Sir John Orde (1751-1824)
A controversial officer, Orde held several important posts through his family’s political connections, but he was best known for his disagreements with the Earl of St. Vincent and Lord Nelson.
He was born on 22 December 1751, the third and youngest son of John Orde of Morpeth, Northumberland, and his second wife, Ann Marr. He was the younger brother of Thomas Orde (later Orde-Powlett), a Tory politician who became governor of the Isle of Wight and through a fortunate marriage, the first Baron Bolton.
Educated at Morpeth Grammar School, Orde entered the navy in 1766 aboard the Jersey 60, Captain William Dickson, flying the broad pennant of the peace-time commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean, Commodore Sir Richard Spry. Three years later he joined the Antelope 50, Captain George Gayton, going out to Newfoundland under Commodore Hon. John Byron. During the Falkland Islands dispute of 1770, he was appointed to the Barfleur 98, Captain Andrew Snape Hamond, fitting out for the flag of Rear-Admiral Lord Howe. When this ship was paid off without putting to sea, he found a berth aboard the Princess Amelia 80, Captain Samuel Marshall, the flagship of Vice-Admiral Sir George Brydges Rodney at Jamaica. On 7 April 1774 Rodney appointed the 22-year-old Orde a lieutenant to serve on the sloop Ferret, Commander William Judd. After returning to England aboard the Rainbow 44, Commodore Thomas Collingwood, Orde spent a brief period in France with the intention of learning the language.
In the autumn of 1775, at the beginning of the American Revolutionary war, he went out to North America aboard the Roebuck 44, Captain Andrew Snape Hamond. He demonstrated his courage when following the burning of Norfolk on 1 January 1776 and the evacuation of British forces to Gwynn’s Island in the Chesapeake, his boat carrying a flag of truce was fired on by disorderly American rebels on the Virginia mainland. Complaining bitterly of this contravention, he was marched to the headquarters of the local commander, Colonel William Daingerfield, who apologised for his subordinates and allowed Orde to return to the Roebuck – fortunately he avoided the fate of being shot as a spy when the Americans neglected to search his person, for he was carrying incriminating papers at the request of the governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, which included a proclamation urging the locals to join with the British.
Remaining on the North American station, in 1777 Orde moved to become the first lieutenant on Vice-Admiral Lord Howe’s flagship Eagle 64, Captain Henry Duncan, and following the death of Captain Hon. John Tollemache of the sloop Zebra 14 in a duel at New York, the 25-year-old Orde was promoted commander of the sloop with seniority from 26 September 1777. That autumn he served in the Philadelphia campaign that autumn.
On 19 May 1778 Orde was appointed post captain by Lord Howe with instructions to commission the captured rebel frigate Virginia 28. When the French fleet appeared off New York in July the Virginia was under repair, so Orde and most of his crew volunteered to serve aboard the Raisonnable 64, Captain Thomas Fitzherbert, participating in the action off Rhode Island in August. When the Virginia had been repaired, she served in Commodore Sir George Collier’s expedition to the Penobscot River during May-August 1779, receiving the surrender of the Hampden 20. She was also present at the reduction of Charleston on 11 May 1780. During his time commanding the Virginia, Orde captured (usually with other warships) at least ten French and American merchant prizes. Sent home with despatches, he reached the Admiralty on 25 September, and two days later attended a long conference with Lord Sandwich (the first lord of the Admiralty) to inform him of the latest situation in New York.
In October 1780, he was appointed to the Chatham 50, described as a remarkably fast-sailing copper-bottomed ship; on 1 December she sailed for North America with several vessels under escort. Not long after her arrival, Orde married Margaret Emma Stephens of Charleston, South Carolina on 8 February 1781 in that town. While in North American waters, on 9 June the Chatham captured the 22-gun rebel privateer General Washington.
Early in July 1781 Orde exchanged with Captain Andrew Snape Douglas into the Roebuck 44, which had been selected to convey Vice-Admiral Arbuthnot (recalled by the Admiralty) to England. Following several weeks off Portsmouth, in September the Roebuck sailed for Harwich to join Commodore Hon. Keith Stewart’s squadron in the North Sea. The next few months were unexciting, mostly spent patrolling the Dutch coast with frequent returns to the Downs. However, the Roebuck did capture the French privateer Providence on 24 February 1782.
On 25 June 1782, the Roebuck arrived at Elsinore, Denmark to collect the homeward-bound Baltic convoy. Bad weather and the threat of interception by a Dutch fleet in the North Sea kept the convoy marooned in the Sound, not reaching the east coast of Britain until the middle of September. The next few months saw the frigate based on Portsmouth, cruising in the Channel, and at the end of the American War the Roebuck went around to Sheerness to be paid off in April 1783.
Meanwhile, in February 1783, benefitting from his brother’s friendship with the short-term prime minister, Lord Shelburne, Orde had been appointed the captain-general and governor-in-chief of Dominica. This Caribbean island had become a British colony on being ceded by France twenty years earlier at the end of the Seven Years War. In October 1783, prior to taking up the post, he was given a sumptuous dinner at the London Tavern by the planters and merchants of the island, no doubt trying to cultivate the favour of the new governor. Orde eventually arrived in the Caribbean in January 1784, having taken passage with the commander-in-chief of the Leeward Islands, Rear-Admiral Sir Richard Hughes, aboard the Adamant 50, Captain William Hancock Kelly.
Once installed as governor of Dominica, Orde’s most vital task was to bring peace to the island, which was currently experiencing a revolt by armed black runaway slaves. This he achieved with a ruthless efficiency that resulted in the deaths of dozens of the rebels. In 1785 he was praised for welcoming loyalist families from East Florida (now returned to Spanish control) and facilitating their settlement with offers of land and suspension of taxes. However, over time it became clear that his relationship with the bulk of the established planters was far from harmonious. In 1789 Orde requested home leave to recover his health, arriving at Portsmouth in late August aboard the Solebay 32, Captain John Holloway. In early 1790 the King received an address from the Assembly of Dominica, thanking him for giving Orde leave of absence, stating that as a consequence of his departure the island had returned to peace and happiness, accusing him of being ‘harsh, unconstitutional, and oppressive’, and humbly requesting a different governor.
On 9 August 1790 Orde was created a baronet, no doubt at the instigation of his influential brother, but a month later he suffered one of several personal tragedies when his wife died in Queen Anne Street, London. The couple had produced a son who had died as an infant. Within a couple of months, he returned to Dominica, but the questions over his governorship rumbled on, and over the next couple of years half a dozen meetings were held by the Privy Council in London, of which his brother was a member, to discuss complaints against him. Meanwhile, he was having to deal with a slave insurrection on Dominica that had been sparked by French revolutionaries, and it must have been with some relief that he eventually came home in December 1792 to resign his post.
On 3 December 1793 at Marylebone Church, London, and with the Bishop of Lincoln officiating, Orde married Jane Frere, the sister of the influential diplomat and author, John Hookham Frere. The couple would have five children, although only two daughters and son would survive their father.
Returning to active service at the end of December 1793 (the French Revolutionary War had been underway for ten months), he was appointed to the newly commissioned Victorious 74 at Chatham. Unfortunately, in March 1794 she was twice run aground on the sands off Harwich; having had her masts cut down and guns jettisoned to get off the shoal, she had to be towed back to Chatham to go into dock. Deemed unserviceable without major repairs, she was paid off at the end of May, and instead Orde moved with his petty officers and some of his crew, to her sister ship, the Venerable 74.
During the summer of 1794 the Venerable was a part of the Channel Fleet, based at Spithead. By October she was based at Plymouth with Rear-Admiral John Bourmaster’s squadron, and when in November Bourmaster gave up his command to go to Bath, Orde took over the squadron (four ships of the line). In the course of December, he sat on the court-martial of the Culloden mutineers at Spithead. Shortly afterwards he was nominated for the command of three sail of the line and several troop transports intended to reinforce the British forces in Corsica. However, the mission was cancelled before his squadron could depart for the Mediterranean, andinstead the Venerable remained with the Channel Fleet at Spithead.
In March 1795 Orde was appointed to the Prince George 98, a ship whose command he had previously declined in favour of the Venerable. He saw no significant activity aboard her before leaving on his promotion to rear-admiral on 1 June.
For the better part of the next two years Orde remained ashore until the spring of 1797 when he undertook the temporary command of the Plymouth station with his flag flying aboard the Cambridge 80, Captain Richard Boger, during Admiral Sir Richard King’s absence. When the fleet mutinies spread to Plymouth on 26 April, he attempted without success to prevent delegates travelling to Spithead. Once Admiral King returned, Orde repaired to London, and he subsequently presided over court martials of many of the Nore mutineers, recommending leniency for some of the accused men.
Towards the end of June 1797, Orde received an appointment as third-in-command in the Mediterranean Fleet under Admiral the Earl St Vincent. Raising his flag aboard the Princess Royal 98, which was preparing for sea at Portsmouth, it was not until the end of September that he set sail, with Captain John Draper as flag-captain. After reaching Lisbon, where the Mediterranean fleet was now based, he relieved Commodore Cuthbert Collingwood in the blockade of Cadiz in mid-November. Here his squadron (nine sail of the line) became known as the ‘illuminated squadron’ for their practice of cruising at night with lights at their mast heads. Over the opening weeks of 1798 he returned to the Tagus while Rear-Admiral Sir William Parker’s squadron cruised off Cadiz, but he was soon back on that station. In the spring he was reinforced to bring his strength up to sixteen sail of the line, which proved enough to prevent the Spanish in Cadiz from coming out to join their allies in Brest.
In the summer of 1798, Orde’s relationship with the prickly Earl of St. Vincent fell apart. At the beginning of May the commander-in-chief had ordered the newly arrived Sir Horatio Nelson on an independent command into the Mediterranean. Orde, who was slightly senior to Nelson, believed that the appointment should have gone to him, and claimed that following his lodging of a complaint against this favouritism he had been subjected to personal suppression, ridicule and derision by the commander-in-chief. A few weeks later Orde was further aggrieved by the arrival of Rear-Admiral Sir Roger Curtis from the Channel Fleet, which resulted in him being demoted to fourth-in-command. Never one to accept criticism, St. Vincent immediately instructed Orde to shift his flag into the Blenheim 90, Captain Robert Campbell, and return to England. He landed at Plymouth in early October in the company of Captain Joseph Ellison, who had also fallen out of favour with St. Vincent. To add insult to injury, St. Vincent then proclaimed that Orde’s departure had brought about ‘a wonderful effect’ upon the fleet.
The dispute between the Orde and St Vincent proved to be a protracted affair, for when the Admiralty refused him a court martial, the infuriated Orde waited until the commander-in-chief returned home in the late summer of 1799 and challenged him to a duel. St Vincent refused because of his poor health, and fortunately, the King forbade any prospect of such an encounter. On 4 October both officers were bound over to keep the peace. Orde subsequently refused a position in the Channel Fleet, and in 1802, after his antagonist’s appointment to the position of first lord of the Admiralty, he published his side of the affair. Unsurprisingly, he would have to wait for employment until St. Vincent resigned his office and Lord Melville took over in 1804.
In the meantime, Orde had been promoted vice-admiral by seniority on 14 February 1799. He spent the next five years residing at Gloucester Place in London with his family and visiting Norfolk and his brother’s estate at Basingstoke.
On 26 July 1804, just two months after Viscount Melville had taken up the post of first lord, Orde attended the Admiralty, and after a further meeting in October, he raised his flag aboard the Swiftsure 74, Captain Mark Robinson. Taking another 74 and three 64-gun ships under his orders, he departed St. Helens on 2 November with secret orders to take up station off Cape Finisterre in preparation for war with Spain, which was duly declared on 12 December. At the time many thought that Orde’s posting was a political appointment to spite the government’s implacable enemy, the Earl of St. Vincent.
Once war with Spain had officially commenced, Orde blockaded Cadiz with half a dozen sail of the line, flying his flag aboard the Glory 98, Captain Charles Craven (replaced in April 1805 by Acting-Captain Hon. Frederick Aylmer). Orde’s presence off Cadiz, an area that had previously formed part of the Mediterranean Fleet’s responsibility, annoyed that fleet’s commander-in-chief, Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson. He not only felt that Orde did not communicate sufficiently with him, but also bemoaned the loss of the income he could have expected from prizes taken in that sector. (Orde’s appointment is said to have left Nelson out of pocket to the tune of £100,000). Nelson’s anger increased when it became apparent that Orde was diverting the Mediterranean fleet’s scarce frigates for his own purpose, and on 1 January 1805 the great admiral took the astonishing step of instructing one of his frigates to avoid his rival’s squadron when carrying his dispatches to Lisbon.
On 9 April 1805 Vice-Admiral Pierre Villeneuve’s fleet of eleven sail of the line and six frigates passed through the Gut of Gibraltar, having left Toulon on 29 March. Off Cadiz Orde immediately learned of this event and withdrew his five ships to the Channel Fleet off Brest, as he had been ordered to do in such a circumstance. However, he neglected to inform Nelson, in pursuit of Villeneuve, of the passage of the French and their apparent westward direction, although he did dispatch a ship to warn the West Indies, as well as sending messages to Madeira and the East Indies. This failure, which may have cost Nelson a chance to catch the French long before Trafalgar, earned Orde the criticism of his colleagues, and his refusal to fight a much more powerful enemy force resulted in the (unfair) scorn of the British press. There were calls in Parliament for an inquiry into his conduct, while the trading community registered its dismay over the shipping that had been put at risk by his failure to act. Until recently historians have also been very critical of Orde’s actions, but there is now some opinion that much of the disapproval was unrealistic, given the situation ‘on the ground’.
Orde arrived at Portsmouth on 10 May 1805 aboard the Glory; in accordance with a previous request, he was allowed to retire ashore, ostensibly because of the gout that had confined him to his cot for weeks at a time, although in reality he was upset by the response to his actions. He did not go to sea again, but in due course was promoted to the rank of full admiral on 9 November 1805. Despite their previous differences, he rose from his sickbed to take his place as a pallbearer at Nelson’s funeral on 9 January 1806, although (perhaps fittingly), it was reported that at the very moment Nelson’s body was landed, Orde’s hat blew off into the Thames and he was left exposed to a heavy rain shower.
The next few years were spent between his residence in Gloucester Place and Bolton House in Yorkshire, with the Ordes’ celebrating the birth of a daughter in May 1806, only to lose her five-year-old sister a few months later. From August 1807 until 1812 (in succession to his nephew, the second Lord Bolton), he served as the M.P. for Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight in the government interest. Unlike so many of his naval contemporaries, he was a regular attendee and speaker in the House of Commons, commenting particularly on naval matters. During the aftermath of the Battle of the Basque Roads in 1809 he stated that Admiral Lord Gambier’s conduct ‘might be meritorious yet might not be entitled to the thanks of the House’; even so, he did support the motion praising Gambier. He also involved himself in charitable causes, as in December 1816 when it was reported that he had given a beef and plum pudding dinner to 120 school children in the Bognor area, in addition to presenting 60 poor families with coal, bread, beef, and money for beer.
On 19 February 1824, following many years of painful illness and just weeks after being visited by Admiral Sir James Saumarez, Orde died at his residence in Gloucester Place, Marylebone, London. He was buried with his first wife, who had died in 1790, in the family vault in the crypt of St Mary Church, Hanwell.
In his late twenties Orde was described as a handsome young man who looked far younger than his years. He was well-educated and cultivated – when captain of HMS Blenheim, he maintained a 14-man ‘band of music’. He seems to have admired Nelson’s talents, but also resented his success, causing the younger man to dislike him, and tend to question his motives. Orde was not a popular officer amongst his peers, being seen as somewhat ‘excitable, petty, and jealous’, whilst St. Vincent labelled him ‘a n affected coxcomb’. Aboard ship he was disciplined and resolute, but also said to have a kindly disposition: for instance, he refused to admonish any offending officer publicly on deck, instead inviting them below to his cabin for that purpose. He was nevertheless bitterly resentful of any implied slight against him, a trait that led to many of his problems.
Orde’s flag-lieutenant from 1797-1800 was the future Captain John Baker. Many of his followers on the Prince George in the 1790’s were considered ‘not to cut a good figure as a gentleman’ and were suspected of joining the navy from the merchant service. As well as residing at Gloucester Place in London and in the vicinity of Bognor in Sussex, he was also recorded as residing at Burwash in Sussex and Beckenham in Kent.