Phillips Cosb (1729-1808)

An Irishman despite his foreign birth, Cosby had to wait a long time for the command of a ship. His moment in the sun came at the Battle of Chesapeake Bay in 1781, when he earned immense praise for his bravery and conduct. In later years he was apparently considered a safe pair of hands, since he was given a number of important peacetime commands.

Phillips Cosby was born in Nova Scotia where his father, Colonel Alexander Cosby, was the lieutenant-governor of the town of Annapolis Royal. His unusual first name was the surname of the governor of Nova Scotia, who was also Alexander’s brother-in-law. His mother was Anne Winniett , and his sister was the mother of William Wolseley, another future admiral. The Cosby ancestral home was Stradbally Hall in Ireland, though Anne Cosby lived most of her long life in her native Nova Scotia.

During 1745, in his sixteenth year, Cosby entered the navy aboard the sloop Comet , commanded by Captain Richard Spry, who was to become his mentor for the next fifteen years. The Comet served in the West Indies during the War of Austrian Succession. Although the Comet was captured by the Spanish privateer frigate Galga 36 and retaken on the same day, Cosby was taken to Havana with Spry and other officers but soon exchanged. In late 1745 he followed Captain Spry into the Chester 50, which in September 1747 was sent to join the East Indies squadron. The Chester took part in the failed attempt to capture Pondicherry under Rear-Admiral Hon. Edward Boscawen, and after a couple of years in the east returned to Britain to be paid off at Plymouth in 1748 at the end of the war.

Admiral Phillips Cosby

Cosby saw further service with Captain Spry aboard both the Gibraltar 24 from June 1754, and then the Fougueux 64 beginning in March 1755. By that time Cosby had been commissioned lieutenant (on 28 January 1755) in his 26th year. Ongoing conflict with the French in North America resulted in a kind of naval cold war; the Fougeux was assigned to Vice-Admiral Hon. Edward Boscawen’s fleet off the Canadian coast. When he transferred with Captain Spry to the Orford 70 in January 1757, the Seven Years War had turned hot. He was present at the reduction of Louisbourg in the summer of 1758, whilst one source that cannot be verified states that during the siege of Quebec in the summer of 1759, he was the naval aide-de-camp to General James Wolfe and was apparently present at that officer’s heroic and celebrated death on the Heights of Abraham.

On 2 June 1760, at a relatively advanced age of 31, Cosby was promoted commander. He was first given command of the sloop Laurel 12, serving in home waters, and then 8 months later employed aboard the sloop Beaver 14. His all-important promotion to post-captain took place on 19 May 1761, when he was assigned command of the small frigate, the Hind 24. As was typical for small warships, his responsibilities involved seeing convoys safely to their destinations. Cosby is said to have had a novel method of keeping errant merchantmen in order within his convoys – he fired at them! In the next few months, the Hind escorted a convoy of troop transports from Lisbon to England, the Hudson’s Bay ships to north of the Orkneys, and an outbound convoy from Cork. While preparing for the departure of the latter he was forced to suspend his first lieutenant, Henry Sandham from duty. That officer had reported sick but had then taken a boat with four men ashore at 2 a.m. in order to get drunk. The offence being compounded by the fact that the boat crew took the opportunity to desert.

Cosby remained with the Hind until August 1762, when he received a no-doubt welcome transfer to the much bigger Isis 50 in the Mediterranean. However, some of his officers on the new ship do not seem to have been very bright, since it was reported that at Gibraltar in early March 1763, the Isis’ first lieutenant accepted a bet that he could not hit the ship’s purser with a pistol from a distance of forty yards. His shot struck home (apparently, he had measured the distance incorrectly), the surgeon had to amputate the purser’s leg, and the foolish lieutenant was arrested and court-martialled. That incident aside, nothing else of note occurred in the Isis’ tour of duty and she returned to Chatham to be paid off in May 1763 at the end of the Seven Years War.

From March 1766 our man commanded the frigate Montreal 32 in the Mediterranean under the orders of his long-time patron, now Commodore Sir Richard Spry. His most notable achievement was to bring home the body of Edward Augustus, the Duke of York, the brother of King George III, from Villafranca in October 1767. Returning to the Mediterranean, in April 1769 he entertained the Holy Roman Emperor, Joseph II, and his brother, the Grand Duke of Tuscany aboard the Montreal at Leghorn (Livorno). The frigate eventually returned to Spithead in May 1770.

From 1771 to1778 Cosby held the lucrative post of receiver-general of the colony of St. Kitts, which fortunately did not require him to actually live there. On 14 February 1778, with the imminent entry of France to the American Revolutionary War, he was appointed to the Centaur 74, then fitting for sea at Portsmouth. His new command joined the Grand Fleet under Admiral Hon. Augustus Keppel in early July and was present (if underutilised) at the Battle of Ushant on 27 July. Following the battle the Centaur was detailed to observe the motions of the Brest fleet in company with several other undamaged ships, and she continued with the Grand Fleet for the remainder of the year.

The aftermath of the unsatisfactory July battle was a series of politically motivated conflicts between Keppel and his second-in-command Vice-Admiral Sir Hugh Palliser that culminated in each officer being court-martialled. At Keppel’s court-martial early in 1779 when the commander-in-chief was brought to account for his conduct at the Battle of Ushant, Cosby appeared as a defence witness. At the end of March, he was appointed to the Robust 74 as the replacement for Captain Alexander Hood, a supporter of Palliser who had resigned following the Keppel court martial over accusations that he had altered his ship’s signal book.

The Robust set sail for North America on 1 May with Vice-Admiral Marriot Arbuthnot’s convoy, although early in the voyage the men-of-war were temporarily detached to protect Jersey from a French invasion before continuing for New York. While on the North American station, Cosby’s ship took part in the February 1780 landing of British troops to capture Charleston, South Carolina. The Robust was not present for the final stages of the campaign and the surrender (11 May 1780), since she too big to cross the bar of Charleston harbour. She subsequently reached Halifax on 17 April before rejoining Arbuthnot’s fleet at New York.

The Battle of Ushant 1778

Cosby commanded the Robust as she led the line at the Battle of Cape Henry on 16 March 1781. Though no ships were captured on either side, the French fleet was prevented from entering the Chesapeake to support the Franco-American army. Due to Arbuthnot’s poor tactics, the ship received the fire of the whole French fleet for half an hour, leaving her unmanageable. Her casualties of fifteen men killed and twenty-one wounded were the most in the British fleet; Cosby was warmly praised in the press for his leadership. Having been ordered home because of her unseaworthy condition, the Robust set sail from New York on 15 December carrying Lieutenant-General Lord Cornwallis and many other senior Army officers who had been granted parole by the Americans following the September surrender at Yorktown. During the voyage she sprung a major leak, and after transferring her passengers to a transport, had to bear away for Antigua to be careened and repaired. In mid-June the Robust departed the West Indies with a convoy of some two hundred vessels, but encountered more problems, since she was under jury masts when she finally reached England two months later. Paid off at Chatham in September, she was (not surprisingly) taken into dock for repair.

Cosby did not see any further service in the American Revolutionary War. He remained on the beach for the next three and a half years until July 1785, when he was appointed commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean with the rank of commodore. As was typical in peacetime, his squadron consisted of his flagship (a fourth-rate), three frigates and a dozen sloops. Taking leave of the King and Queen in early August, he hoisted his broad pennant aboard the Trusty 50, Captain William Wolseley (his nephew), and took up his post on station in the autumn. A misunderstanding not long after he arrived led to the tragic death of one of his officers. Commander John Melcombe of the Rattlesnake 18, fearing arrest, shot himself. Apparently, he believed Cosby intended to court-martial him for disobedience of orders relating to the rules concerning quarantine. In fact, Cosby’s concern was a dispute over freight money, not a court-martial offence.

In September 1787 Cosby was appointed to the sinecure of colonel of marines, and he continued in the Mediterranean during ‘the Dutch Armament’ in late 1787. A dispute arose in the spring of 1788 with the Emperor of Morocco, threatening British trade in the Mediterranean. Although he visited the Barbary States and negotiated a treaty with the Emperor, hopes that the dispute was over proved precipitate, and by the autumn he was back on patrol observing the Moorish fleet. Soon after, his three-year tenure came to an end, and he returned to Portsmouth in January 1789.

During July 1790, in the early stages of the Spanish Armament, he kissed hands with the King upon being appointed to the new post of commander-in-chief at Cork. In September Cosby was promoted rear-admiral, hoisting his flag at the Irish port aboard the Alligator 28, Captain Isaac Coffin. His time at Cork proved short, for with the dispute with Spain being resolved, he returned to Plymouth in January 1791 aboard the Fame 74, Captain William Truscott. He was soon actively employed, for in March, with the Russian Armament commencing, he arrived at Portsmouth to raise his flag aboard the Impregnable 98, Captain Sir Thomas Byard in the fleet under the orders of Vice-Admiral Lord Hood. By September the majority of the fleet had been decommissioned. In the same month, Cosby suffered a personal tragedy: his nephew and heir, a lieutenant in the Army, drowned when his yawl overset in Cork Harbour. Continuing to be favoured with employment, in 1792 Cosby was appointed the commander-in-chief at Plymouth in succession to Vice-Admiral Sir Richard Bickerton who had died in February, flying his flag aboard the St. George 98, Captains Thomas Hicks and later Sir Thomas Byard.

On 1 February 1793, at the start of the French Revolutionary War, Cosby was promoted vice-admiral. In April he sailed from St. Helens with a squadron of six sail of the line and three frigates to become third in command in the Mediterranean under Vice-Admiral Lord Hood, now with his flag aboard the Windsor Castle 98, Captain Byard. Present at the occupation of Toulon in August, his squadron was at Leghorn on 26 November when a French prize, the Scipion 74, caught fire and blew up with a reported two hundred deaths. After seeing further uneventful service in the Mediterranean, Cosby departed Gibraltar on 18 September 1794 aboard the Alcide 74, Captain Byard, and the ship returned to Portsmouth with the Mediterranean convoy to perform quarantine on 11 November, having in company the captured Commerce de Marseilles 130, which had been taken at Toulon.

He did not see any further active service but from the spring of 1795 until 1801 he was based in Dublin, commanding the impress service in Ireland raising seamen for the navy. Between May 1797 and May 1798 his officers enrolled about 1200 seamen, paying out about £10 per man in bounties . In May 1798, during the Irish rebellion, reports that his Stradbally tenants were disaffected led to a military detachment being ordered to his estate. He was promoted an admiral on 14 February 1799 and appears to have left Ireland to live in south-west England for the remainder of his life.

Admiral Phillips Cosby died at his house in Alfred Street, Bath, in his 78th year on 10 January 1808, having enjoyed a hand of whist at the Assembly Rooms the night before. He was buried in Bath Abbey.

He married a widow, Eliza Hurst (née Gunthorpe) of Southampton in September 1792, but had no children. His estate of Stradbally Hall in Queen’s County (Laois), which he had inherited in 1774 from his relative, Baron Sydney, passed to a distant cousin. During the mid-1780’s he had a residence in Bond Street, London.