Andrew Sutherland (1745-95)
Sutherland’s main claim to fame was his involvement in the events surrounding the treachery of Benedict Arnold during the American Revolution. Fighting at the Battle of Fort Royal in 1781 and the Battle of the Saintes a year later, he retired ashore to a civil position in the early stages of the French Revolutionary War and died within the year.
He was born on 9 March 1745 at Dornoch in the county of Sutherland in northern Scotland, the son of Kenneth Sutherland, the Baillie of Dornoch. He had two brothers, Alexander and James, and several sisters.
Sutherland was commissioned lieutenant on 28 December 1770, and appointed agent of transports at Plymouth early in 1776. Whilst in his early thirties he was promoted commander of the Vulture 14 in May 1779 , and later that month he participated in Commodore Sir George Collier’s expedition up the Hudson River to drive the Americans out of Stony Point. His ship and the Galatea 20, Captain James Reid, captured a valuable American merchant ship bound from Philadelphia to Amsterdam in late April 1780 and sent her into New York as a prize. The Vulture was a key part of the plot for Benedict Arnold to hand over the fortress of West Point to the British, a plan that went wrong when the vessel was forced downriver from her anchorage in the Hudson. Arnold managed to reach her and flee to New York; his British handler, Major John André, did not and was hanged as a spy. It seems likely that when Admiral Sir George Brydges Rodney departed New York with his fleet for the Leeward Islands on 16 November, he took Sutherland with him aboard the flagship Sandwich 90. On 5 December Rodney promoted him to be captain of the Triton 28, although this appointment was apparently for purposes of rank only.
Sutherland was in acting command of the sickly Russell 74 at the Battle of Fort Royal on 29 April 1781, when after a four-hour engagement, the British fleet under Rear-Admiral Sir Samuel Hood was repulsed by a larger French fleet. The Russell lost six men killed and fourteen wounded, suffered a great deal of damage, and was holed below the waterline. With her pumps unable to cope with the leaks, she was detached by Hood for St. Eustatius to take news of the action to Rodney. Reports of the battle praised Sutherland as a junior officer who had fought the Russell until she was almost sinking, and who at one time in the action had been surrounded by three French sail of the line. Meanwhile, having reached St. Eustatius, on 13 May Sutherland was transferred to the sloop of that name, the Saint Eustatius 20.
Remaining in the Leeward Islands, at the end of January 1782 he was ordered to exchange with Captain Lord Cranstoun into the Belliqueux 64, in which he fought at the Battle of the Saintes on 12 April, losing four men killed and ten wounded when assisting in the capture of the French Ardent 64, and performing well in the pursuit of the laggards of the French fleet in the Mona Passage days later. After sailing to North America with the fleet under Admiral Hugh Pigot, the Belliqueux returned to the Leeward Islands in the autumn, and she later arrived at Jamaica with Hood’s squadron on 8 February 1783. With the American Revolutionary War drawing to an end, the Belliqueux returned in July to Portsmouth with two other vessels including Pigot’s flagship, and she was paid off a month later.
During the next decade of peace, Sutherland recommissioned the Powerful 74 in May 1786, serving time as the flag captain to Rear-Admiral Thomas Graves, the commander-in-chief at Plymouth. At the time of the Dutch Armament in the autumn of 1787, the Powerful sailed to Spithead before resuming her duties at Plymouth. In July 1788 Sutherland transferred to the newly commissioned guardship Orion 74, which he retained until April 1789. In July 1790 he commissioned the new Nassau 64 at Plymouth for the Spanish Armament, joining the force at Portsmouth in late September and paying her off after returning to Plymouth at the end of November. In the meantime, on 30 December 1789 at St. Swithun, Walcot, Bath, he had married Louisa, the daughter of a wealthy MP, Sir George Colebrooke, and the couple would have two children, a daughter, Louisa, and a son, James Charles.
At the beginning of the French Revolutionary War in February 1793, Sutherland, (who was now approaching his fifties), recommissioned the Diadem 64 at Plymouth, but it was the end of May before the ship had sufficient crewmen to sail for Portsmouth. In early June she departed for Ireland, to return on 15 July with several ships under convoy, including a stray East Indiaman. She joined the Channel Fleet off Plymouth Sound at the end of July; returning once more to Portsmouth, on 20 August she departed with the Mediterranean convoy of over 150 sail and several other men-of-war, only to be recalled when some hundred miles to the west of the Scilly Isles and diverted into Torbay on reports of a French fleet being at sea. In early October she entered Falmouth Roads where the convoy (now totalling over 200 ships) had gathered, and after waiting some time for a favourable wind, they got away on the 15th.
In the Mediterranean, during early January 1794 the Diadem was off neutral Genoa when Sutherland, (reportedly flying a commodore’s broad pennant) remonstrated with the local authorities over their firing on a Royal Navy cutter which had chased a merchantman under their batteries. In the early summer the Diadem captured a Swedish vessel, which claimed to be bound for Lisbon, but was under escort by a Genoese galley. At about the same time, Sutherland demanded an explanation for the Diadem being fired on in the Gulf of Spezzia. The Genoese responded that because the British had committed so many violations of their neutrality, that they could not be allowed into port without risk to the city’s sovereignty.
In early July 1794 Sutherland transferred into the Berwick 74, but he left her on 10 October, to take up the position of naval commissioner at Gibraltar.
Captain Sutherland died in his fiftieth year at Gibraltar on 18 July 1795. At the time his children were still in their infancy. His burial place is unknown, but a memorial plaque was erected in Bath Abbey, commemorating both him and his brother Alexander, a Royal Engineer, who had been killed at the Battle of Lannay in Flanders in 1793.