Sir William Mitchell (1745-1816)
Entering the Navy as a common seaman, he rose through the ranks to become a post captain in his mid-forties, and an admiral in his twilight years. Lacking ‘influence’, his career was a series of temporary or underwhelming commands, yet his long service was recognised with a knighthood.
Born in Fetcham, Surrey, one of five children of William and Elizabeth Mitchell, William junior entered the Navy as a common seaman. By August 1766, at about 20 years old, he joined the exploration vessel Dolphin 24, Captain Samuel Wallis which undertook a voyage to the southern hemisphere in company with two other vessels, visiting Madeira, the Cape Verde Islands, Patagonia, the Magellan Straits, Tahiti, the Northern Mariana Islands, Batavia, and the Cape of Good Hope before returning to Plymouth on 20 May 1768.
It is not clear whether Mitchell (who often spelled his name Mitchel) was employed at sea over the next decade, but in July 1777, with the American Revolutionary War underway, he joined the Hector 74, Captain John Hamilton. He must have impressed Hamilton, since he was promoted from the lower deck to potentially become a commissioned officer, serving both as masters’ mate and midshipman. Further service followed aboard the Victory 100, before in 1781he moved to the Foudroyant 80, Captain John Jervis.
Now 35, and no doubt benefitting from the patronage of the egalitarian Captain Jervis, Mitchell was commissioned lieutenant on 2 November 1781 and promoted commander six months later. Taking command of the sloop Pigmy 10, he escorted a small convoy from Spithead out to Jamaica in June. After taking several prizes in short order in the Caribbean, the Pigmy left Jamaica at the beginning of May 1783 and returned to Plymouth in June, carrying news of Rear-Admiral Lord Hood’s fleet, dispatches for the Admiralty, and letters from Prince William to his father, the King. The Pigmy was paid off at the end of the month, so presumably Mitchell was on half-pay for the next few years of peace.
In February 1787 Mitchell was appointed to the sloop Calypso 16, going from Plymouth out to Jamaica in April, where his command remained for the next three years, including duty in the Bay of Honduras protecting British woodcutters. After a six-week passage from Port Royal, the Calypso returned to Spithead in the latter part of July 1790, and Mitchell left her at the end of the following month when she was taken into Portsmouth Harbour. At this time the Spanish Armament was underway and from 8 October to 14 November Mitchell commanded the Regulus 44, armed en-flute (a vessel with most of her cannons removed) to carry troops. Once the dispute with Spain was settled, he was one of many officers posted captain on 22 November, being appointed to the Boston 28 for purposes of rank only.
Probably lacking the requisite ‘interest’, Mitchell was not immediately re-employed when the French Revolutionary War broke out in 1793; when he was eventually recalled to duty it was only to fulfil a number of acting commands in ships attached to the Channel Fleet. From 10 April to 16 May 1794, he had the Colossus 74 for Captain Charles Morice Pole whilst she was undergoing a refit at Portsmouth, from August to December he temporarily commanded the Excellent 74 prior to Captain Cuthbert Collingwood assuming command, and in January 1795 he briefly joined the Caesar 80 in place of Captain Anthony James Pye Molloy, who was preparing for a court-martial relating to his conduct at the Battle of the Glorious First of June.
Mitchell finally got his own ship, albeit a mediocre one, when in March 1795 he was appointed to the aged Nonsuch 64 at Chatham, where that vessel had been undergoing repairs intended to fit her as a floating battery and receiving ship at Hull. Unfortunately, he had the misfortune to lose his sailing master to a brief fatal illness in the second week of May, and soon left the ship whilst she was still at Chatham. Instead, on 17 June, he was appointed to recommission the Salisbury 50 which was fitting out at Portsmouth Harbour, and which (briefly) flew the flag of Rear-Admiral Richard Rodney Bligh.
In the first week of November 1795, the Salisbury sailed from Spithead to Cork to pick up a convoy for Sierra Leone in Africa, and she then sailed for the Jamaican station in the following spring. While in passage for Port Royal, she grounded on a reef near the Ile de Vache off San Domingo in the early hours of 10 May 1796. Three attempts to kedge her off ended in failure, and the first lieutenant was dispatched in a boat to Port Royal (over 400 miles away), for assistance. Meanwhile the water continued to overwhelm the pumps and the ship began heeling with the additional weight. By the next morning, the planking was breaking up, and Mitchell was left with no other option than to surrender to the numerous Spanish craft which had assembled with the apparent intention of attacking the wreck. The crew were taken off by a Spanish vessel and carried as prisoners to San Domingo, where Mitchell was fortunately able to avoid contacting a fever that was raging through the island. Once exchanged, the inevitable court-martial exonerated the captain and his officers for the loss of their ship, the wreck being attributed to under-estimating the powerful local current.
Having returned to England, during September 1797 Mitchell temporarily commanded the Adamant 50 in the North Sea for Captain William Hotham, before joining the 23-year-old Isis 50, which had been prominent in the recent mutinies. He commanded her at the Battle of Camperdown on 11 October, losing two men killed and twenty-one wounded in attacking the Dutch van. Two weeks later the Isis brought the disabled Dutch prize Admiral de Vries into the Humber, and on 19 December Mitchell took part in the Service of Thanksgiving at St. Paul’s Cathedral for the naval victories.
In early 1798, the Isis was sent to St. Helena to collect a convoy, but it had already sailed before she arrived. However, on 3 June she left the island with another seven Indiamen to arrive in home waters at the end of July. Intriguingly, she brought with her a British man known as ‘General Bowles’ who was described in the newspapers as ‘a Cherokee chief’ – the self-declared ‘Director of the Creek Nation’ had escaped Spanish custody in a small boat which had fallen in with the homeward-bound Isis. In August and September Mitchell conducted successful negotiations with the captain of a Swedish frigate about the escort of Swedish merchant ships to Portugal. in October his ship was repaired at Sheerness, and thereafter he continued with her in the North Sea Fleet, employed in the tedious patrol of the Dutch coast.
In July 1799, he transferred to the thirty-year-old Resolution 74, which on 2 October collided with and badly damaged a brig as she endeavoured to sail out of Portsmouth Harbour for Spithead. Towards the end of the month she sailed for Torbay to join the Channel Fleet, and in December Mitchell vacated her in favour of Captain Alan Hyde Gardner.
After six months on the beach, Mitchell was appointed to the Zealand 64 in June 1800, flying the flag of Vice-Admiral Alexander Graeme as a guardship at the Nore. This proved to be an inactive role from which he was released in May 1802 by the end of the French Revolutionary War.
By early March 1803, war with France appeared imminent once more, and it was announced that Mitchell had been reappointed to the Zealand; however, with her commissioning delayed he was instead asked to take command of the ancient Winchelsea 32 as the flagship at the Nore. On 11 April it was reported from Sheerness that the Zealand, to which Mitchell had returned a week earlier, was now ready for sea and would be taking on her guns the next day. Once in service, she flew the flag of Rear-Admiral Sir James Saumarez during that officer’s brief tenure as commander-in-chief of the Nore, a role that passed to Rear-Admiral Bartholomew Rowley in May once war had been declared. Again, this proved to be a quiet posting for Mitchell, enlivened only by his presiding over several court martials, and he left the Zealand on 1 September 1804. In early 1805 he became tangentially embroiled in a nasty conflict between Admiral the Earl of St Vincent, and David Ewen Bartholomew, a midshipman (and follower of Captain Sir Home Popham) whom St Vincent had had pressed into the Navy, furious over his persistent requests for promotion.
Mitchell did not see any further service at sea; however, from 10 December 1805 to 14 October 1807 he commanded the Sea Fencibles between Emsworth in Hampshire and Beachy Head in Sussex. He was promoted rear-admiral on 28 April 1808, vice-admiral on 4 December 1813, and created a KCB in 1815, a surprising honour given his largely undistinguished career.
Vice-Admiral Sir William Mitchell died on 7 March 1816 at his residence Camberwell Grove, Surrey, in his 71st year. He was not married but made provision in his will for Margaret Elliott ‘spinster, now living with me’ to occupy his house for the rest of her life, after which it would be left to his brother and sister.
Writing many years after Mitchell’s death, the Arctic explorer, Rear-Admiral Sir John Ross, claimed that Mitchell had once been flogged around the fleet for desertion. The claim seems unlikely, but it is entirely possible that while serving as a seaman he was in fact flogged, a punishment unlikely to have been suffered by any other senior officer in the Royal Navy.