John Campbell (1719-90)
Entering the Navy on the lower deck and yet rising to vice-admiral, Campbell was a down-to-earth Scot who fought in three major fleet battles in three different wars. An excellent seaman and courageous warrior, he also gained a reputation as a scientific astronomer, and was an key figure in the development of the sextant.
He was born at Kirkbean, near Dumfries in Kirkcudbrightshire, the son of the Reverend John Campbell and of his wife Mary Michelson. His younger brother, William Campbell, served as a member of the Navy Board (Comptroller of Storekeepers Accounts) between 1783 and 1790.
John lost his father at a young age, but after receiving a good education was apprenticed to the master of a coaster. Several accounts of his entrance to the Navy have been offered: that he volunteered to replace a mate pressed into service out of the coaster when sailing from Leith to London; or that he was pressed out of a ship returning to Britain from South Carolina while employed as her second mate. However, there is little doubt that he entered the service on the lower deck as an able seaman.
Admiral John Campbell
In 1740 he was promoted midshipman, and he served as a masters’ mate under Commodore George Anson aboard the Centurion 60 during that officer’s famous voyage around the world from 1740-44. Accordingly, he enjoyed a share in the riches obtained through the capture of the Spanish treasure galleon Nuestra Señora de Cavadonga, which carried cargo valued at $1,313,843 in addition to 35,682 ounces of silver and other merchandise. Campbell was personally rewarded by being promoted master of the Cavadonga following her capture. The voyage, his association with Anson, and the friends he made aboard the Centurion were to shape the course of his career.
After returning home he passed his lieutenant’s examination on 8 January 1744. Anson’s patronage ensured his promotion, and he soon was appointed to the Lion 60, commanded by Captain Piercy Brett, another of Anson’s companions from the Centurion. Campbell served as second lieutenant when the Lion fought the French 64 Elizabeth in 1745 and followed Brett to the Yarmouth 64, being her first lieutenant at the First Battle of Cape Finisterre in May of 1747. Three weeks later, on 27 May, he was promoted to master and commander, taking command of the bomb vessel Falcon 10, which joined Rear-Admiral Peter Warren’s fleet cruising off Cape Finisterre. On 16 June he gave chase to a Bayonne-based privateer, the Foudre, mounting 24 carriage guns, and after an action of one and a half hours at close range he had the satisfaction of securing the enemy’s surrender on the approach of the Gloucester 50, Captain Philip Durell. Are a brief visit to Plymouth, the Falcon was soon back at sea, capturing a fish-laden French merchantman bound from Newfoundland to Le Havre in early July. Further cruises followed, including in the Bay of Biscay during the autumn.
On 23 November 1747 Campbell was posted captain of the frigate Bellona 30, in which he cruised out of Plymouth and took the privateer Grande-Biche 22 near Ushant on 9 March 1748 after a chase approaching five hours. He retained the Bellona until she was paid off in October.
Following the end of the War of the Austrian Succession in October 1748 on Anson’s recommendation he was selected to take two sloops to the South Sea, with his own appointment being to command the Porcupine 16, which was under modification at Deptford. However, no sooner had the ships been fitted out at the beginning of 1749 than the expedition was cancelled because of complaints from Spain that it would be the first step in a campaign to threaten their Pacific hegemony. Similar concerns prevented him from being despatched in the following year to explore a possible north-west passage
Instead, in June 1749 Campbell was appointed to commission the sixth-rate Mermaid 24, but when that vessel was ordered out to Boston in August, he quickly exchanged with Captain John Montagu into the Portsmouth-based guardship Kent 64. He subsequently exchanged back into the Mermaid in early 1750 before she was paid off in March. Having remained unemployed for the next nine months, he was appointed in December to the yacht Charlotte, and on 10 July 1751 to the yacht Mary. Command of a royal yacht (Campbell spend five years in this role) was often a perk offered to a senior captain approaching retirement, but in this case, it was probably a means of keeping a favoured officer in employment.
In September 1755 Campbell was appointed to the Assistance 50 at Plymouth before transferring to the Prince 90 in late November, though it is not clear that he ever took her to sea. On 12 May 1756, just days before the official start of the Seven Years War, he was appointed to the Royal George 100, which however had to await a draft of seamen from Portsmouth to sail from the Thames to the Hampshire port. On 2 July she left Spithead to join Vice-Admiral Hon. Edward Boscawen (whose flag she briefly flew) off Brest, and although a fever aboard her cost the lives of several men, welcome reports soon reached the newspapers that newly installed ventilators had brought the crew back to health. On 1 October she returned to Portsmouth where she remained for most of that month.
Desiring a move to a more active ship, Campbell was appointed to the Essex 70 on 5 November 1756, and on 2 June 1757 he joined the escort of an out-going East India convoy from Portsmouth. Two months later, he brought the St. Malo privateer Comte de Florentine 16 into Portsmouth. In mid-September the Essex sailed for Ireland to collect a convoy, although she found that it had already departed before her arrival; in mid- November she brought 600 prisoners into Portsmouth who had been taken by the Tartar 28, Captain John Lockhart-Ross in the Channel over several weeks. Ten days later one of the Essex’s boats carrying provisions sunk in the harbour with the loss of a midshipman and three men. On 21 April 1758 she arrived at Portsmouth with two prizes: the French frigate Galatea 26 and a storeship which she had taken from a convoy bound from Bordeaux to Canada.
Towards the end of May 1758 Campbell rejoined the Royal George as flag captain to Admiral Lord Anson, who put out from Portsmouth with a strong fleet on the 27th of that month. In October he exchanged back into the Essex, which sailed for Ireland in November to bring home the East India convoy. During March 1759 his ship was docked at Portsmouth, and she departed that port in April to join Admiral Sir Edward Hawke’s fleet in the Channel.
On 4 June 1759 Campbell once more rejoined the Royal George as flag captain to Hawke, in which capacity he fought at the Battle of Quiberon Bay on 20 November. In the aftermath of the engagement, he took a small boat to determine the condition of the grounded French sail of the line, receiving much praise for his brave conduct. He was granted the honour of carrying Hawke’s despatches home aboard the frigate Vengeance 28, Captain Gamaliel Nightingale, and he arrived at the Admiralty on the morning of 30 November. In the company of his patron, Lord Anson (now First Lord of the Admiralty) Campbell personally conveyed the news of the victory to the King. As was customary he received a monetary reward for delivering the good news, in this case 500 guineas to purchase a sword.
Beginning in February 1760 Campbell commanded the Dorsetshire 70, initially under Admiral Hon. Edward Boscawen in the Channel; in April he was dispatched with other men-of-war across the Atlantic. There he served under the orders of Commodore Hon. John Byron during the clearance of the Louisbourg fortifications, and he was present at the destruction of the Machault 32 in the Saguenay River, and in the capture of the Pallas 14, Bienfaisant 22 and Marquis de Malauze 16 in Chaleur Bay on 8 July. The Dorsetshire soon returned to England, spending a few weeks in dock at Portsmouth being sheathed with copper plates, before seeing further uneventful service in the Channel.
In October 1761 Campbell’s ship made a quick trip to Gibraltar, but she was back at Spithead in early November. At the end of the month she captured the privateer Henri, taking her prize into Lisbon, and then continuing to the Mediterranean. There she came under the command of Vice-Admiral Sir Charles Saunders. In early April 1763 at the end of the Seven Years War, the Dorsetshire returned to Portsmouth with other men of war and was paid off a month later.
During the peace, Campbell resumed his role of commanding a royal yacht, initially the Mary, which he captained from December 1763 to October 1770, and then the Royal Charlotte, serving until January 1778. This duty involved the ferrying of various royal personages across the North Sea , although for much of the time the yacht would be anchored at Deptford or another port close to London. In June 1773 Campbell hosted the King at the Portsmouth naval review, and a few months later he was made a director of the Royal Naval Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich.
On his elevation to flag rank in January 1778, Campbell gave up his command of the royal yacht and took a new role – commander-in-chief in the Medway, with his flag in the Conquestador 74 at Sheerness. On 25 April he hosted the King on his tour of the ships at the Nore. French support for the Americans in their war with Britain was increasing, and shortly afterwards (as a result of a long-standing promise), he struck his flag upon being appointed Captain of the Grand Fleet. This post involved acting as a kind of chief of staff in assisting his old friend Admiral Hon. Augustus Keppel, whom he had first met 40 years before aboard the Centurion. Serving aboard the Grand Fleet flagship Victory 100, Captain Jonathan Faulknor, he participated in the Battle of Ushant on 27 July.
Unsurprisingly, Campbell displayed total loyalty to Keppel at the court martial in the early part of 1779 which investigated the commander-in-chief’s conduct at the Battle of Ushant, and he later took a leading part in the exuberant Whig celebrations which celebrated his acquittal. Promoted vice-admiral on 19 March, he was a witness at Vice-Admiral Sir Hugh Palliser’s court martial in April, where he was denounced by that officer (Keppel’s accuser) for finding fault with everything he (Palliser) did. Although a lifelong friend of Admiral Keppel, he was never comfortable with that officer mixing his duty and politics. Along with many other Whig officers he was beached until the fall of Lord North’s government in March 1782. He also lost a legal case against Palliser in which he asserted right, as captain of the fleet, to receive a flag officer’s share of all the prize money which had been made by the fleet in 1778. While out of employment, Campbell enjoyed the company of his Whig friends, engaging in a boat race with the Duke of Cumberland and other notables near Blackfriars Bridge in June 1779, and travelling to Bath in the same month. In October 1780 he attended a levée, but royal attendance did not help his career, since in December he was mentioned in Parliament as being an officer who wished to serve but had been rejected.
Upon the change of government at the end of March 1782, Keppel, the new First Lord of the Admiralty, appointed Campbell to be commander-in-chief and governor of Newfoundland. His flag flew initially aboard the Portland 50, Captain John Breton, which set sail on 17 June from Portsmouth with twenty-seven vessels comprising the Newfoundland and Quebec convoy. Eight days later they fell in with the Brest-bound Franco-Spanish fleet of Admiral Don Luis de Cordova and the Comte de Guichen. In the ensuing mayhem eighteen of the British merchant vessels were captured, but the men of war all made good their escape. The Portland (with Campbell aboard) returned to Portsmouth in November at the end of the fishing season, as was the custom.
Between 1783 and 1785 Campbell passed the summers in Newfoundland, with his flag aboard the Salisbury 50, Captain James Bradby. He was a popular governor, in part because he instituted a more liberal policy towards religion in what was a primarily Roman Catholic community of fishermen. He published a proclamation ‘to allow all persons inhabiting this island to have full liberty of conscience and the free exercise of such modes of religions worship as are not prohibited by law’. In line with this approach, he granted the Catholics permission to build a chapel in St John’s, which they had not been able to do previously. In a lighter vein, it said that on one of his return journeys from ‘The Rock’, he allowed his crewmen to bring home a Newfoundland dog if they wished; the ship ended up carrying 75 of these shaggy dogs.
Perhaps Campbell’s most lasting achievements were in the field of science, particularly in using astronomy and timekeeping to solve the problems of navigation. During the Seven Years War, working closely with the astronomer royal, James Bradley, he carried out tests of the lunar tables submitted by German astronomer Mayer to the Board of Longitude. Finding that the current octant was inadequate to make the relevant measurements, he and instrument maker John Bird devised the sextant, a versatile instrument still in use today. Years later he also undertook some of the experiments intended to test the accuracy of Harrison’s chronometers at sea. He also made unofficial trials of chronometers from two different makers (Arnold and Mudge) during his voyages to and from Newfoundland in 1784 and 1785. As early as 1764 Campbell’s scientific achievements were recognised by him being made a Fellow of the Royal Society. Four years later he suggested to his colleagues in the Society that Lieutenant James Cook, recently appointed to lead a voyage of exploration to the South Seas, also be given the responsibility of taking astronomical observations of the Transit of Venus in Tahiti. His recommendation was accepted and Cook duly carried out this role a year later.
Vice-Admiral John Campbell died at his house in Charles Street, Berkeley Square, London, on 16 December 1790. He had married Elizabeth Young, the daughter of a captain of the Scots Brigade in Dutch service, probably in the late 1740s, but her date of death is unknown. The Campbells had a daughter, also named Elizabeth, who may have been adopted.
Campbell had a rich Scottish accent and simple manners, characteristics that did not dissipate during the many years that he lived amongst the elite. He had a dry, sarcastic way of expressing himself that was the subject of various anecdotes. For instance, when taking the despatches announcing the victory at Quiberon Bay to Court, Lord Anson, his former commander, informed him that the King would probably wish to bestow a knighthood on him. (This was the customary reward for the bearer of news of a great victory). Campbell replied, ‘Troth my lord, I ken nae use that will be to me’ When Anson replied that Mrs Campbell might be happy to gain a title, he responded ‘a weel, His Majesty may knight her if he pleases.’