Sir Hugh Cloberry Christian (1747-98)
Christian was a talented officer initially lacking influence but later befriended by Admiral Lord Howe and the future King William IV. After incredible weather difficulties that delayed his departure from England for many months, he conducted a successful campaign in the West Indies in 1796. His early death at the age of 51 deprived the country of an officer who might have played a major role in the Napoleonic War.
He was the only child of Lieutenant Thomas Christian of Hook Norton in Oxfordshire, an ex-naval officer who had made his fortune as a privateer captain and of his wife Anne Hughes. After her husband’s death in 1748 Anne remarried and earned fame as the poet Anne Penny. He was the father of Vice-Admiral Hugh Hanway Christian, and a distant relation of Captain Brabazon Christian.
Christian entered the navy during 1761 and saw early service in the Channel and the Mediterranean before he was commissioned lieutenant in his 24th year on 21 January 1771, having passed his examination four years earlier. On 6 March 1775, he married Anne Leigh from Thorley on the Isle of Wight. The couple would have three daughters and two sons, the eldest of whom, Hood Hanway Christian, (born in 1784), served with his father in his formative years, and died a rear-admiral on 31 August 1849.
Sir Hugh Cloberry Christian
During 1776, in the early stages of the American Revolutionary War, Christian commanded a small vessel on the Leeward Islands station . Vice-Admiral James Young ordered him to collect a number of merchant ships with supplies for the army, and escort them to New York. On arrival he was transferred to serve on board the Eagle 64, Captain Henry Duncan, the flagship of Vice-Admiral Lord Howe.
On 24 January 1778, at the relatively advanced age of 30, Christian was promoted commander of the sloop Kingfisher 16. His tenure on the vessel was brief – he was obliged to set her on fire to prevent capture by French frigates at Rhode Island on 30 July. Once ashore, he commanded his men as they served on the British batteries against the American forces.
After returning to England, he was posted captain on 8 December 1778 and appointed to the Suffolk 74, flying the broad pennant of Commodore Joshua Rowley. On Boxing Day his vessel departed England with half a dozen other ships of the line for the Leeward Islands. In mid-February 1779 the squadron arrived at St. Lucia, and the Suffolk participated in the Battle of Grenada on 6 July where she suffered casualties of seven men killed and twenty-five wounded.
In March 1780 Christian transferred to the frigate Fortunee 40, which had been taken three months before by Sir Joshua Rowley’s squadron. He sailed north to America with the Leeward Islands fleet later in 1780, departing New York in mid-October and arriving at Portsmouth a month later with an aide-de-camp bearing Major-General Sir Henry Clinton’s dispatches. At London he was received by the King; he remained ashore for some months whilst his command was refitted and coppered.
In the middle of May 1781, the Fortunee left Portsmouth with a convoy to North America, and she was present at the Battle of Chesapeake Bay on 5 September. At the end of the engagement she was sent to assist the stricken Terrible 74, Captain Hon. William Clement Finch, which had been so badly damaged in the battle that she could not be saved, and so was burnt a week later. The Fortunee captured the privateer Columbia on 16 October and then returned to the Leeward Islands with the new British governor, Major-General Thomas Shirley . She was present at the Battle of St. Kitts on 25/26 January 1782, when Rear-Admiral Sir Samuel Hood out-manoeuvred a larger French fleet. After ferrying troops to Antigua, the Fortunee was dispatched to watch the French fleet anchored at Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe. She continued to serve with the Leeward Islands fleet when it sailed to North America under Admiral Hugh Pigot, and following the end of the American Revolutionary War she returned to Portsmouth on 19 June 1783 to be paid off in July.
Christian did not see any further employment until June 1787, when he commissioned the new Colossus 74 at Woolwich during the Dutch Armament, proceeding to Spithead in September, and commanding her afterwards as a guard-ship at Portsmouth until October 1790. During this period, he became closely associated with the young Duke of Clarence (the future King William IV), serving as his equerry, and on one occasion in June 1789 being sent to arrange a meeting between Prime Minister William Pitt and the young prince at the House of Lords. Christian hosted the duke at his Cowes estate of West Hill on the Isle of Wight in November 1790. During the Spanish Armament in 1790 Christian was briefly the flag captain to Admiral Lord Howe aboard the Queen Charlotte 100, and in 1792 he supported his fellow Manxman, Peter Heywood, when he was court-martialled for supposedly participating in the mutiny on the Bounty three years earlier.( The Christian family originated on the Isle of Man, and Fletcher Christian,, the chief mutineer was a distant relative).
With the French Revolutionary War commencing in February 1793, he again assumed the position of flag-captain to Lord Howe aboard the Queen Charlotte, participating in the disappointing Channel Fleet cruises of July – August and October – December 1793. He temporarily left active service in April 1794, thus missing the Battle of the First of June, although he briefly hosted the convalescent Rear-Admiral George Bowyer, who had lost his leg in the engagement, at his West Hill estate. As the senior commissioner (with a salary of £1,000 a year) Christian assumed the chairmanship of the newly formed Transport Board at Dorset Court, Westminster, during August. He was obliged to resign this lucrative post on 1 June 1795 when he was promoted rear-admiral.
In September 1795 Christian was appointed by Lord Spencer, the First Lord of the Admiralty to command the naval forces assigned to an expedition to capture the islands in the Leeward chain controlled by the French or by insurgent groups. Since a much more senior admiral, Sir John Laforey, held the post of commander-in-chief Leeward Islands, the resulting overlap of commands caused dissension among senior admirals. The posting so infuriated the influential Admiral Sir Charles Middleton that he resigned from the Admiralty Board in protest at his friend (Laforey) being pushed aside for this important role by one of the most junior flag officers, although in terms of his age (being in his 48th year), Christian was anything but a novice.
The expedition was delayed for some weeks by problems gathering the necessary troops and hiring sufficient transports to carry them. Departing London on 1 October, Christian hoisted his flag at Spithead aboard the Prince George 98, Captain James Bowen, in command of a convoy of including eight sail of the line escorting about 140 transports carrying Lieutenant-General Sir Ralph Abercromby’s eighteen thousand troops. The commanders first attempted to set sail on 16 November, (a month after the intended date), but the expedition had not been at sea a day when it ran into a violent storm. Several ships foundered or were driven ashore, and the remainder of the fleet straggled back to Spithead, where the Prince George and a number of other vessels were pronounced now unfit for the voyage to the West Indies.
Christian then shifted his flag with Captain Bowen into the Glory 98 and tried to sail once more. The fleet departed on 9 December, but again the ships were scattered in the unrelenting winter storms, although some did at least manage to get through to the Leeward Islands. By this time his bad luck was common knowledge, and the ferocious storms the fleet had encountered were nicknamed ‘Christian’s gales’. Returning to Spithead on 29 January 1796, Christian waited another two months before setting out for the final time on 20 March (now escorting only a fraction of the original fleet) with his flag aboard the Thunderer 74, still with Captain Bowen. In the meantime, on 17 February, he had been created a Knight of the Bath, but he had also fallen out with Captain John Schank, a successor at the Transport Board, over the arrangements for the expedition. A duel between the two seemed inevitable, despite efforts at conciliation by government ministers. On Christian’s return to England in late 1796 it was reported that his differences with Captain Schank had been resolved, following ‘proper concessions’ by the latter.
Finally arriving at Barbados on 21 April 1796 (six months late), Christian soon replaced the ailing and homeward-bound Laforey as the commander-in-chief in the Leeward Islands. With Abercromby, he conducted a brief but successful campaign from April to June, capturing St. Lucia on 24 May, St. Vincent on 11 June, and Grenada shortly afterwards. The objectives were achieved despite considerable sickness in the combined force, but Christian was probably felt too junior to hold the Leeward Islands command permanently, being superseded by Rear-Admiral Henry Harvey in the middle of June. Departing from Martinique for England on 3 October aboard the frigate Beaulieu 44, Captain Lancelot Skynner, he arrived at Weymouth in mid-November with his second-in-command, Rear-Admiral Charles Morice Pole.
In September 1797 Christian was appointed to succeed Rear-Admiral Thomas Pringle in command at the Cape, taking passage aboard the frigate Virginie 44, Captain Anthony Hunt. Also aboard was Richard Wellesley, Earl of Mornington, who was bound for India to become governor-general. The frigate set off in the first days of October, arriving at the Cape in January 1798, where Christian raised his flag on the Sceptre 64, Captain Valentine Edwards. In May Christian transferred to the Tremendous 74, Captain John Clarke Searle, when Pringle returned home, allowing him to formally assume command of the station. Apart from assisting in the assembly of a naval force to tackle Tippoo Sahib, the ruler in Mysore, he was little employed before his sudden death on 23 November 1798 in his 51st year. The government had conferred the title of Lord Ronaldsway on him, but news of his advancement to the peerage was only received at the Cape after his death. He was interred at the Cape, though in his will he had expressed a preference to be buried at the Isle of Wight if he died close enough for it not to be too much trouble. Meanwhile in England Ann Christian, herself suffering from a prolonged illness, only survived her husband by two months, having never learned of his death.
A calm and confident officer (but with a temper when crossed) Christian was generally well-regarded by his contemporaries. He was on friendly terms with senior politicians such as William Pitt and the secretary for war, Henry Dundas. He was also a favourite of Admiral Lord Howe, and an early patron of the celebrated surveyor, Rear-Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort.