1796 Overview
The Brest Fleet remained in port under a very loose blockade by the Channel Fleet until December, when it attempted to get to sea to carry out an invasion of Ireland in support of the United Irishmen’s uprising. Due to adverse weather, coupled with some inspired disruption by Captain Sir Edward Pellew off Brest, the French were thwarted in their ambitions, but the failure of Admiral Lord Bridport and Vice-Admiral John Colpoys to mobilise the Channel Fleet enabled the French to avoid a major battle and led to much criticism of those officers.
In the Mediterranean matters were even less under control as General Napoleon Bonaparte smashed through Italy and sent Brigadier-General Joachim Murat to seize the British supply port of Leghorn in June. Seeking to maintain a forward base for his operations, Admiral Sir John Jervis occupied Elba on 10 July, but six weeks later the French and Spanish signed the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso, and following Spain’s declaration of against Great Britain on 8 October they became allies in the war. Shortly afterwards, Admiral Don Juan de Langara’s Cadiz based fleet joined forces with the French at Toulon to number thirty-eight sail of the line, and when Rear-Admiral Robert Man inexplicably disappeared with a third of Jervis’ fleet in October, the commander-in-chief was left with no option but to give up Corsica and Elba in November and to retire down the Mediterranean to Gibraltar. Here, to make matters worse, a tragedy occurred on 10 December when the Courageux 74 was wrecked on the Barbary Coast with huge loss of life.
The brilliant Sir Edward Pellew enjoyed a memorable 1796. His brother, Israel, did not.
Whilst their fleets largely remained inactive in port, the French sent out cruisers and privateers to harass the British supply lines and trade routes, with their Atlantic ports, Mauritius, and Guadeloupe hosting a great deal of such activity. Rear-Admiral Pierre-César-Charles-Guillaume Sercey, commanding a frigate squadron, departed Rochefort on 4 March for an eventful cruise in the Indian Ocean which eventually led to a bloody but inconclusive engagement with two British sail of the line on 9 September. More alarmingly, Rear-Admiral Joseph De Richery with seven sail of the line and three frigates was sprung from Cadiz by the Spanish, and after arriving off the sparsely patrolled waters of Newfoundland in August, he destroyed more than a hundred vessels and devastated the local fishery.
Admiral Adam Duncan continued to watch the Dutch fleet in the Texel, being aided for some time by a Russian squadron, but whilst he was temporarily off station in February a small squadron bound for the relief of the Cape did manage to escape. This force was subsequently captured by Admiral Sir George Keith Elphinstone with some ease in Saldanha Bay on 17 August after British intelligence had kept him fully informed of its movements.
In the West Indies, Vice-Admiral Sir John Laforey sent a squadron under the command of Captain Thomas Parr to take the Dutch possessions of Demerara, Essequibo and Berbice in April. A combined force sent out from England and led by Rear-Admiral Hugh Cloberry Christian and Lieutenant-General Sir Ralph Abercromby engaged in a two-month campaign from April, re-taking St. Lucia on 24 May, and supressing French inspired revolts on St. Vincent and Grenada in June. Illness prevented it from achieving little else, many lives were lost during the campaign, and Christian himself was superseded in June. Meanwhile Rear-Admiral William Parker, commanding at Jamaica, assisted the army on Saint-Domingue in their campaign to take control of the island, but the combined British forces were thwarted in an attack on Léogane on 21 March.
In the East Indies Captain Alan Hyde Gardner and Colonel James Stuart captured Colombo in March, whilst the commander-in-chief, Rear-Admiral Peter Rainier, took Amboyna and Banda Neira in the Moluccas. The latter campaign earned a great amount of prize money for Rainier and his five captains, one of whom was his nephew.
It proved to be a mixed year for several of the Navy’s star captains. The celebrated Captain Sir Edward Pellew added further laurels to his crown by directing the astonishing rescue of five hundred people from a transport that had driven aground in a gale off Plymouth on 26 January, and he achieved further glory on 12 April and again on 20 April when his squadron captured two French frigates. Fortune did not smile so favourably upon his less distinguished brother, Captain Israel Pellew, whose command, the Amphion 32, blew up with great loss of life at Plymouth on 22 September. Similarly, one of Pellew’s contemporaries, the flamboyant Captain William Sidney Smith, also suffered great misfortune when he was captured by the French on 18 April and held as a state prisoner in Paris. Elsewhere another brilliant officer, Captain Richard Bowen of the Terpsichore 32, also celebrated two frigate captures on 13 October and 13 December respectively, although on the second occasion his prize was re-taken by her crew, whilst Commodore Horatio Nelson just happened to be aboard the Minerve 38 when she defeated the Spanish frigate Santa Sabina 40 on 20 December, although again the prize was almost immediately retaken by the enemy.
Commodore Sir John Borlase Warren was criticised both for his frigate squadron’s failure to capture anything bar a storeship from a French convoy escorted by a lighter escort on 20 March, and for inflating the French firepower in his dispatch to the Admiralty. More happily, his squadron ran down the French frigate Andromaque 36 and destroyed her on 24 August. Meanwhile on 27 April, a 15-year-old midshipman from the frigate Niger 32, James Patton, had exhibited astonishing strength and then compassion in the destruction of a French lugger, whilst on 8 June, the ex-British frigate Thames 32, together with the Tribune 32, had been taken from the French by two British frigates off the Scilly Isles. Responding to a veiled comment from Admiral Sir John Jervis in the Mediterranean, the French corvette Utile was brilliantly cut out of the Hyères Roads by the frigate Southampton on 9 June.
In the North Sea, the Phoenix 36 defeated the lighter Dutch frigate Argo 36 on 12 May after Admiral Adam Duncan’s fleet had intercepted the latter on her return home from Norway, and Captain Henry Trollope of the heavily powered and experimental Glatton 54 engaged a French frigate squadron off the Dutch coast on 15 July with great credit. In the Caribbean an engagement between the Aimable 32 and French frigate Pensée 42 off Guadeloupe on 22-23 July was inconclusive and ended with the two captains later dining together, whilst in the same waters the Mermaid 32 defeated the French frigate Vengeance 40 on 8 August but was unable to make a prize of her when a calm set in, and an attempt by a French frigate Mèdèe 32 to take the sloop Pelican on 23 September ended with the aggressor being put to flight.
The brutality of sea battles wasn’t the only violence naval officers found themselves associated with during the year. The General Election in June saw a candidate for the borough of Westminster, Vice-Admiral Sir Alan Gardner, subjected to mob hostility that resulted in his carriage being smashed to pieces, whilst also in London, a hot-headed and privileged young officer, Lord Camelford, sought out the esteemed navigator, Captain George Vancouver, whom he considered had treated him harshly during their long voyage of exploration, and thrashed him with his cane on 21 September. An even more appalling officer, the tyrannical and deranged Captain Hugh Pigot, caused a diplomatic outrage with his flogging of an errant American merchant captain on 1 July after that gentleman’s ship had not followed orders whilst being convoyed to Saint-Domingue.