Richard Bagot

Died 1798.

Little is known of his early career, but during the Spanish Armament Bagot was commissioned lieutenant on 28 October 1790 of the Director 64, Captain Edward Dod, remaining with this ship until the following March when he removed to the fireship Pluto 8, Commander Robert Faulknor, which was fitting out at Portsmouth. On 13 June 1792 he transferred to the Romney 50, Captain William Domett, going out to the Mediterranean.

At the commencement of the French Revolutionary War in 1793 he was appointed a junior lieutenant aboard Admiral Lord Howe’s flagship, the Queen Charlotte 100, Captains Hugh Cloberry Christian and Sir Andrew Snape Douglas. Serving with the Channel Fleet, he fought at the Battle of the Glorious First of June in 1794.

HMS Concorde depicted in action in 1794

Remaining with the Chanel Fleet, Bagot was promoted commander of the fireship Incendiary 8 on 23 June 1794, which vessel left Plymouth Dock on 5 November to rejoin that force. He appears to have left her sometime before the second week of December, for in that month he and other officers kissed the King’s hand on being appointed to Commodore John Willet Payne’s squadron which was to bring Princess Caroline of Brunswick to England for her marriage to the Prince of Wales. In the event, adverse weather saw the mission delayed until March 1795, following which Bagot was posted captain on 6 April.

In November 1796 he joined the frigate Concorde 36, which served on the North Sea station. At the end of the year his command brought a ship flying Danish colours into Yarmouth which had been bound from Cadiz to the Texel with a cargo valued at twenty thousand pounds. On 7 January 1797 the Concorde entered Sheerness for a refit but she was back in the Downs a week later, and shortly afterwards she arrived at Spithead with men from the Nore. She was present during the Spithead Mutiny in April but was released by the delegates to escort a merchant convoy through home waters. On 15 May she arrived at Plymouth from Torbay having lost her mainmast in a gale, and on 6 June delegates from the Concorde and other vessels in the Hamoaze wrote to those ships that were still disaffected, urging the men to return to duty. Bagot left her later that month when she was ordered out to the West Indies.

He was next appointed to the Trent 36 in October 1797, going out to the Leeward Islands with a convoy from Portsmouth on 10 November to reach Barbados on Boxing Day and then proceeding on to Saint Domingue and Jamaica. During the following summer, and being in company with the Ceres 32, Captain Robert Waller Otway, the Trent chased a ten-gun coast-guard vessel off Havana which was flying the pennant of a commodore, but both British frigates drove ashore and were temporarily at the mercy of the guns of their prey until Otway took to his boats to board the enemy vessel and burn her, prior to re-floating the Ceres and then the Trent.

Captain Bagot died at sea on 12 June 1798, being replaced on board the Trent by Captain Otway.