Charles Powell Hamilton (1747-1825)
With the country at peace during his early years of service, the aristocratic Hamilton had to wait until the age of 30 before achieving his first command. Although he served in both the American and French Revolutionary Wars, opportunities for distinction never quite fell his way.
Hamilton was born on 26 December 1747, at Widcombe, Bath, the third and youngest son of Lord Anne Hamilton (so named for his godmother, Queen Anne), and his wife, Anna Charlotta Maria Powell. He was the grandson of the 4th Duke of Hamilton, and the younger brother of Lieutenant-Colonel James Hamilton.
After service as a midshipman, Hamilton (then approaching his 22nd birthday) was commissioned lieutenant on 12 December 1769, a rare promotion during a period of peace between wars. During 1772 he served in Newfoundland waters aboard the Panther 60, Captain Cornthwaite Ommanney, flying the broad pennant of Commodore Molyneux Shuldham.
On 24 May 1777 he married Lucretia Prosser at St. Mary in Portsmouth. The couple would have a daughter and two sons, the younger of whom, the extravagantly named Augustus Barrington Price Powell Douglas-Hamilton, became a lieutenant in the navy.
The sacrifice of HMS Alexander in 1794 allowed Captain Hamilton’s Canada to escape capture by a superior French force.
In June 1778, during the early stages of the American Revolutionary War the 30-year-old Charles Hamilton was promoted commander of the sloop Fortune 14, serving in the Channel and at the Battle of Cancale Bay on 13 May 1779. As a reward for his efforts on that occasion, he was posted captain on 18 May and ordered to commission the newly acquired sixth-rate Champion 24 for service in the Channel.
During September 1779 the Champion joined Commodore John Brisbane’s small squadron on a cruise to the French coast, and on 21 November she arrived at Portsmouth from Jersey. In March 1780 Hamilton was brought to a court-martial and severely reprimanded for not obeying a summons to attend a previous court martial . However, he remained in command of the Champion in the Channel, where he assisted the Emerald 32, Captain Samuel Marshall, in the capture of two Dutch ships carrying naval stores off the French coast. On 19 October 1780 Hamilton was appointed to succeed Captain John Ford aboard the frigate Brilliant 28, but he appears not to have joined her, for on 7 November Captain Roger Curtis assumed command of that vessel.
Hamilton was next appointed on 17 May 1781 to the frigate Apollo 32 fitting out at Chatham, which served in Commodore Hon. Keith Stewart’s North Sea squadron that autumn. In January 1782 she arrived at Plymouth from the Downs before taking a convoy out to the Mediterranean in March. When the convoy and its escorts (commanded by Captain Robert Man of the Cerberus 28) arrived off Cape Spartel, Captain Charles Morice Pole who had captured the Spanish frigate Santa Catalina on 16 March mistakenly assumed the strange ships were enemies and burned his hard-won prize. By June the Apollo was at Spithead where she was briefly attached to the Channel Fleet, and on 18 September she arrived at Plymouth under jury masts, having been dismasted in a violent gale some weeks previously off the Irish coast. After returning to duty, she arrived at Portsmouth with troop transports on 21 December. Dispatched shortly afterwards to Newfoundland, on 15 March 1783 she returned to Plymouth via Lisbon, and with the American Revolutionary War drawing to a close she sailed around to the Thames to be paid off in April.
Hamilton did not see any naval service during the inter-war years , though he did receive a sinecure appointment to the council of the island of Grenada, which conveniently did not require him to travel to the West Indies. It was only in October 1793, eight months after the beginning of the French Revolutionary War, that he returned to active service, taking command of the Canada 74, which had just been recommissioned by Captain Thomas Newnham. She had joined the Channel Fleet by the end of the year, but the ship missed the Battle of the Glorious First of June in 1794, as she was undergoing repairs in Portsmouth Harbour.
Towards the end of September 1794, the Canada sailed with the escort of outbound convoys from Plymouth for Gibraltar and the West Indies. On 6 November she was returning from this duty in company with the Alexander 74, Captain Richard Rodney Bligh, when the two ships ran into Rear-Admiral Joseph Marie Nielly’s squadron some two hundred miles west of Ushant. The two British ships separated as they fled the much larger French force – after a desperate defence the Alexander surrendered, but the Canada was able to make good her escape . When Hamilton’s command arrived at Spithead five days later with the unfortunate tidings, there was some question about whether he had acted appropriately, but under the circumstances there was not much else he could have done. The Canada was taken into harbour in the second week of December for a refit, and after rejoining the Channel Fleet she again entered harbour for more work on 2 May 1795.
Hamilton’s superiors must have felt that he bore no blame for the loss of the Alexander, (one of only British five ships of the line captured by the enemy during this war) since in June 1795 he was promoted to command the second-rate Prince 98 in the Channel Fleet. His ship was present but barely involved in the action at the Battle of Groix on 23 June and did not suffer any casualties. In late August the Prince sailed with Rear-Admiral Henry Harvey’s squadron ferrying troops to the French coast, and she also cruised with Harvey in February 1796. A further cruise from 12 April with Vice-Admiral John Colpoys’ squadron followed before she was paid off at Portsmouth on 23 June.
Hamilton did not see any further service, perhaps because he managed to get himself in disfavour at the Admiralty for some minor bureaucratic transgressions. He was advanced to flag rank on 20 February 1797, and in December attended the Service of Thanksgiving at St. Pauls for the naval victories. He was promoted a vice-admiral on 1 January 1801, and with hostilities looming with France once more in April 1803 he attended the Admiralty to offer his services, but he was unable to obtain any employment. He participated in Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson’s funeral on 9 January 1806 and was promoted an admiral on 28 April 1808.
Aged 77, Admiral Charles Powell Hamilton died on 12 March 1825 at his seat, Fir Hill, near Droxford in Hampshire.