by Richard Hiscocks | Jul 28, 2024 | 1784, The Peace of 1784-1792
Captain Mostyn is killed in a duel – 13 February 1784 Amongst the hundreds of officers who made it to post captain rank in the Georgian Navy were a handful of hotheads whose impulsive and injudicious characters propelled them onto the so-called ‘field of...
by Richard Hiscocks | Jan 22, 2019 | 1792, The Peace of 1784-1792
1792 Overview In 1792 war clouds gathered over Britain as revolutionary France took up arms against her continental neighbours. The Prime Minister, William Pitt, was initially averse to hostilities and was more intent on making economies in the armed forces,...
by Richard Hiscocks | Dec 26, 2018 | 1792, The Peace of 1784-1792
Lieutenant Perkins is rescued from Saint-Domingue – 24 February 1792 By February 1792 the island of Saint-Domingue, the modern-day Haiti, had been engaged in a very turbulent and bitter civil war for the best part of a year, brought about by the French...
by Richard Hiscocks | Jan 3, 2019 | 1792, The Peace of 1784-1792
?Towards the end of 1791 Lieutenant Philip Beaver, the son of a clergyman, and prot?g? of the late Vice-Admiral Sir Joshua Rowley, became involved in a plan to purchase and then colonise the uncultivated island of Bulama off the coast of Sierra Leone. This island is...
by Richard Hiscocks | Jan 10, 2019 | 1792, The Peace of 1784-1792
?In June 1777 the then 45 year-old Captain Adam Duncan of the Royal Navy had married 28 year-old Henrietta Dundas, the daughter of the Right Hon. Robert Dundas of Arniston, who had been the M.P for Midlothian from 1754-61, and in 1760 had become the Lord President of...
by Richard Hiscocks | Jan 14, 2019 | 1792, The Peace of 1784-1792
George Collier and the Shipwreck of the Winterton – 22 August 1792 For many sea-officers lacking interest and patronage the opportunities for employment in the navy during times of peace could be scarce indeed, and it was not unusual for these less...
by Richard Hiscocks | Jan 22, 2019 | 1792, The Peace of 1784-1792
The Navy’s role in Lord Macartney’s Embassy to China – 1792-4 For many years there had been frustration in mercantile circles, in particular within the East India Company, at the restrictions placed on British trade by the Chinese authorities,...
by Richard Hiscocks | Dec 18, 2018 | 1791, The Peace of 1784-1792
?March Vice-Admiral Lord Hood began to commission a fleet of thirty-six sail of the line when concern over Russia?s territorial ambitions threatened to invoke Britain?s Triple Alliance with Prussia and the Netherlands. Eventually, opposition to a possible war in...
by Richard Hiscocks | Nov 20, 2018 | 1791, The Peace of 1784-1792
?Although Britain had been at peace for the best part of eight years, her government had maintained a robust attitude to European affairs, as evidenced by its re-commissioning of the fleet for the Dutch Armament of 1788 and the Spanish Armament of 1790. One particular...
by Richard Hiscocks | Nov 29, 2018 | 1791, The Peace of 1784-1792
?Following the signing of the Nookta Sound Convention which brought an end to the Spanish Armament in October 1790, the sloop Discovery, Commander George Vancouver, accompanied by a tender, the Chatham, Lieutenant William Broughton, were sent to reclaim those...
by Richard Hiscocks | Dec 9, 2018 | 1791, The Peace of 1784-1792
Captain Bligh’s Second Breadfruit Mission – August 1791-August 1793 It would be fair to say that William Bligh’s first mission to the Pacific Ocean had not been an unqualified success. Sailing in command of the Bounty in December 1787 with...
by Richard Hiscocks | Dec 18, 2018 | 1791, The Peace of 1784-1792
?Throughout the ten years following the end of the American Revolutionary War there had been no substantive threat to peace between France and Britain in home waters, but on the sub-continent of India the conflicts of interest between the two empires had ensured that...
by Richard Hiscocks | Nov 9, 2018 | 1790, The Peace of 1784-1792
A crisis known as the ?Spanish Armament? developed during April that was by far the most serious since the end of the American Revolutionary war. Britain and Spain clashed over the rights to Nookta Sound on the North American Pacific coast, and although the...
by Richard Hiscocks | Oct 8, 2018 | 1790, The Peace of 1784-1792
?During the course of his last voyage of discovery into the Pacific Ocean the late Captain James Cook had visited what was later to be known as Vancouver Island in 1778, and had found a deep water anchorage on the western coast which he had named Nookta Sound, an...
by Richard Hiscocks | Oct 9, 2018 | 1790, The Peace of 1784-1792
?In May 1790, with war clouds gathering over Britain as a result of the Nookta Sound dispute with Spain, Captain Charles Morice Pole was appointed to the frigate Melampus 36. Unfortunately, he was soon to find that rather than engaging in conflict with the enemy he...
by Richard Hiscocks | Nov 1, 2018 | 1790, The Peace of 1784-1792
The Endymion 44 had been launched in 1779 and had seen service in the West Indies during the American War of Revolution under the command of Captains Philip Carteret and Edward Tyrrell Smith, being present under the latter officer at the Battle of the Saintes...
by Richard Hiscocks | Sep 12, 2018 | 1789, The Peace of 1784-1792
The year of 1789 would become one of the most infamous in the history of the Navy when elements of the crew of the Bounty, which had been sent to collect breadfruit plants from Tahiti, mutinied against their commander, Lieutenant William Bligh on 28 April....
by Richard Hiscocks | Aug 29, 2018 | 1789, The Peace of 1784-1792
On 11 February 1789, after a three month delay awaiting a royal seal of approval due to King George III?s incapacitation, a squadron under the command of Commodore Hon. William Cornwallis finally departed Spithead for the Indian sub-continent. It consisted of...
by Richard Hiscocks | Jul 26, 2018 | 1789, The Peace of 1784-1792
On 15 October 1787 a tiny, overcrowded, ninety-feet long, two hundred and thirty-ton feebly armed ex-collier, commanded by a man embittered at not having been granted promotion prior to the undertaking of a two year voyage to the other side of the world,...
by Richard Hiscocks | Aug 22, 2018 | 1789, The Peace of 1784-1792
During the latter part of 1788 the health of King George III had been deteriorating as he continued to suffer from a disturbing condition that could not be diagnosed at the time, but which symptoms included a tendency to irrational behaviour and speech,...
by Richard Hiscocks | Sep 4, 2018 | 1789, The Peace of 1784-1792
Mr Nesham defies a French Mob and earns a Civic Honour – 27 October 1789 Whenever the two countries were not at war it was often the case that British naval officers spent time living or studying in France, and at various periods in their lives admirals...
by Richard Hiscocks | Sep 16, 2018 | 1789, The Peace of 1784-1792
On 8 September1789 the two-decked fifth-rate Guardian 44 set sail from Spithead armed en-flute and commanded by Lieutenant Edward Riou. Aboard were a collection of stores, machinery, livestock and, plants, in addition to thirty-six civilians and convicts, all...
by Richard Hiscocks | Jun 10, 2018 | 1788, The Peace of 1784-1792
Admiral Lord Howe?s position as the first lord of the Admiralty became untenable following parliamentary disquiet at his superannuation of a large number of officers due for promotion to flag rank in favour of more worthy officers further down the captain?s...
by Richard Hiscocks | May 22, 2018 | 1788, The Peace of 1784-1792
The practice of placing the names of ?in absentia? young gentlemen on the muster-roll of a ship in order for them to fulfil the requisite six years sea-time before sitting a lieutenant?s examination had long been an unsaid tradition in the navy. It was not...
by Richard Hiscocks | Jun 9, 2018 | 1788, The Peace of 1784-1792
The promotion of captains to flag rank had never been a cut and dried process, despite the general assumption that the achievement of the rank of post captain entitled one to join the list of officers who would in strict succession reach the rank of admiral....
by Richard Hiscocks | Jun 10, 2018 | 1788, The Peace of 1784-1792
On 22 December 1786 the frigate Phaeton 38, Captain George Dawson, left Portsmouth bound for the Mediterranean station where the peace-time squadron consisted of the commander-in-chief?s 50-gun vessel, four or so frigates and a couple of brigs or sloops. Here...
by Richard Hiscocks | Jun 9, 2018 | 1787
For a couple of all too brief but exciting months during the autumn the Navy mobilised to meet the threat of a French involvement in Dutch affairs, but following sound diplomacy the so-called ?Dutch Armament? petered out and the disappointed officers returned...
by Richard Hiscocks | Apr 19, 2018 | 1787, The Peace of 1784-1792
In September 1786 Captain Arthur Phillip was chosen to head an expedition to establish a convict colony and the first white settlement on the east coast of New Holland, which part of what is now known as Australia had been claimed and named New South Wales by...
by Richard Hiscocks | May 5, 2018 | 1787
For the best part of seven years there had been trouble in the Dutch Republic where two opposing groups, the Orange Party, led by the Stadtholder, William V Prince of Orange, and the Patriots, a group keen to see the restoration of a republic, had been vying...
by Richard Hiscocks | Mar 29, 2018 | 1786, The Peace of 1784-1792
The third year of peace following the end of the American Revolutionary War was, if anything, quieter than the previous two, and the only significant public interest involving a sea officer came in July when an ecclesiastical court found the wife of Captain...
