George Dawson (1739 – ?)

Active in North American waters both prior to and during the War of Independence, Dawson was clearly an awkward officer. After being dismissed from the Navy over a conviction for tyranny and fraud, he disappeared into obscurity.

Of his origins nothing is known, other than that he was born about 1739 and resided during the early1780’s at Holgate, York.

Having passed his lieutenant’s examination on 1 July 1761, Dawson was commissioned lieutenant on 9 August 1762 during the latter stages of the Seven Years War. From March 1768 he commanded the schooner Hope, taking her out to Boston in New England. When he returned to England in December 1769 he brought news of the political troubles in that city. The Hope sailed once more to North America in the following March, and spent several years on customs enforcement duties, making Dawson unpopular with the local merchants. In December 1774 a snowstorm blew his small vessel all the way from Boston to Bermuda, where she was slightly damaged, but after repairs she returned to North America three months later. During June 1775 while the Hope was off the port of Gloucester, Massachusetts she was fired upon from the shore; when Dawson was unable to apprehend the culprits, he instead confiscated over a dozen local vessels. The Hope remained on the North American station until paid off in January 1776.

Dawson’s Renown attacks the French flagship Languedoc off Rhode Island in 1778

Still in in North America, on 13 May 1776 Dawson was promoted commander by Commodore Molyneux Shuldham. He commissioned a newly purchased 14-gun brig, also named the Hope, and on 25 July arrived at Halifax from Nantucket with a British fisheries official, who had been forced to flee Boston after being imprisoned. As the disturbances turned into rebellion, the Hope captured an American privateer brig, Independence, in late November in the Bay of Fundy. During 1777 the Hope was based at Halifax, and in August Dawson helped prevent a planned American invasion of Nova Scotia by destroying the rebels’ accumulated stores and inflicting a great deal of damage on their shipping at Machias, Maine.

Following the death of Captain Francis Banks in June 1777, Dawson joined the Renown 50 as her acting-captain, being posted to permanent rank on 9 September. On 26 July 1778, whilst still acting on the Renown, he arrived at New York from the West Indies, having slipped unnoticed through the rear of the French fleet that was off the port. His ship was with Vice-Admiral Lord Howe’s fleet when it arrived to defend against the Franco/American assault on Rhode Island during August. Following a skirmish at sea, and the gale that subsequently scattered the fleets, the Renown moved in at sunset to attack Admiral d’Estaing’s damaged and isolated flagship, the Languedoc 90. Regrettably, Dawson decided to withdraw from an advantageous position, intending to renew combat in the morning. However, by that time more French vessels had appeared on the scene and the opportunity had been lost.

On 29 May 1779 the Renown captured the small American privateer Friendship, and she later served in Commodore Sir George Collier’s expedition against the rebels on the coast of Connecticut. Shortly afterwards while escorting a convoy to Quebec, she was dismasted in a gale, but largely through the efforts of the first lieutenant, James Athol Wood, she survived. In 1780, she served in the expedition that captured Charleston on 11 May.

At the beginning of June 1780 Dawson exchanged with Captain James Hawker into the Iris 28, and this vessel was off South Carolina and the Chesapeake River in November. During January 1781 she was sent to New York with Brigadier-General Benedict Arnold’s dispatches from the Chesapeake, and in the following month Dawson was temporarily the senior officer at New York, writing to General George Washington regarding charges that rebel prisoners were being poorly housed and fed. The Iris was subsequently present at the largely inconclusive Battle of Cape Henry on 16 March, which however sealed the fate of Cornwallis’ besieged army.

On 8 August 1781 whilst off the Delaware Capes, the Iris fell in with the undermanned colonial frigate Trumbull 32, Captain James Nicholson. The British ship was able to bring the Trumbull to action the next day after that vessel had been damaged aloft in rough weather. Many of the inexperienced American crew fled below, and although her officers resisted for an hour, they were eventually obliged to surrender with casualties of five men killed and eleven wounded, as opposed to one man killed and six wounded aboard the Iris. Three days later Dawson’s ship and her prize reached New York. A month later, when the Iris (along with Richmond 32, Captain Charles Hudson) was removing the buoys that had been laid by the French fleet in the Chesapeake, she was caught unawares by the Comte de Barras’ squadron. The two British frigates had no option but to strike their colours, and their captains returned to New York on parole in early November. (The hulk of the captured Iris was later destroyed during the evacuation of Admiral Lord Hood’s fleet from Toulon in December 1793.)

On the beach for the next four years, in August 1785, while Britain was at peace, Dawson was appointed to recommission the Phaeton 38. He took her out to the Mediterranean towards the end of September, giving Admiral Viscount Keppel passage to Naples, where he was going to spend the winter for his health. Phaeton returned with Keppel to Portsmouth in July 1786 – the Admiral died three months later. Back in the Mediterranean in December, the Phaeton proved to be a most unhappy ship. The surgeon, David Wardrope, was court-martialled and sentenced to death for an assault against the frigate’s lieutenants (he would later be pardoned by the King). These same two lieutenants (William Wall and John Lucas) were also dismissed the Phaeton for permitting the attack upon themselves! Then the sailing master, John Wilkie brought no less than fourteen charges against Dawson; two of these were proved and one partially proved at a twelve-day court martial presided over by Rear-Admiral Joseph Peyton aboard the Edgar 74 at Portsmouth. George Dawson was dismissed the Navy on 20 November 1788 for ‘tyranny, oppression, malversation, suttling and such like’. In turn, Dawson successfully brought two charges against Wilkie, who was dismissed the ship, but not the Navy.

In 1796 Dawson sought restoration of his rank from the Privy Council, but he was unsuccessful, and he seems to have disappeared from the historical record, even his death being unrecorded in the newspapers.

Evidently a difficult man, it was alleged that when presiding at a court-martial, Dawson advised a prisoner sentenced to be hanged that he should ‘prepare himself for death without delay, and to thank God it was no worse for him’.