Sir Andrew Mitchell (1757-1806)

Having spent ten years in the East Indies during and immediately after the American Revolutionary War, Mitchell saw very little service until promoted vice-admiral at the end of the century. He then held several key positions until his early death at the age of 48.

He was born on 1 October 1757, the second son of Charles Mitchell of Baldridge, near Dunfermline, who died when he was just two years old, and of his wife, Margaret Forbes. His brother, Sir Charles Mitchell, became a commodore in the East India Company.

After being educated at the High School, Edinburgh, Mitchell entered the navy as a 14-year-old aboard the Deal Castle 20, Captain Maximilian Jacobs, in 1771. During the next few years of peace he saw further service on a number of other vessels on the home station.

In 1776 he sailed to the East Indies aboard the Ripon 60 with Commodore Sir Edward Vernon, and on 11 October 1777 he was promoted lieutenant of the frigate Coventry 28, Captain Benjamin Marlow. Following the French entry into the American Revolutionary War, he was present at the operations off Pondicherry in August 1778. Two months later (on 25 October), aged only 21, he was posted to be captain of the Coventry when Captain Marlow moved to the flagship Rippon 60. Mitchell commanded this frigate for almost four years, although in 1781 some incapacitation resulted in Lieutenant John Sutton taking temporary command.

Sir Andrew Mitchell

On 12 August 1782 Mitchell commanded the Coventry in a furious two-and-a-half-hour action with the French frigate Bellone 32, Captain de Piervert, off Friars Hood, Ceylon. It was a drawn battle – the enemy captain was killed, but the Coventry suffered significant casualties (fifteen men killed and twenty-nine wounded). He later took information about the location of the French fleet to Vice-Admiral Sir Edward Hughes, intelligence that resulted in the Battle of Trincomale on 3 September, at which the Coventry was present. After the death of Captain James Watt in that battle, in September Mitchell transferred to the Sultan 74. He commanded her at the Battle of Cuddalore on 20 July 1783; in this action she lost four men killed and twenty wounded.

With the arrival of peace Hughes returned home, but Mitchell remained in the East Indies as commodore and interim commander-in-chief. He hoisted his broad pennant aboard the Defence 74, Captain Christopher Halliday on 18 November 1784. His squadron wintered at Bombay, where on New Years Day 1785 he married Anne Stackhouse. In April he sailed with his squadron for Madras, the summer station for the East Indies ships. Departing for England a month later, he reached Portsmouth in mid-December in company with the Worcester 64 and Eagle 64, having spent two weeks at the Cape on route. Unfortunately, the financial capital he had accrued during his ten-year absence from England in the East Indies was soon lost through the bankruptcy of his agent who squandered it on an attempted election to a Scottish parliamentary constituency.

During the Spanish Armament of 1790 Mitchell was presented to the King shortly before he took command of the Asia 64 in July, which soon joined the Grand Fleet at Spithead. Once the dispute was settled, she went around to Chatham in November to be paid off.

He remained unemployed throughout the early years of the French Revolutionary War before in February 1795 he was finally appointed to the Impregnable 98, which put out with the Channel Fleet in early February and was back at Spithead by mid-March. On 1 June he was promoted rear-admiral, at which time he left his ship to await an appointment suitable to his new rank.

During the autumn of 1795 Mitchell travelled north to Edinburgh and it seems that he spent the next few years with his family in Dunfermline. In May 1798 there was talk of him becoming captain of the fleet in the North Sea to his fellow Scotsman, Admiral Lord Duncan, but this came to nought.

On 14 February 1799 he was promoted vice-admiral, and he returned to service at the age of 41 when appointed to the chief command at the Nore in April, his flag flying aboard the Zealand 64, Captain Thomas Parr. In the event he retained this post for just a couple of months before being placed in command of the naval element of the expedition to the Netherlands under Admiral Adam Duncan’s overall command. This role necessitated him spending some time checking the condition of the transports that were congregating in the Kent ports. At the end of July his flag was raised aboard the Isis 50, Captain James Oughton, although he later shifted it to the Babet 24, Captain Jemmett Mainwaring, in order to be able to move inshore when the campaign opened in August. On 30 August he received the surrender of the Dutch fleet after it had mutinied against its officers; however, the expedition was doomed to failure, and the Duke of York’s army was forced to withdraw.

Mitchell was praised for seizing the Dutch ships and keeping his fleet together in the appalling weather conditions, but along with the Duke of York he achieved little else. Lieutenant-General Sir Ralph Abercromby (also involved in the expedition) criticized him for doing nothing more than confiscating the hapless Dutch fleet. Even so, on 9 January 1800 he was invested as a Knight of the Bath by the King at St. James’ Palace, and he also received the thanks of Parliament and a hundred guinea sword for his efforts in the Netherlands. Additionally, he earned a small fortune as his share of the capture of the Dutch ships. This gave rise to a legal action with Duncan over who was entitled to the commander-in-chief’s eighth share, a dispute not finally decided until 1815, when both the protagonists were long dead!

Mitchell subsequently served from September 1800 in the Channel Fleet under Admiral the Earl of St. Vincent, taking passage aboard the Achille 74, Captain George Murray, to raise his flag aboard the Windsor Castle 98, Captain James Oughton. This proved to be a particularly uneventful period of duty with little of interest to break the monotony of blockade aside from visits to Plymouth in February 1801 and again in August.

In November 1801 he sailed to Bantry Bay with the intention of taking a fleet out to the West Indies, but on 3 December a mutiny broke out aboard several of the ships, as the seamen objected to being sent away to the West Indies when peace was imminent. The most serious trouble was aboard the Temeraire 98, the flagship of Rear-Admiral George Campbell. The deployment to the West Indies was cancelled, and the 16 sail of the line under Mitchell’s command returned to Portsmouth at the end of the month. In early January 1802 he was the president of the court-martial of the Bantry Bay mutineers, which resulted in twelve men being executed. He was also the president of the court-martial of Captain Sir Edward Hamilton at Portsmouth on 22 January which found that officer guilty of an act of cruelty and dismissed him from the Navy.

In April 1802, with the French Revolutionary War having come to an end, Mitchell was appointed the commander-in-chief in North America, and he sailed in mid-June aboard the Cambrian 40, Captain William Bradley, reaching Bermuda on 20 July and Halifax on 1 August. Transferring his flag in December to the Leander 50, Captain Oughton, he was to spend the following summers at Halifax and winters at Bermuda, while the Leander saw service at sea under a succession of different captains.

On 10 February 1803 Lady Mitchell died at Bermuda; the couple had had three sons, Charles, Nathaniel and Andrew, all of whom died unmarried and died as captains in the navy. Admiral Mitchell soon married for the second time in May 1805 to a woman 24 years his junior, the 23-year-old Mary Uniacke of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Apparently when a man convicted of mutiny and desertion was about to be executed aboard the frigate Cleopatra in Halifax Harbour the newly-married Mary successfully begged her husband to spare his life. In 1837 their daughter would marry a naval captain, William Hargreaves Molyneux.

Retaining the North American command, Mitchell was promoted admiral on 9 November 1805. For some time, he had been laid low by sickness, and he died at Bermuda after a recurrence of the illness on 26 February 1806 and was buried on the island following a military funeral and a solemn procession from his residence to the naval cemetery.

In polite society, Mitchell’s love of the opposite sex, money and extravagance was frowned upon, with the chatter describing his first wife as ‘a pleasing woman and looks deserving of a better partner than it seems, has fallen her lot’. In the Navy, he was viewed as a humane, gentlemanly officer who was very attached to his subordinates. The acerbic St. Vincent scathingly referred to him as a ‘bull-headed centurion’, but Collingwood described him as ‘a very good-tempered man’. He was a keen music lover and put on concerts in his cabin aboard ship.