Sir John Collins (1734-94)
Collins saw extensive service throughout the American Revolutionary War, and near the end was knighted for his capture of a French ship of the line. He died at sea in the early stages of the French Revolutionary War.
Collins entered the navy in March 1751 and was commissioned lieutenant on 15 June 1757, early in the Seven Years War. He saw duty from January 1760 aboard the Valiant 74, Captains Hon. Augustus Keppel and Adam Duncan, being present in the expedition against Belleisle in the spring of 1761 and the capture of Havana in the summer of 1762.
In his late thirties, and fourteen years after gaining his first commission, he was promoted commander of the bomb Infernal 14 on 10 January 1771, a post he appears to have retained until August 1774. In February 1775 he was appointed to the sloop Nautilus 16 when another officer declined the command on account of ill health. Departing Portsmouth Harbour in March, the Nautilus sailed for Boston where the locals were in open rebellion, part of the lead-up to the American Revolutionary War. Shortly afterwards, she convoyed troops from New York to Boston, and by the beginning of August she was standing guard at Philadelphia before heading north for Rhode Island.
On 10 October 1775 the Nautilus drove the Continental Army schooner Hannah ashore near her home harbour of Beverly, Massachusetts. While attempting to burn the rebel vessel, over a period of several hours Collins’ command was repeatedly hulled by fire from the shoreline, and he was only able to extricate her on the rising tide. One man was killed and another wounded. The Hannah, the first American armed vessel (assigned to the army for lack of a navy), was never returned to service.
In early April 1776 the Nautilus was part of a squadron at Newport, Rhode Island, until rebel forces firing on the British squadron from ashore forced it out to sea. At around this time, Commander Christopher Mason briefly acted for Collins in command of the Nautilus, and upon the latter’s return to duty, the sloop formed part of the escort of the homeward-bound Jamaica convoy in the early stages of its voyage. The vessel was then ordered to Bermuda, and she had returned to the island in early 1777 when Collins was required to send his men ashore to help man the forts. In August the Nautilus sailed to Nova Scotia for a refit.
Collins was posted captain of the sixth rate Camilla 20 on 1 February 1778 by the commander-in-chief in North America, Vice-Admiral Lord Howe, and in April his vessel arrived at Philadelphia (then under British occupation) with a convoy of victuallers and transports from New York. At the beginning of August, she was again escorting a convoy, this time from Jamaica northward in the early stages of its voyage. Returning to the North American station, she briefly flew the broad pennant of Commodore Sir George Collier whilst serving in that officer’s operations up the Hudson River, off the coast of Connecticut and in the Penobscot Expedition from May to August 1779. On 13 October she captured the rebel privateer Revenge, but after being charged with escorting a Hessian regiment to Quebec that autumn, she encountered foul weather in the St. Lawrence and was obliged instead to seek refuge in Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island.
Collins subsequently commanded the Camilla in Vice-Admiral Marriot Arbuthnot’s expedition to capture Charleston on 11 May 1780, and by August she was at New York providing an escort to the Army’s transports. She remained in North American waters until ordered home with a large convoy from Charleston, arriving at Kinsale in early May 1781 in the company of the Galatea 20, Captain James Reid. Towards the end of June, she left Cork with the remnants of Commodore William Hotham’s convoy, which had recently lost ships carrying a large amount of booty from the capture of the island of St. Eustatius when intercepted by a French fleet off the Scilly Islands. Continuing on to the Downs, the Camilla brought a Baltic convoy into Leith Roads in September, and by March 1782 she was docked at Chatham, where Collins left her.
In July 1782 he was appointed to recommission the newly repaired Ruby 64 at Portsmouth, and on 18 October his ship was present at the relief of Gibraltar. Detached a couple of weeks later as part of squadron under Rear-Admiral Sir Richard Hughes for the West Indies, on 6 December the squadron fell in with a French force off Barbados and the Ruby engaged the French 64 Solitaire. After a close action of about three-quarters of an hour, the enemy struck her colours upon the approach of a second British vessel. Given the fact that the Ruby’s casualties numbered two men wounded in comparison to her opponent’s twenty killed and thirty-five wounded, Collins’ ship would have probably won even without assistance . Following the end of the American Revolutionary War, the Ruby returned to Spithead in June 1783 with elements of the Leeward Islands fleet, and within days she entered Portsmouth Harbour to be paid off. Going up to London, on 4 July Collins was knighted for his capture of the Solitaire.
After a very short period of unemployment, the death of Captain Sir John Hamilton in January 1784 saw Collins take command of the Portsmouth guardship Hector 74, retaining her until 1786. In October 1788 he was elected a burgess of the Corporation of Southampton, where he was living in a house in French Street, complete with a coach house and stable. During the Spanish Armament in 1790, in his role as the regulating captain at Southampton, he opened a rendezvous for seamen to enlist, and on the last day of September he set off from his home in Southampton to recommission his old command, the Ruby 64 at Portsmouth. His tenure proved to be brief, as the dispute with Spain was settled within a matter of weeks.
On 25 January 1793, shortly before the start of the French Revolutionary War, Collins was appointed to the Berwick 74. He supervised her fitting her out at Portsmouth and in the first week of May took her out of the harbour to sail with Vice-Admiral Lord Hood’s fleet for the Mediterranean. During a violent three-day storm off the Barbary Coast in the last week of July, the Berwick lost contact with the fleet, lost all her masts, and was left a wreck. During the tempest, two men were killed and ten wounded by the falling mainyard. After undergoing repairs at Gibraltar, she was present at the occupation of Toulon beginning in August – during this period his men displayed mutinous conduct over a dispute regarding lean beef, but Collins and his officers brought them back to duty without the need for force.
The veteran Collins, who was now about 60 years of age, had long been suffering from an illness diagnosed as ‘gout in his head and stomach’ . He was replaced in temporary command of the Berwick by Captain William Shield but died at sea off Toulon on 24 March 1794 before he could return home. He was buried at sea.
Collins had married Sarah Green in 1780. The couple had seven children, at least four of whom lived to adulthood. A son, Augustus Leveson Rogers Collins died as a lieutenant in 1808, whilst their eldest daughter, Elizabeth, married the pioneering psychiatrist, John Conolly. It appears that after his death, Collins’ family were left in straitened circumstances, and his widow died at Chichester on 11 January 1827
His colleagues considered him to be an easy-going and fair officer, although his prolonged illness apparently made him ‘fractious’. His chaplain and secretary aboard the Berwick, Alexander John Scott, would later become chaplain to Lord Nelson aboard the Victory, and was present at the admiral’s side on his deathbed at the Battle of Trafalgar.