Thomas Drury (1750-1832)
Drury saw service in both the American and French Revolutionary wars, but his career was beset by illness, and he enjoyed very few opportunities for distinction. He appears however to have had a remarkable, if estranged wife!
He was the fourth child but the eldest son of the Reverend George Drury, the rector of Claydon in Suffolk, and of his wife, Elizabeth Cavell.
In his 23rd year, Drury was commissioned lieutenant on 18 March 1773 and joined the Alarm, 32 Captain John Stott, serving in the Mediterranean. He was promoted commander on 1 March 1779 during the American Revolutionary War and having recommissioned the sloop Cygnet 14 he witnessed the Battle of Cancale Bay on 13 May as part of Captain John Lewis Gidoin’s squadron. His command was back at Portsmouth from Guernsey in early June, and after sailing for Newfoundland later that month it appears that Drury handed over command to Commander Peter Baskerville on 24 October.
On 12 March 1781 Drury was appointed to commission the newly purchased Cameleon 14, with which he joined the squadron in the Downs. On 14 August his sloop fell in with the Dutch dogger Patriot 18 guns off the Texel, and after an intense forty-five-minute duel his opponent blew up with the loss of all hands. Drury was one of thirteen casualties aboard the Cameleon, suffering a splinter wound to his leg, and it was necessary to extinguish a blaze upon his command after she been set alight by the burning wreckage of the Dutch vessel, leaving her with significant damage to her sails and rigging.
He was posted captain on 12 March 1782 and appointed to the sixth rate Myrmidon 24, which shortly afterwards arrived at Leith. By July she was in the Downs, and come September she was on the Irish station. On 17 October she arrived at Plymouth with the flag of Rear-Admiral Thomas Graves who had earlier taken passage to Cork on a merchantman after his flagship, the Ramillies 74, had been scuttled as a result of damage sustained in the Central Atlantic Hurricane. In January 1783 the Myrmidon sailed from Portsmouth for Cork with transports ultimately destined for the West Indies, and with the American Revolutionary War drawing to an end, she was sent around to Sheerness, where no doubt her crew expected to be paid off – instead, they were paid six months wages and ordered back to sea.
In August 1783 the Myrmidon arrived at Yarmouth prior to being stationed on the Yorkshire and Northumberland coast, where in April 1785 she captured a smuggling lugger off St. Abb’s Head. Shortly afterwards she was dispatched from Leith for Shields where sailors had been rioting. Further duty was undertaken in the Channel, where she soon captured a smuggler between Arundel and Shoreham, followed quickly by another which she sent into the Downs. On 8 September she sailed for Sheerness, from where she escorted a yacht to Copenhagen which had been gifted to the Danish crown prince, arriving on 9 October. She was back at the Nore by the middle of November, and after further service in the Downs Drury left her in March 1786.
He remained unemployed for the next seven years of peace until the commencement of the French Revolutionary War in 1793, being appointed to the frigate Fox 32 in January, at which time he was in his 43rd year. On 22 March his command sailed from Sheerness with a messenger carrying dispatches for the Duke of York in the Netherlands, but she grounded on the Gunfleet Sands in the Swin off the mouth of the Thames Estuary, requiring the official to transfer to another vessel. In early May she escorted troop transports from Cork to Chatham, and she then returned to Portsmouth from the Downs with another convoy. From there she immediately put out with the Quebec and Newfoundland convoys, from which duty she returned to Portsmouth that December. In March 1794 she took a convoy out to Gibraltar, by the autumn she was at Spithead, and in November Drury’s poor health required him to hand over the command to Captain Pulteney Malcolm.
In late 1795 he was reportedly appointed to the Fortitude 74, which had lately returned from the Mediterranean, but he did not take her to sea. Joining the Alfred 74 at Plymouth instead, he was attached to Rear-Admiral Hugh Cloberry Christian’s force which sailed from Portsmouth on 16 November 1795 to restore order in the Leeward Islands. Not long after sailing, the fleet was battered by ferocious storms, and the Alfred eventually struggled into Plymouth on 15 December without her main, mizzen and foretopmasts, and having lost seven men overboard when the main mast had toppled over. On 14 February 1796, having completed her repairs, she sailed out of the Hamoaze for Cawsand Bay, and she eventually departed for the Leeward Islands with transports under the orders of Vice-Admiral Hon William Cornwallis at the end of the month. When Cornwallis was forced back, Drury continued in command of the convoy, and in the course of the voyage out to the West Indies the Alfred captured the French corvette Favorite 22 off Cape Finisterre on 18 March. After serving in the Leeward Islands campaign from April to June, she later transferred to the Jamaican station, where with two broadsides she captured the excellent two-year-old French frigate Renommée 32 off San Domingo on 12 July after the enemy had mistaken her for an Indiaman. With sickness taking hold on the Alfred, Drury returned to England in the autumn to be replaced by Captain Thomas Totty.
He did not serve afloat again but became a rear-admiral on 23 April 1804, acted as a pallbearer at Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson’s funeral on 9 January 1806, was promoted vice-admiral on 28 April 1808, and admiral on 4 June 1814.
In June 1814, Drury’s estranged wife, Elizabeth, was sued by the owners of Loughborough School for outstanding fees relating to the education of a son, and by teachers owed money by her school in Chingford for the education of an infant son. The Court heard that she was a native of America, who as a child had been taken to France by her relative, Benjamin Frankin, to receive an education, and that the estate and title of La Roque had been bestowed on her by Queen Marie Antoinette. Evidence submitted in the court by the rector of Kingston, Jamaica, who had performed the marriage ceremony with Drury when he was commanding the Alfred in the West Indies, proved that Drury was responsible for the education of their children and the suit against Elizabeth, who had claimed coverture, was withdrawn. Intriguingly, in December 1816 Eliabeth Drury sailed for the island of St. Domingo at the invitation of the president of Haiti, Alexandre Pétion, to assist with the distribution to the free people of what was termed ‘the Madras plan of Instruction’ – it is not clear what this philanthropic assignment entailed.
Admiral Drury died of apoplexy in his 82nd year on 5 September 1832 at Bruges. At the time, a cholera epidemic was sweeping though the city and it not only carried away two men within hours of their arrival to collect Drury’s property, but also his nephew, Captain Augustus Vere Drury, a month later.
Elizabeth Drury died in Kingston, Jamaica in 1845. One of their sons, Charles Thomas Augustus, had earlier died at Jamaica on 24 August 1822 at the age of twenty-two, whilst another son, George, drowned in the North Sea.