Sir John Lockhart-Ross (1721-90)

Lockhart-Ross had two careers: a successful naval officer, the scourge of French privateers during the Seven Years War; and famous agricultural reformer who improved the productivity of his Scottish estates at the expense however, of the livelihoods of some of his tenants.

He was born at Lockhart Hall, Lanarkshire, on 11 November 1721, the fifth son of Sir James Lockhart Bt. of Carstairs, and of his wife, Grizel Ross. He was known by the name of Lockhart until 1760, when he added his mother’s family name – from then on his surname was shown as ‘Lockhart-Ross’, or sometimes ‘Lockhart Ross’ or just ‘Ross’.

During September 1735 in his 14th year, Lockhart entered the navy aboard the Portland 50, Captain Henry Osborn, going out to the Dardanelles. During 1737-8 he served on the Diamond 40, Captain Charles Knowles, employed off Africa and in the West Indies, but was laid low by a fever which delayed his career progression. In 1739 he joined the Romney 50, Captain Henry Medley, seeing service at Newfoundland and in the Mediterranean, and thereafter he was aboard the sloop Trial, Captain Rowley Frogmere. He later served aboard the Lively 20 and Ruby 50 under the same officer, ending this period of continuous service when he was once more taken ill at Barbados.

Sir John Lockhart-Ross

In September 1743 aged 22, he passed his lieutenant’s examination, and on 21 October he was awarded a commission, being appointed to the Dover 44, Captain Hon. Washington Shirley, employed in the North Sea. He afterwards joined the Chester 50, Captain Francis Geary, serving in North America. After returning home he was appointed to the Devonshire 66, Captain Temple West, which flew the flag of Rear-Admiral Peter Warren and was present at the Battle of Cape Finisterre on 3 May 1747. During this battle Vice-Admiral George Anson’s fleet captured four French sail of the line and two frigates. He subsequently enjoyed a spell of independent command from July 1747 aboard the fireship Vulcan 16, and as the War of Austrian Succession drew to a close he temporarily commanded the Kent 64, acting for the suspended Captain Thomas Fox.

Lockhart was fortunate in being able to obtain peacetime employment as the first lieutenant of the Portsmouth guardship Invincible 74, Captains William Lloyd and John Bentley. In 1752 at Spithead his bravery and quick thinking saved the vessel from a devastating explosion when he extinguished a fire near the magazine. After this commission finished in November, he returned to Scotland on half-pay until he was re-employed in January 1755 as the first lieutenant of the Prince 90, Captain Charles Saunders.

On 22 April 1755, at the relatively advanced age of 34, he was promoted commander of the sloop Savage 8 in succession to the late Thomas Foley, joining her at Portsmouth and cruising out of that port over the next year. At this time Britain and France were not officially at war, but the two nations were attacking each other’s shipping as disputes over North American territories escalated. On 23 July two boats were observed acting suspiciously around Vice-Admiral Sir Edward Hawke’s fleet at Spithead. The Savage was sent to investigate, capturing one (a French shallop), which was apparently engaged in spying. Departing on a cruise, the Savage sent a French ship from Saint Domingue (modern-day Haiti) laden with sugar into Portsmouth in September. Two months later Lockhart earned a fortune with the capture of another French West Indiaman carrying a cargo valued at £30,000.

On 23 March 1756 he was posted captain of the Tartar 24 (soon rerated 28), a small frigate carrying 9-pounder guns as her main armament. Dropping a convoy around to Portsmouth from the Downs in the first week of June, she then joined Vice-Admiral Hon. Edward Boscawen’s fleet in the Channel. Commanding this swift vessel and operating out of Plymouth, over the next two years Lockhart was to perform outstanding service, taking many enemy privateers and merchantmen. Her early captures included the St. Malo privateer Cerf 24 on 12 August after a sharp two-hour action which saw numerous enemy casualties; the St. Malo privateer Rose 10, which was taken off Start Point on 16 September; and the Granville privateer Grand Gideon 22 on 23 October following a short resistance in which the enemy captain and a handful of his men were killed.

In January 1757 the Tartar sent the Prince de Soubise into Dartmouth, a vessel described as a privateer, but which had been carrying a cargo of coffee from Martinique to France. During the capture of the La Rochelle privateer Mont-Rozier 20 on 17 February the enemy crew surrendered, and then scandalously attempted to board and capture the Tartar. This breach of the rules of war saw them suffer losses of 36 men killed and a similar number wounded before they finally laid down their weapons. An injured Lockhart spent the next two months ashore in recovery, while Commander Thomas Baillie acted in his stead. When the Tartar captured the newly-launched Le Havre privateer La Marie Victoire 24 in March, Baillie was promoted to post-captain and appointed to command the vessel, which was renamed the Tartar’s Prize.

Lockhart returned to the Tartar at Portsmouth in early April 1757. His ship had just set out with money to pay the workers at Plymouth Dockyard when she fell in with the heavily armed St. Malo privateer Duc de Aiguillon 26 – the ensuing contest lasted just over an hour and was witnessed by spectators on the Isle of Wight. The Tartar prevailed, inflicting fifty casualties aboard the Frenchman, compared to four men killed and one wounded aboard the British ship. Returning to Portsmouth Harbour for repairs, the victorious frigate was saluted by cheers from the assembled shipping, and grateful merchants raised a subscription to present Lockhart with a piece of plate. No sooner was the Tartar back at sea than she captured the Morlaix privateer Penelope 18 at the end of May.

By now the Tartar’s reputation was so great that newspapers were claiming that the name of the Tartar was regarded as being as disagreeable to the French as that of Drake had been to the Spanish in a previous century, and they also circulated rumours that the French had sent out a handful of vessels specifically to capture her . A letter home from her sailing master in July 1757 listed the Tartar’s captures and estimated that his own prize money from them was in the region of 9,000 guineas (equating to over £1m in today’s money). He claimed that his ship with 28 guns and 160 men had accounted for enemy shipping totalling 148 guns and 1,565 men, of whom 180 had been killed outright for the loss of just 4 of her own men. The Tartar was said to be so famous that an outgunned Bristol privateer had managed to obtain the surrender of a superior French ship in the dark of night by requesting her to strike to ‘the Tartar, Captain Lockhart’. Meanwhile in Scotland, a reel was composed in honour of the Tartar’s captain.

The frigate’s incredible run of success continued when she captured the French privateer Comtesse de Gramont 18 on 29 October 1757. However, her greatest feat occurred on 2 November with the defeat of the Bayonne privateer Melampe 36. This vessel had been fitted out with the sole purpose of hunting down the Tartar, and she boasted a crew of 320 men as opposed to Lockhart’s crew of 200. When the Frenchman was first spotted, the Tartar was in company with other British men-of-war, but over the course of a thirty-six-hour chase Lockhart had left his consorts far behind, and after a three-hour action fought at close quarters, he forced the Melampe to strike. Casualties on the Tartar were reported as one man killed and three wounded, in return for several killed and twenty-six wounded aboard the enemy. In early January 1758 the Tartar (in company with the Magnanime 74, Captain Hon. Richard Howe) made prizes of a French ship and a snow that were homeward bound from Saint Domingue. To recognise that his captures of privateers had made their shipping safer, the cities of London, Bristol and Plymouth all presented awards to Lockhart.

In January 1758 Lockhart was appointed to the Chatham 50 which was completing at Portsmouth. She was launched before thousands of spectators on 25 April, and many of his crew from the Tartar were transferred to this new command. Four weeks later she sailed out of the harbour with a reported ten-month roving commission. One of Lockhart’s first tasks was to sail north in June from the Downs in search of a large French privateer, the Maréchal de Belleisle, which had been creating much mischief to shipping in the North Sea, eventually seeking sanctuary in Gothenburg, Sweden. After a fruitless seven-week cruise the Chatham was at Leith, Scotland at the beginning of August, and she continued to operate in the North Sea on convoy duty from the Downs in September. By this time, Lockhart would have realised that any hopes of being able to replicate his astonishing success with the Tartar were ill-founded, as the Chatham was a sluggish sailor, and hence a great disappointment.

Lockhart-Ross provided excellent service at the Battle of Quiberon Bay in 1759 and was rewarded with the command of Admiral Sir Edward Hawke’s flagship

In the spring of 1759 Lockhart cruised off the French coast, having under his command the frigates Venus 36, Captain Thomas Harrison, and Thames 32, Captain Stephen Colby, and on 18 May these two vessels took the French frigate Aréthuse 32, commanded by the Marquis de Vaudreiul after a two-hour chase in Audierne Bay, the Chatham playing little part in the action. In July he led a squadron that captured about thirty small Dutch vessels that were trying to get into Le Havre, and the Chatham later served under Rear-Admiral George Brydges Rodney at the bombardment of that town. After joining Commodore Robert Duff ‘s inshore squadron monitoring the port of Brest, on 20 November the slow-sailing Chatham found herself at the mercy of a French 74 as the Brest Fleet entered Quiberon Bay. Fortunately, Admiral Sir Edward Hawke’s fleet came in sight turning the tables, and the Chatham participated in the resulting victory as part of Duff’s squadron. After the battle the Chatham was one of the ships ordered to set fire to the grounded French ships of the line Soleil Royal 80 and Héros 74. When Hawke’s flag-captain, John Campbell, was sent home with despatches, Lockhart took command of the flagship, Royal George 100, returning to Portsmouth on 30 January 1760.

In early March 1760 he was appointed to the Bedford 64 at Chatham, serving in an unexacting capacity with the fleet off Brest. Before the end of the year he was replaced by a temporary captain, Joseph Deane, who was in command when the Bedford captured the French frigate Comète 32 in March 1761. Lockhart briefly commanded the Bedford once more in the summer of that year before going on half-pay in the autumn, and he saw no further employment during the remaining eighteen months of the Seven Years War.

In June 1760 Lockhart assumed the additional name of Ross and became the 18th Laird of Balnagowan (an estate north of Inverness). This was a title which had descended from his mother’s family. In April 1761 he was elected unopposed as the M.P. for the Linlithgow Boroughs. Although he had little interest in parliamentary affairs, he generally supported the incumbent government, Whig or Tory. He retained the seat until 14 April 1768 when he was elected to the Lanarkshire constituency, which he represented until October 1774.

With the country at peace from 1763 to 1777, he devoted himself to energetically managing his highland estate – bringing in an English farm manager, employing lowland shepherds, erecting fences, introducing cheviot sheep, assisting local industries, and supporting the improvement of local roads. As a result, Lockhart-Ross became a renowned agriculturalist, and his new farming techniques were described as the best in the country. However, his approach required the eviction of many tenants and their families from their small-holdings, making him a leading proponent of ‘the Highland Clearances’. Whilst he sought better conditions for those tenants who remained, he also increased their rent. The result of these changes was that the incoming shepherds often found that poor and displaced tenants raided their flocks for food . In August 1778 Lockhart-Ross succeeded his late brother in the family baronetcy and added the estate of Carstairs to the south-west of Edinburgh to his Inverness-shire holdings.

With the American Revolutionary War gathering pace, Lockhart-Ross returned to duty. Appointed in September 1777 to the Shrewsbury 74, his command (the second ship in the line of battle) was heavily engaged at the Battle of Ushant on 27 July 1778, losing three men killed and six wounded. His fame at this time is evident from a song composed in his honour and sung to the tune of ‘Heart of Oak’:

Ye sons of old Ocean who’re strangers to fear
On board the Shrewsbury quickly repair;
Brave Lockhart commands her, rejoice every tar,
For Lockhart commanded the Tartar last war.

When political conflicts after the Battle of Ushant led to some of the fleet’s flag officers being unable or unwilling to serve, Lockhart was tapped to take on the duties of a junior admiral. He took command of a dozen sail of the line to patrol off Brest in November, and he later cruised in the Bay of Biscay with thirteen sail of the line, to which another five were soon added. A mere captain commanding so many capital ships was almost without parallel in the annals of the Navy. In mid-December he turned over command of the Shrewsbury to Captain Samuel Reeve in order to give evidence in favour of Admiral Hon Augustus Keppel at his court martial at Portsmouth in January 1779 on charges arising out of the Battle of Ushant.

Lockhart-Ross was promoted rear-admiral on 19 March 1779, and after spending time on his private affairs in Scotland he sought re-employment, being one of the few senior officers who had supported Keppel but were still willing to serve the current administration. When the summons came in May, he set out for London from Edinburgh with two of his sons. After attending a royal levee, he took up the post of fourth-in-command in the Grand Fleet, hoisting his flag aboard the Royal George 100, Captain John Colpoys, at Portsmouth. He briefly left the three-decker when he was despatched with a small squadron on a cruise to the North Sea to hunt down the American rebel John Paul Jones, but he failed to intercept the famous raider. Returning to his flagship, he was involved in the Grand Fleet’s cautious retreat from the allied armada during August. After the allies left the Channel he briefly raised his flag aboard the Romney 50, Captain George Johnstone. His ship sailed from St. Helens on 14 September with a small squadron in order to investigate the rumoured collection of a French invasion force in Cancale Bay near St. Malo, but when this proved to be groundless and the Romney returned to Spithead at the end of the month.

On Christmas Day 1779, and with his flag back on the Royal George with Captain John Bourmaster now serving as his flag captain, Lockhart-Ross sailed with his division from Spithead as part of Admiral Sir George Rodney’s fleet for the relief of Gibraltar. He was present at both the capture of the Spanish convoy on 8 January 1780 and the Moonlight Battle off Cape St. Vincent on 16 January. When he returned to England with the bulk of the fleet, it was reported that he had earned 6,000 guineas from the prizes, equivalent to about £900,000 in today’s money. He was presented at Court in March, and then travelled up to Edinburgh to visit his Scottish properties. In early June Lockhart-Ross sailed out from Spithead with the Channel Fleet under the command of Admiral Francis Geary to cruise off Ushant and in the Bay of Biscay. When the worn-out fleet returned to Spithead in August to revictual he took the opportunity to travel up to Bath. On 9 September as Vice-Admiral George Darby assumed control of the Channel Fleet Lockhart-Ross re-hoisted his flag aboard the Royal George at Portsmouth; little of note occurred over the next few weeks as most of the fleet (including his flagship) took shelter in Torbay from continuing gales. He then made his usual December sojourn to Bath.

Balnagowan Castle By sylvia duckworth, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13189130

In January 1781 he presided over the court martial which reprimanded Captain Evelyn Sutton of the Isis 50 for his failure to sufficiently engage the Dutch vessel Rotterdam 50 on 31 December. Rejoining the Channel Fleet, he participated the second relief of Gibraltar under Vice-Admiral Darby on 12 April. On reaching the Rock he shifted his flag into the Alexander 74, Captain Lord Longford, commanding a small squadron that was sent into the harbour to defend the victualling ships from Spanish gunboats. He successfully superintended the landing of the stores under a constant heavy cannonade from the Spanish guns onshore. In early June he was dispatched with two sail of the line and three frigates to protect the trade in the North Sea, and on 21 July he sailed from Spithead with the Channel Fleet as the second-in-command to Vice-Admiral Darby to monitor a superior Franco-Spanish fleet. By early November, with the threat of invasion over, the fleet was back at Spithead having avoided contact with the enemy. As was his custom, Lockhart-Ross visited Bath in December.

In January 1782 it was reported in the newspapers that he had a long conference with the King, and in the spring they announced that he had been appointed to command a squadron in the North Sea , however, in response to intelligence that the Dutch might attack British shipping in the North Sea, on 10 May the newly-appointed Admiral Lord Howe took a dozen ships of the Channel Fleet east to monitor the primary Dutch fleet base at the Texel. Lockhart-Ross was second-in command of this squadron, having moved from the Royal George to the Bienfaisant 64, Captain John Howorth. Finding little evidence of enemy activity, Howe returned to Portsmouth at the end of May, leaving eight sail of the line and five frigates under his rear-admiral to blockade the Texel. In June (by which time he had transferred his flag to the Ocean 90, Captain Bourmaster), Lockhart-Ross’ squadron was infected by a flu epidemic that forced it back into the Downs on the 17th. He himself was suffering so badly that he struck his flag and went ashore to convalesce. Despite applying for re-employment at the end of the year, the impending cessation of hostilities meant that he was not required to serve again, and he retired to his estate at Balnagown.

He had married Elizabeth Dundas, the eldest daughter of the Right Hon. Robert Dundas, the Lord President of the Court of Session in Scotland, and the M.P for Edinburgh, on 6 September 1762 at St. George’s Church, Hanover Square, London; the couple had five sons and three daughters. His eldest son, Lieutenant-General Sir Charles Lockhart-Ross, served as an M.P from 1786 until 1807, and his second son, James, changed his surname to that of his wife (Farquharson), and rose to the rank of captain in the navy before dying in 1809. Two of his younger sons entered the Army, and another the judiciary. One of his wife’s younger sisters married the future Adam Lord Duncan.

In April 1787 he kissed the King’s hand on being appointed the commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean station, but his poor health prevented him from taking up the post. He was promoted a vice-admiral on 24 September 1787 by seniority, but it was obvious his active service was over due to ill health. A month later it was reported that he was desperately ill at Buxton, a spa town which he had previously visited for the benefit of his health, but though infirm, he lived on for a few more years.

Sir John Lockhart-Ross died on 9 June 1790 in his 69th year at his family seat of Balnagowan Castle. He was buried at the nearby Fearn Abbey, which had been re-built under his patronage.

A great motivator and a strict but not cruel disciplinarian, Lockhart-Ross was admired by his seamen and tenants, with some of the former becoming the latter as a result of his benevolence. During a famine in 1782 he made great efforts to keep the Highlanders fed, and he later discounted his rent arrears by a third. However, a critical observer noted that when an admiral he was ‘very parsimonious’ in the dinners he gave to visitors to his ship. Perhaps his most lasting memorial is the number of pubs named after his famous frigate, the Tartar.