code of the 22nd April 1790 was published, M. d'Albert, having ineffectually tried to establish order and acceptance among the crews, at a time when all social bonds were being broken, and all the legal authorities were threatened.

He decided to leave the command, and also to leave France. Appointed Rear-Admiral, on January 1, 1792, he emigrated on January 15 of the same year and joined the princes, brothers of Louis XVI at Coblenz , and joined the campaign of 1792, in a particular body, formed by the officers of the navy emigrants. After the battle of Valmy, the retreat of the Prussians, and the dispersion of the royal troops, M. d'Albert retired to Dalmatia, and lived for several years in asylum. He returned to France under the Consulate, "when a conciliatory government recalled the men of merit that the civil troubles had removed, and he had the happiness, before ending his career, to see reborn in his homeland the monarchical institutions military order and discipline, of which he had been all his life the faithful and courageous defender.

Having retired in 1802, he died on October 3 of the same year, in his family home in Saint-Auban.

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M. de Marigny.



Charles René Louis, Viscount Bernard de Marigny, married to Marie Francoise Le Coutelier, he had at least two sons, both sailors and heroes of the war of independence of the United States: the eldest, the Chevalier de Marigny, also called Marigny d'Avernes, fought at the battle of St Kitts and died whilst in command of the Caesar at the Battle of Saintes, in April 1782, in an explosion that killed more than four hundred.

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M. la Clochetterie.



The only detailed information I can find on this Captain is related here when he was captain of Belle Poule:-

On 17 June, Keppel's fleet sighted two French frigates: the Licorne (32) and the Belle Poule (32), accompanied by the corvette Hirondelle (16), and a lugger, Coureur (10). The British admiral deployed some his ships to compel the French captains to report to him. The Licorne was halted by the British Milford (74) and escorted back to Keppel's flagship, the Victory in the late afternoon.
About the time (estimated 1800 hours) the Licorne was confronted by the Milford, the British frigate Arethusa (32) approached the Belle Poule, and signaled the latter to stop. When the French commander, Jean-Isaac Chadeau de la Clocheterie, of the Belle Poule refused the ‘invitation', the Arethusa fired a shot in front of the French ship. The two frigates engaged in a close range, exchange of gunfire for about four hours. As other British ships from the Keppel's fleet approached, the Belle Poule withdrew toward the French coast. The Belle Poule suffered 102 casualties among its 230 -man crew, and though badly damaged it was able to maneuver on its own. The Arethusa suffered 44 causalities from its 198 - man crew, but its masts and rigging had been so severely damaged that it had to be towed by the newly arrived British ships.
The Coureur was overtaken by the British cutter Alert, and after some resistance finally cooperated with being taken to Keppel's flagship. The following morning, the Licorne attempted to escape, firing at, and killing some of the crew of, the British America before striking its colors. The French Hirondelle escaped the engagement entirely. Commanded by comte de Blachon, the Hirondelle took part the Battle of Ushant one month later, before being put out of the armed service, end of August.
This action marked the first naval combat between French and British forces in the American War for Independence. The French king, Louis XVI, elected to identify this incident as the opening of war between England and France, although a formal declaration was made months later. The French needed this first open breach of peace by a British initiative, in order to have England appear as the aggressor, a necessary condition to apply ‘Le Pacte de Famille' and draw Spain into the war. This, of course belie the fact that France's February 1778 recognition of the United States (after years of covert assistance to American colonies in rebellion) had already cast France as taking sides in the war.
The resolute deportment of the La Belle Poule and its captain was applauded by the French population, and inspired celebrations in Paris. De la Clocheterie was personally decorated by the King. [La Clochetterie would later be killed, commanding L'Hercule, at the Battle of the Saintes (1782).

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Louis-Philippe de Vaudreuil.





Louis-Philippe was born into a family with a rich political and military tradition. His grandfather, Philippe de Rigaud de Vaudreuil, and his uncle Pierre de Rigaud de Vaudreuil de Cavagnal, were both governors of Canada; the latter was its last governor, surrendering Montreal to the British in 1760. Another uncle, Pierre-François de Rigaud, fought with Montcalm at the Battle of Oswego.

His father, also named Louis-Philippe de Rigaud de Vaudreuil, was a celebrated admiral of the French Navy, and was in charge of the navy in North America in 1747. Louis-Philippe the elder successfully saved Desherbiers de l'Etenduère at the Second battle of Cape Finisterre while commanding the Intrépide. Louis XV himself ordered the celebrated Dutch artist Charles-André van Loo to paint one of his naval battles; this painting is still in the Palace of Versailles.

American Revolutionary War.

Vaudreuil was dispatched to America when the French entered the war on the side of the Americans in February 1778. His first engagement came at the First Battle of Ushant, an island on the north-west part of France near Brest, where the French Navy and the British Navy fought to a draw. He was at sea for about five months.

Vaudreuil was on the Sceptre in the Battle of the Chesapeake. After one furious engagement with the British navy, Admiral de Grasse's fleet and the British fleet drifted for miles south of Yorktown and lost sight of each other. De Grasse eventually disengaged and returned to the Chesapeake, where he met the fleet of the Comte de Barras. This combined fleet outnumbered the British fleet, and gave the French control of the bay when the British opted not to attack. This had the effect of cutting the army of Cornwallis off from resupply and relief, leading to the Siege of Yorktown and his surrender. Vaudreuil's contribution to this effort was to provide the cavalry of Duke of Lauzun, a foreign legion that was a mix of Russian, Slavic, Polish and German mercenaries in the service of France. He also provided eight hundred men from his ship to Gloucester Point in defence of a peninsula near Yorktown. Together with the Duke of Lauzun these men fought the cavalry of Tarleton, and defeated him.

In the 1782 Battle of the Saintes, Vaudreuil was credited with saving most of the French Navy's ships in the disastrous defeat. Since De Grasse was taken prisoner Vaudreuil took command of the entire French fleet in America. Afterward, Vaudreuil was on the ship Triumphant in Boston harbour. At the conclusion of the war in 1783, he was responsible for bringing the victorious French army of Rochambeau back to France.

French Revolution.

Vaudreuil, with other Naval officers, forced his way into the Palace of Versailles on the night of October 5–6 to protect the Royal family. He then emigrated to London in 1791, returning to Paris in 1800. Upon returning, he was granted a Naval pension by Napoleon.

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All that I could find on this Captain was as follows:-






Alexandre de Thy (Comte d'Ethy)

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Nationality French
Roles Sailor
Date of Birth1729 - Château de Thoiras
First Known Service1729
Last Known Service1789
Date of Death1789

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Event History

Date from	Date to	Event
Unknown		Appointed Comte d'Ethy
1755		Enseigne de Vaisseau
1780		Capitaine de Vaisseau
1780	1782	Le Citoyen (74), as Commanding Officer
1780/04/17		Battle of Martinique
1781/04/29	1781/04/30	Battle of Fort Royal
1781/09/05		Battle of the Chesapeake
1782/01/25	1782/01/26	Battle of Saint Kitts
1782/04/09		Action off Dominique
1782/04/12		Battle of the Saintes
1786		Junon (36), as Commanding Officer

Captain d’Ethy of the French ship, the Citoyen, drew this perspective of the 1782 naval battle between the British and French near the Îles des Saintes. D’Ethy helped defeat the British at the Battle of the Chesapeake during the Revolutionary War, which led to the surrender of the British at Yorktown. He then went on to fight at the Battle of St. Kitts The following year, however, the British prevented the French from taking over Jamaica at the Battle of the Saintes.

D’Ethy drew this plan as part of a series of nine maps showing the changing locations of the ships during the battle. The highly stylized plan details the ships and the fire exchanged between them.

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M. de Goimpy.



François-Louis-Edme-Gabriel, Count of Maitz de Goimpy, called "Dumaitz de Goimpy", born April 10, 1729 at Goimpy Castle in Saint-Léger-des-Aubées, near Chartres and died December 29, 1807 at the castle de Billancourt in the Somme, was an aristocrat and French naval officer of the eighteenth century. He distinguished himself during the American War of Independence and ended his career with the rank of squadron commander and was decorated with the Grand Cross of the Royal and Military Order of St. Louis.

He was the son of Henri Dumaitz de Goimpy, lord of Goimpy, Saint-Léger, Aubeis, and his wife Marie Marguerite-Antoinette-Louise of Pas de Feuquières.

Career in the French Royal Navy.

He joined the French Royal Navy in 1748, as a marine officer, and became a naval officer in 1752. The same year, he was appointed deputy academician of the Navy Academy at the creation of the institution, and a regular academician in 1753. He published various works, notably on the navy, including a theory on the construction of ships in 1776.

In September 1753, he embarked on the frigate La Comète to go to Aveiro, Portugal, with Bory, the captain of Chezac, and Chabert, also members of the Academy of Marine, to observe the eclipse October 26, 1753. Lieutenant Navy in 1757. He became an ordinary member of the New Academy of Marine when this institution was reformed in 1769. Promoted frigate captain meanwhile, he was appointed captain of ship in 1772.
He distinguished himself on April 17, 1780 at the Battle of Martinique, under the command of the Earl of Guichen, against the British fleet commanded by Admiral Rodney. He commanded Destiny, a 74-gun ship in 1781 at the battle of Fort Royal on April 29th against Admiral Hood's British fleet, and at the Battle of Chesapeake Bay on September 5th, St. Kitts, at the Battle of Saintes. and the fight of Dominica in 1782 under the orders of the Count de Grasse. He was promoted to Squadron Commander by a certificate of 13 August 1786,a short time before his retirement.

Marriage and descent.

On October 6, 1772, he married Antoinette-Jeanne Jouenne d'Esgrigny, daughter of Jean-Rene Jouenne, Marquis d'Esgrigny, former captain of the regiment of the French Guards, and Marie-Louise Nicolle du Fresne. She died childless on April 24th 1816.

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Henri-César de Castellane-Majastre.






Henri-César de Castellane-Majastre was born on March 28, 1733 in Riez, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France. A French aristocrat, he was a member of the House of Castellane. His father was César-Henri de Castellane (1693-1761) and his mother, Agathe de Martin.

Career.

He served as a career officer in the French Royal Navy. He became Gardes de la Marine in 1749, Lieutenant in 1762 and Captain in 1775.
During the American Revolutionary War of 1775–1783, he served on a French fleet that came to the rescue of the Americans in March 1781. Leaving from Brest on March 22, 1781, under the command of Lieutenant General François Joseph Paul de Grasse (1722–1788), they were bound for Martinique. He served in the Invasion of Tobago on May 30, 1781. Their campaign led to the capture of Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis (1738-1805), and they took part in the Battle of the Chesapeake on September 5, 1781 and the Siege of Yorktown on October 19, 1781.
Additionally, he fought in the Battle of Saint Kitts aboard the French ship Vengeur du Peuple in April 1782. A month later, in May 1782, he served on the fleet of Louis-Philippe de Vaudreuil (1724–1802).
In October 1782, he was inducted in the Society of the Cincinnati and received 800 pounds from them for his service. On October 1, 1784, he became Chef d'escadre.

Personal life.

He married Marie Claire de Montolieu (unknown-1800). They had two sons:

• Charles de Castellane (1783-1857).
• César Elzéar de Castellane, Comte de Castellane-Majastres (1784-1835).

He died on May 5, 1789 in Riez, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France.