Sir Edward Joseph Hamilton (1772-1851)
Few officers transformed from hero to villain as rapidly Sir Edward Hamilton, at one moment the warrior who cut out the mutinous frigate Hermione from the Spanish Main, and the next a brute who was dismissed the navy for his ill-treatment of an aged warrant officer.
Of Scottish descent, Hamilton was born on 22 March 1772, the younger of two sons of Captain Sir John Hamilton Bt., and of his wife Cassandra Agnes Chamberlayne, the sister of Captain Charles Chamberlayne. His elder brother was Admiral Sir Charles Hamilton, and he was the nephew of the Earl of Abercorn.
On 21 May 1779 at the age of 7(!), Hamilton entered the service in the American Revolutionary War aboard the Hector 74 commanded by his father. At that point, he had already been listed on the books of the Hector as a crew member for three years. The boy served in the West Indies until 1781, being present in Commodore Hon. William Cornwallis’ retreat from a superior French force on 20 June 1780. He then served briefly aboard the Ramillies 74, Captain John Cowling, on the Jamaican station before returning to England and attending the Royal Grammar School at Guildford.
In early 1787 the now fifteen-year-old Hamilton joined the Plymouth guardship Standard 64, commanded by his uncle, Captain Charles Chamberlayne, then moving to the Calypso 16, Captain William Mitchell. The Calypso went out to Jamaica in April 1787 to spend the usual three years on that station before returning home in August 1790. During the Spanish Armament of 1790 Hamilton was aboard the Melampus 36, Captain Charles Morice Pole, and a year later during the Russian Armament of 1791 he served on the Victory 100, Captain John Knight, the flagship of Vice-Admiral Lord Hood. With the immediate threat of war averted, he travelled to the Continent and attended Caen University before touring the French coast; he later undertook a tour of Portugal.
After the start the French Revolutionary War in February 1793 Hamilton joined the Queen Charlotte 100, Captain Hugh Cloberry Christian, the flagship of Admiral Lord Howe in the Channel Fleet. Earning his lieutenant’s commission on 29 October, aged 21, he joined the Dido 28, commanded by his brother, Captain Charles Hamilton. An early example of his audacity came when he launched a boat attack off the Norwegian coast. Leading eight men against the forty-five men of the privateer Le Vrai Patriote 13, he not only captured her, extinguished the flames ignited by her fleeing crew, but also forced thirteen men who had escaped ashore to surrender. He commanded the prize until the autumn, before rejoining his brother’s frigate and going out to the Mediterranean at the end of the year.
During the Corsican campaign from February 1794, Hamilton led over 100 seamen (and a number of Corsican troops) in erecting a battery of two 18-pounder cannons to lay siege to a Martello tower at Girolate near the French stronghold at Calvi. Invited in July to join Vice-Admiral Lord Hood’s flagship Victory 100, Captain John Knight, by October he had been promoted from ninth to first lieutenant. When the Victory returned home for repairs Hood left the ship, resulting in Hamilton being displaced as senior lieutenant by another officer. He remained aboard the Victory when she returned to the Mediterranean a few months later; there she flew the flag of Rear-Admiral Robert Man at the Battle of Hyeres on 13 July 1795. Hamilton also served under the new commander-in-chief, Vice-Admiral Sir John Jervis, following that officer’s arrival at the end of November.
On 11 February 1796, approaching his 24th birthday, Hamilton was promoted commander of the fireship Comet 8. His diminutive vessel was soon active on the coasts of Italy, and France, assisting the evacuation of British families from Leghorn while under fire from the invading French army. After arriving at Gibraltar with evacuees from Corsica, the Comet was sent out to the West Indies with intelligence of a French squadron that was believed to be heading for those waters. When the Comet rejoined Jervis at Lisbon, Hamilton was appointed acting captain of the San Josef 110, which had been captured at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent on 14 February 1797. His new rank of post captain was confirmed on 3 June, enabling him to remain in command of the three-decker.
Seeking a more active role, in March 1797 Hamilton exchanged into the Surprise 24, a beautifully built French corvette which (as the Unité) had been captured in April 1796. After escorting a convoy to Newfoundland and conducting a two-month cruise, during December 1797 she returned to Portsmouth with the homeward-bound convoy. In early 1798, the ship was given a refit at Plymouth and Sheerness, which included replacing her 9-pounder ‘long guns’ with 32-pounder carronades, shorter and lighter cannons throwing a much larger ball. At the same time she was re-rated as a 28-gun frigate. In July the Surprise sailed for the West Indian station with a convoy from Portsmouth. Remaining on the Jamaican station, over the next eighteen months, the ship is said to have captured or destroyed eighty enemy privateers and merchantmen, with the sale of her prizes amounting to some 200,000 guineas, of which Hamilton would receive a quarter. On one occasion, Hamilton chased a privateer and her prize into the narrow harbour at Laguna on the north coast of Cuba, and in addition to capturing them he also made prize of a Spanish schooner. The wind that had carried him in then proved unfavourable, resulting in the Surprise having to suffer the fire of the batteries and musketry at pistol-shot range for two days before a land wind allowed her to escape. Fortunately, the enemy batteries, being situated on a cliff, had not been able to depress sufficiently to fire down into the Surprise’s hull, and she only suffered in her rigging and masts. Though there were few casualties from enemy action, the ship lost many men to the scourge of the Caribbean, yellow fever, especially in her first year on the station.
On 24 October 1799 Hamilton and his men carried out one of the most famous boat actions of the age when they cut out the Spanish frigate Santa Cecilia 32 from under the batteries of Puerto Cabello in Venezuela. This vessel was originally the infamous British frigate Hermione, which had been turned over to the Spanish two years earlier by her mutinous crew. Hamilton led 100 men in an attack that recaptured the ship, inflicting many casualties on the Spanish crew. The British suffered no fatalities, although Hamilton received a severe head wound and several contusions to his legs, injuries that would bother him for the rest of his life. News of the capture was rapturously received by the planters of Jamaica and the Admiralty, since it helped wipe out the stain of the Hermione mutiny. In honour of his spectacular achievement, the House of Assembly at Jamaica presented Hamilton with a three hundred guinea sword, and he was knighted and awarded the naval gold medal (almost unheard of for such an action) by the King,
Taking passage aboard the packet boat Carteret to recuperate in England, Hamilton had the misfortune to become a prisoner of war when that vessel was captured by the French privateer Bellona on 18 March 1800 after a two-day chase. He was initially taken to Bordeaux and then to Paris before arriving in London at the end of April. He had been having been exchanged for half a dozen midshipman, with the apparent blessing of the first consul, General Napoleon Buonaparte, who had admired his achievement at Puerto Cabello. Days later he attended a royal levee, and he was also honoured with a Mansion House banquet on 25 October, at which he was presented with a gold box containing the freedom of the City of London, which had been voted to him six months earlier. He refused a three hundred guinea pension from the Admiralty in consideration of his wounds, fearing that it might prevent him from being offered future employment. However, his wounds do not seem to have prevented him from enjoying the company of women: in August 1801 he was to have a midshipman flogged for peeping in the cabin window to see his captain ‘in the embrace of a lady’.
On 23 October 1800 he was appointed to the eighteen-pounder frigate Trent 36, which he took out of Portsmouth Harbour at the end of November in order to command a squadron blockading the French coast around L’Havre, Cherbourg, and St. Malo. This force (which included the Fortunee 36, Captain Lord Amelius Beauclerk, and the cutter Dolphin) was successful in seizing enemy vessels and disrupting coastal traffic – among their captures was the privateer Renard 10 off Jersey on 20 April 1801.
Hamilton’s active career came to an unhappy end weeks before his 30th birthday when he was court martialled at Spithead on 22 January 1802. Ten days earlier in a rage he had lashed the Trent’s elderly gunner and his mates to the rigging, for not cleaning the cannon as he had ordered. The court martial board found the punishment to be illegal, and he was sentenced to be dismissed the service. He was to be reinstated in June on the instructions of the first lord of the Admiralty, Admiral the Earl of St. Vincent, perhaps out of sympathy for the wounds incurred when so gallantly cutting out the Hermione, although the old admiral, who seems to have had a regard for Hamilton, was not adverse to displaying a ruthlessness in the punishment of offenders.
On 1 November 1804 at St. George’s Church, Hanover Square, Westminster, Hamilton married Frances Macnamara of Llangoed Castle, Brecon, and of Baker Street, Portman Square. She was the niece of Captain James Macnamara, famous for fighting a duel over his dog. The couple would have two sons and two daughters.
From 1806 to 1815 he commanded the royal yacht Mary on the Thames, and from December 1815 he captained the yacht Prince Regent at Deptford and Portsmouth, resigning his post in January 1819. Command of a royal yacht was often given to a deserving officer who through wounds or age was not up to commanding a proper ship of war. Hamilton’s wartime exploits were again recognised when on 2 January 1815 he was nominated a KCB, and his service to the king rewarded October 1818 with a baronetcy. He achieved flag rank with his promotion to rear-admiral on 19 July 1821. Despite his service on the royal yacht, there is evidence that Hamilton became a supporter of Queen Charlotte, the wife of the unpopular King George I, who had recently ascended to the throne. On 8 June 1820 he appeared at Dover to conduct the Queen to a carriage on her way to London as she made her controversial return from exile.
Further evidence of his unstable personality was revealed in November 1821 when three men found an abandoned trunk in a London street with the name ‘Hammilton’ (sic) inscribed on a card. When the men arrived at Sir Edward’s house in Nottingham Place to enquire whether it was his, he seized them, accused them of attempting to burgle his house, and locked them in the parlour. Once arraigned before a magistrate, the three innocents were instantly discharged. He even played a role in the unfortunate suicide of Captain Sir George Ralph Collier on 24 March 1824 in Albemarle Street, London, for it was Hamilton who had informed that officer of the critical passage in William James’ Naval History which had caused Collier’s despair. He subsequently gave evidence at the inquest, where he claimed that he had done his best to warn Collier’s friends that he was at risk of suicide, and that he was probably insane.
During his long retirement, as well as appearing regularly at court, Hamilton appears to have travelled extensively; in October 1823 he arrived home from Hanover with his family, and in the summer of 1836, he undertook a tour through Germany and lived for some time in Munich. In Britain he was often reported to have visited his country residences at Trebinshun House, Brecon, and St. Andrews in Scotland. Sadly, he was predeceased by his eldest son, Arthur, who died at sea of a fever on 22 June 1836, and he became a widower on 27 March 1840 when his wife died in Nottingham Place. He suffered another personal tragedy when his second son, John, died in November 1847 after a short illness.
Hamilton had been advanced (by seniority) to the rank of vice-admiral on 10 January 1837 and promoted admiral on 9 November 1846. By the early months of 1849 he was very ill and not expected to survive, but he lived on for a further two years before dying the day before his 79th birthday on 21 March 1851 at 17 Cumberland Terrace, Regent’s Park, London, to which residence he appears to have removed early in the previous decade. He was succeeded in his baronetcy by his young grandson, Edward Archibald Hamilton.
Like a small minority of officers in this period, Hamilton was a savage disciplinarian who stopped at nothing to ensure that his orders were fulfilled. As soon as he gained command of a ship he became known as a ‘flogging captain’, awarding excessive punishments for trivial offences, and this appalling attitude may have been worsened by the effects of his wounds from the cutting out of the Hermione. His fierce temper did not spare the youngsters aboard: he flogged a midshipman before sending him off the ship, and at his dining table he was known to give youngsters a tongue-lashing for the merest of misdemeanours. Aboard the Trent the sailors were not allowed to walk on deck (they had to run everywhere) or to show fear in going aloft – this tyrannical approach made her ‘a crack ship.’ Nevertheless, his personal courage inspired great loyalty in his men, who appeared willing to follow him anywhere, even though they were petrified of his harsh discipline. He appreciated courage in others: when his coxswain was killed, he provided an annual allowance for the man’s mother. He also gave gifts to his wounded officers, such as the 100 guineas to purchase a sword he gave to a lieutenant of marines wounded in a cutting out expedition. Hamilton was a man of extremes: incredible courage mixed with astonishing brutality, both of which were expressed throughout his career.