Sir James Athol Wood (1756-1829)
Bad luck and controversy, not always of his own making, surrounded this otherwise able officer, whose career included imprisonment in France, court-martials and a shipwreck, as well as important contributions to the capture of West Indian islands.
Born in 1756, he was the third son of Alexander Wood of Burncroft, Perth, and of his wife, Jean Ramsay. He was the younger brother of Colonel Sir Mark Wood, who sat in the House of Commons from 1794-1818, and of Major-General Sir George Wood.
Wood’s initial time at sea was aboard an East Indiaman, which he joined in 1772. Two years later he entered the navy rated as able seaman aboard the sloop Hunter, Captain Thomas Mackenzie, serving off Ireland and later on the North American station in the early stages of the American Revolutionary War. In July 1776, in his 20th year, he became a master’s mate aboard the Barfleur 98, Captain Mark Milbanke, the flagship of Vice-Admiral Sir James Douglas at Portsmouth. In April 1777 he moved with Captain Milbanke to the Princess Royal 90, the flagship of Admiral Sir Thomas Pye at Portsmouth, and afterwards he joined the Asia 64, Captain George Vandeput, as an acting-lieutenant.
In the spring of 1778, he rejoined the Princess Royal 90, now the flagship of Vice-Admiral Hon. John Byron, going out to North America on 9 June, and in October he was commissioned lieutenant of the Renown 50, Captain George Dawson. When she was totally dismasted whilst taking a convoy to Quebec, Lieutenant Wood’s actions were largely responsible for her survival. He served at the reduction of Charleston on 11 May 1780, and commanded the Renown’s tender, capturing enough prizes to make his captain eleven hundred guineas richer, but at the cost of receiving a life-threatening pike wound on one occasion. He returned to England in 1780 aboard the Squirrel 20, Captain Thomas Piercey, and was employed from the autumn of 1781 off Portugal aboard the Juno 32, Captain James Montagu, before moving to the Anson 64, Captain William Blair. He fought at the Battle of the Saintes on 12 April 1782, and following Captain Blair’s death in the battle, he remained as the first lieutenant to his successor, Captain John Rodney, until the peace.
After spending a couple of years in the south of France, Wood tried his hand at a commercial venture. He visited his brother in India, and while there purchased a merchant vessel to trade in the area, but ill health brought an end to that undertaking and he sailed home. His activities over the next couple of years are not clear, but at some point, he was engaged in the mapping of the western coast of Africa. Apparently in 1793 the ship he was travelling on was seized by a British privateer at the slave trading post of Cape Coast Castle, and he was put ashore, the vessel being taken to Barbados. When Wood made his own way to Barbados, he found that the vessel had been condemned, leaving him out of pocket . (This incident raises many questions, some of them far from palatable, but unfortunately they are also largely unanswerable.)
The French Revolutionary War was now underway, and when Vice-Admiral Sir John Jervis arrived at Barbados with an expeditionary force on 10 January 1794, Wood applied for employment and was taken aboard the flagship Boyne 90, Captain George Grey. Ordered to sail a cartel ship to deliver French prisoners from Martinique to France later in 1794, on arrival at St. Malo in May he was detained, imprisoned, and treated as a civilian rather than as a Royal Navy lieutenant. This was the time of the Reign of Terror in France, when thousands of people were guillotined on spurious charges; Wood was lucky to escape this fate, instead being illegally incarcerated in the Abbaye jail in Paris. In February 1795 (after Robespierre’s fall), he was allowed to return to England on parole and eventually exchanged. On his release he received a strong letter of recommendation from a fellow prisoner, General Charles O’Hara, who had been captured at the occupation of Toulon in 1793, and who praised Wood’s efforts to work for the liberation of other British detainees.
On 7 July 1795, 17 years after being commissioned lieutenant, Wood was promoted commander of the sloop Favourite 16, sailing on a cruise out of Portsmouth at the end of August before going out to the Leeward Islands in the autumn. Placed under the orders of Captain Robert Otway, he performed excellent service in the blockade of the islands of St Vincent and Grenada, where the slaves had risen at the instigation of the French Republican, Victor Hugues. In February 1796 he captured the privateer Général Rigaud 8, (manned mostly by a cut-throat band of Spaniards and Italians); in the same incident he destroyed another privateer when she ran ashore at Trinidad. Ordered to cruise off the north-east coat of Grenada, Wood succeeded in embarking 1,100 British troops and their followers from Sauteurs in the north of the island. He commandeered two merchant sloops for the task and showed skilful seamanship in navigating a passage of rocks and shoals to bring the men and women away.
Dispatched at his own request to the Gulf of Paria in early January 1797, Wood reconnoitred the Spanish colony of Trinidad, providing information that contributed to its capture on 18 February . He was rewarded with a promotion to temporarily command the sole survivor (San Damaso 74) of the four Spanish ships-of-the-line, which had been harboured there. His official elevation to post rank was dated 27 March, and he was in command of the captured vessel when she arrived at Portsmouth with a convoy from the Caribbean on 10 July.
In January 1798 Wood was appointed to command HMS Vindictive 28, a Dutch prize taken at the Cape of Good Hope. He took passage to join her, but on arrival found that she had already sailed for England. Instead, Rear Admiral Sir Hugh Christian appointed him to the Garland 28, currently at the Cape. On 26 July 1798 while cruising off Fort Dauphine, Madagascar, the frigate came upon a large French merchant vessel anchored close inshore in the Baie de Saint-Lucie. In endeavouring to approach her, the Garland struck a reef a mile from the other vessel – her tiller detached and she began filling with water. Since the frigate was foundering, the crew tried to beach her. Wood had already had the boats hoisted out to save the Garland’s crew; he now ordered the men in some of the boats to capture the French ship. Her crew, who had escaped ashore, were handed over by the local population. The prize had also run aground and was not seaworthy, so Wood decided to use timbers salvaged from the wreck of the Garland and stores retrieved from both ships to construct two vessels to carry the men back to the Cape. The British and French sailors built an encampment on shore and lived there without any molestation by the local people. Four months later (before the work on the vessels could be completed) the stranded men were rescued by the Royal Navy brig Star 18, Commander David Atkins, and taken to the Cape. On 15 December a court martial sat aboard the Tremendous 74 at Table Bay, Cape Town, under the presidency of Captain John Osborn to examine Wood and his officers for the Garland’s loss. They were acquitted of any blame and indeed praised for their conduct. Wood and two of his lieutenants returned to England in April 1799 as passengers along aboard the Sphinx 20, Captain Lord Augustus Fitzroy.
Wood did not see any further service in the French Revolutionary War (in part due to ill health), but in April 1802 he was appointed to the Acasta 40, one of the largest frigates in the Royal Navy. His first task at the beginning of May was to sail for the Mediterranean with news of the Treaty of Amiens, confirming the end of hostilities with the French. Back at Portsmouth in early July the Acasta was taken into the harbour to be paid off, but almost immediately recommissioned under Wood. A trip north to Leith Roads followed, where he opened a rendezvous to recruit seamen and stayed into the first weeks of 1803. On 16 February a boat alleged to belong to the Acasta, foundered with the loss of thirteen men off Ostend whilst apparently engaged in the surveying and sounding of the French-ruled port. In mid-March, with hostilities against France looming once more, the Acasta was sent to Guernsey to impress sailors from ships calling there, and in early April she sailed for Spithead.
When the Napoleonic War did break out in May 1803, Captain James Oswald took temporary command of the Acasta, while Wood went onshore for treatment to a long-standing liver complaint, but he had rejoined her by the time she came out of Plymouth Dock in early September having been refitted. Cruising out of Plymouth, on 2 October the Acasta took the Bordeaux privateer Aventure 20 after a two-day chase in the mid-Atlantic, together with two of the French vessel’s prizes from a Jamaica convoy. In early December she arrived at Plymouth, having detained the Eliza, a brig under American colours, on which were found important dispatches and letters from the French forces in Sainte Domingue. On Christmas Day she went up the Hamoaze to undergo minor repairs, returning to sea in the first few days of January 1804. She spent the next nine months serving with the Channel Fleet off Brest and later off Rochefort, seeing some duty with the Inshore Squadron. The ship returned to Plymouth for a thorough refit during April, and again in mid-July. The latter visit followed a calamitous incident that had seen her lose two boats and 18 men after they had been dropped ashore near Brest to collect sand for scrubbing the decks, only to be surrounded and captured by French troops.
Towards the end of October 1804, the Acasta was fitted out for foreign service, and on 14 November she sailed from Plymouth to Portsmouth to collect a convoy for the West Indies. Whilst in the Hampshire port a court martial found one of her lieutenants guilty of overstaying his leave, and he was dismissed the ship. The convoy got away at the end of November, but when it arrived in the Leeward Islands in February 1805, Vice-Admiral Sir John Duckworth Wood removed Wood from his command. Instead, Duckworth appointed his own nominee (Richard Dalling Dunn) to the Acasta, since he intended to return to England on the ship and wished to choose his own flag captain. Having no other means of returning to England, Wood was forced to embark as an unhappy passenger aboard his former command, which arrived at Portsmouth on 19 April after a passage of seven weeks. He immediately applied for a court-martial on the self-serving Duckworth, accusing him of tyranny and oppression, and of using a naval vessel to transport his own goods. The charge was thrown out at a court martial on 25 April presided over at Portsmouth by Admiral George Montagu, with the verdict concluding that the charges had been ‘gross, scandalous, malicious, shameful, and highly subversive to His Majesty’s Service’. When Wood’s MP brother, Sir Mark, attempted to have the evidence of the court-martial laid before the House of Commons in early June, the motion was thrown out without the need for a vote. Even so, many felt that Wood had been harshly treated, particularly as Duckworth had admitted freighting his own goods on the Acasta.
After seven months on the beach Wood was appointed in November to the frigate Uranie 38 at Portsmouth, but it appears that he did not take her to sea before Captain Christopher Laroche took command six weeks later. It was not until early April 1806 that he was appointed to command the frigate Latona 38 (recently in dock at Plymouth), which days later set out to patrol off the Black Rocks off Brest with the Channel Fleet’s Inshore Squadron. She was back at Plymouth on 28 May to revictual and repair after striking a rock when reconnoitring Brest, although at least her return dispelled strong rumours that the Inshore Squadron had been captured wholesale. On 17 July she left harbour to resume her station off Brest; two weeks later she came back to Plymouth to report that the squadron had unsuccessfully chased four French frigates, which had sailed from Rochefort for the West Indies.
Towards the end of August 1806, the Latona sailed for Cork to collect a twenty-six-ship convoy for the West Indies, which departed on 14 September and called in at the Azores. Unfortunately, two of the vessels were captured by a French privateer before their arrival at Barbados. In early November, she sailed from that island in a fruitless hunt for a French frigate and corvette which had been sighted off Martinique, and she then continued on to the Jamaican station. Wood was the second-in-command to Captain Charles Brisbane at the capture of Curaçoa on 1 January 1807, where the Latona lost one man killed and two wounded. His efforts were barely praised by his self-publicising superior, but he did receive the much-coveted Captain’s Gold Medal a few months later (though some years later he lost it to thieves). Lloyd’s Patriotic Fund also voted to award him one of their elaborate 100-guinea swords, but he seems to have instead requested a tea kettle made by the famed silversmith Paul Storr! In July, the Latona sailed for Barbados to undertake patrols in the Leeward Islands. Meanwhile, back in England, Wood had been elected as the MP for Gatton, Surrey, in December 1806, a constituency in which his brother Mark held the other seat, but being absent in the West Indies he never entered Parliament, and his seat changed hands in the election of May 1807.
Remaining in the West Indies, in December 1808 Wood transferred to the Captain 74, in which he served at the reduction of Martinique on 24 February 1809, and later off the Saintes with Rear-Admiral Hon. Sir Alexander Cochrane. At the end of July, he transferred to the Neptune 98, in which he returned to England with a large convoy, arriving at Portsmouth on 6 September. Going up to London, on 1 November, he was knighted by the King for his contribution to the capture of Curaçoa. In mid-January 1810 he returned to sea when the Neptune set sail with the West Indies convoy, and by early May his command was at Barbados carrying Admiral Cochrane’s flag. Soon after Wood transferred to the Pompée 74, which on 11 August arrived in the Downs with the Leeward Islands convoy. Two weeks later she was taken into Plymouth Dock to have her bottom scraped of the barnacles that had built up over a long service in the West Indies.
Whilst at Plymouth, the Pompée was temporarily modified to become a troop-carrying ship by the removal of her lower deck cannons. Leaving Plymouth Dock in the second week of January 1811, she went east to Portsmouth with a convoy, and she sailed from that port at the end of the month for Lisbon with a squadron under Rear-Admiral Sir Joseph Sydney Yorke carrying reinforcements for Lieutenant-General Lord Wellington’s army. Adverse winds caused the ships to shelter in Torbay, forcing them back to the anchorage three times. Once they did get to sea, the rough weather in the Bay of Biscay caused the Pompée to become detached from the squadron, suffering damage to her masts, sails and rigging. Many of her crew and the troops became afflicted with an eye infection, but they did at least have the compensation of recapturing a lucrative merchantman. On 9 March she sailed from Lisbon with Yorke’s squadron to arrive back in Plymouth Sound and re-embark her lower deck guns.
In mid-April 1811 the Pompée sailed to Portsmouth once more before departing for the blockade of Rochefort; she was back at Plymouth from the Basque Roads on 17 October. After some delay in December, she was eventually docked in Portsmouth to refit. She remained there until sailing for the blockade of Cherbourg on 8 March 1812. Two days later off Ushant, the Pompée encountered Vice-Admiral Zacharie Allemand’s French squadron of four sail of the line, being tailed by the frigate Diana.38, Captain William Ferris, who informed Wood of the enemy’s identity. Late in the afternoon, the Diana discovered two further ships to windward, which proved to be the British ships of the line Tremendous 74, Captain Robert Campbell, and Poictiers 74, Captain Samuel Jackson. Overnight a series of confused signals and misidentifications resulted in the French squadron escaping into the fog. Admiral Lord Keith was requested to investigate Wood’s apparent failure to challenge the French effectively, and at the end of May the Pompée was recalled from the blockade of Flushing for Wood (along with Captain Campbell) to face a court martial at Portsmouth. The inquiry opened on 29 June aboard the Gladiator 44 under the presidency of Admiral Sir Richard Bickerton, and after a trial lasting several days, Wood was admonished for standing away from the French on the evening of 8 March, there being an ‘erroneous impression at the time, but not a want of zeal’.
On 9 August 1812, the Pompée came out of dock at Portsmouth, and in early September she set sail with the Portugal and Mediterranean convoys. Her arrival in the fleet off Toulon on 12 October came a day after a lightning strike had killed one man and caused some damage to her masts. Thereafter, she remained with the fleet during its onerous and largely uneventful blockade of the French fleet The one exciting episode occurred on 5 November 1813 when as part of the Inshore Squadron under Captain Henry Heathcote of the Scipion 74 she participated in a skirmish with elements of the Toulon fleet.
In the latter days of July 1814, with the Napoleonic Wars having apparently come to an end, the Pompée arrived at Portsmouth from the Mediterranean, and after quarantine she was taken into the harbour for a refit, remaining there for six weeks. Inactive at Portsmouth until the end of November, she then went out of the harbour to be manned and victualled for foreign service. Even then, she was still at Portsmouth until 18 April 1815, (during the hundred days of Napoleon’s return from exile), when she sailed for the Mediterranean with the fleet under Admiral Lord Exmouth, reaching Genoa after a three-week voyage. Although Napoleon abdicated following the Battle of Waterloo in June, the Pompée continued to serve with the squadron at Marseilles, before in early November she arrived at the Nore from Gibraltar to be paid off.
Wood did not see any further employment. On 4 June 1815 he was nominated a Companion of the Bath (CB), on 19 July 1821 he was promoted rear-admiral, and after a very quiet retirement he died aged 73 at Hampstead in July 1829 and was buried at St Marylebone in London. He never married, however his will reveals that he was a very rich man – the total of his bequests comes to more than £50,000, and in addition to large sums destined for his nephews and nieces he left his servant and his wife several annuities and the use of a house for their lifetime. He also left £13,000 in trust for his four-year old ‘adopted daughter’ Elizabeth Watt, the money to be managed by her guardians, his good friend Captain Peter Heywood (of Bounty fame) and his wife Frances.
Plain spoken and confident, Wood’s temper apparently deteriorated following the Duckworth controversy in 1806, and he became a harsher officer. The family feud with Duckworth continued when in May 1808 MP Mark Wood moved a censure against the admiral for his failures in the Dardanelles campaign. Meanwhile, a deposition in Captain Wood’s name labelled Duckworth a ‘coward and dirty rascal’ – words that probably induced Lord St. Vincent to describe Wood as a ‘very dangerous man ’.