British Admirals of the Fleet

by T A Heathcote

  Fraser left office in April 1952 and thereafter lived in retirement, emerging occasionally to speak in the Lords on naval matters. He was not an intellectual (he claimed never to have read a novel in his life) and some have seen this as a weakness in his battles in Whitehall. Nevertheless, his straightforward character allowed him to get on well with most of those with whom he had to deal and he was widely respected as an old sea-dog. He was popular with the Fleet as a whole and during the Korean War took pains to ensure that there would be no repetition of ships on that station becoming “the Forgotten Fleet” as his British Pacific Fleet had been dubbed. On the escape of the frigate Amethyst down the Yangtse River past Chinese Communist shore batteries, he personally directed the local flag officer to make additional recommendations for honours and awards to the ship’s company. He died in London on 12 February 1981. Lord Fraser never married and his barony became extinct.

  FREEMAN

  WILLIAM PEERE WILLIAMS (1742–1832) [13]

  William Williams was born on 6 January 1742 at Peterborough, where his father, Dr Frederick Williams, rector of Peakirk, Northamptonshire, was prebendary and his maternal grandfather, Dr Robert Clavering, was the bishop. A maternal great-uncle, John Freeman, was the owner of Fawley Court, near Henley, Oxfordshire. William Williams’ paternal grandfather, also called William Peere Williams, was a wealthy barrister and MP, whose estates included one at Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire. Williams entered the Navy during the Seven Years War in June 1757. He did not go to sea until August 1759, when he sailed in the 3rd-rate Magnanime, commanded by Lord Howe [9], in which he served at the battle of Quiberon Bay (20 November 1759). He followed Howe when the latter became flag captain in the 3rd-rate Princess Amelia in August 1762 and, after Howe joined the Board of Admiralty early in 1763, was appointed to the 4th-rate Romney, stationed at Halifax, Nova Scotia. Williams became a lieutenant on 18 September 1764, in the 5th-rate Rainbow, based in Virginia until returning home in October 1766. He was promoted to commander on 26 May 1768, possibly through the influence of his patron Howe at the Admiralty, and became a captain on 10 January 1771. On 20 June 1771 he married the twenty-five-year old Henrietta Wills, daughter of a country gentleman. In December 1771 he was given command of the 6th-rate Active and sailed for the West Indies. There he contracted a tropical fever and was in July 1773 re-deployed with his ship to Newfoundland. In November 1773 he exchanged into the 6th-rate Lively and returned home.

  During 1777 and 1778, in the American War of Independence, Williams commanded the 5th-rate Venus, part of Howe’s fleet on the North America station and was at the occupation of Rhode Island in August 1778. After again returning home, he was appointed in April 1780 to the 5th-rate Flora in which he captured the French frigate Nymphe (10 August 1780) and took part in the relief of Gibraltar in March 1781. When escorting a convoy in company with the 28-gun frigate Crescent, he defeated two Dutch frigates off Gibraltar, capturing one and driving off the other in a hard fight (30 May 1781). Going on with the convoy, he was intercepted off Finisterre on 19 June 1781 by two French frigates. As both Crescent and the Dutch prize had been dismasted and could only sail under jury rig, Williams declined action and left them to be captured while he convoyed the merchantmen, his primary concern, to safety. He was judged to have acted correctly but, after going onto half-pay in April 1782, was not again employed at sea.

  In 1784, on the death of his childless cousin Sir Booth Williams, he inherited the family estate at Hoddesdon. Thereafter, Williams was promoted to rear-admiral of the White on 12 April 1794, rear-admiral of the Red on 4 July 1794, vice-admiral of the White on 11 February 1775, admiral of the Blue on 25 October 1809, admiral of the White on 9 November 1805 and admiral of the Red on 25 October 1809. He took no part in the Napoleonic wars and lived as a country gentleman, at his home (renamed Yew House in 1800) in Hoddesdon. In 1804 the local clergyman noted in his diary that the admiral was insufferably proud and rude, and that Mrs Williams was extremely rude and unfeeling, and that he, the writer, had never during his previous twenty-two years in the parish received the most trifling favour from either of them. Henrietta Williams died in 1811, leaving two sons, both of whom predeceased their father, though the second left an heir. In November 1821 Williams succeeded to the Fawley estate, and assumed the additional surname Freeman in acknowledgement of his benefactor. As the senior admiral of the Red, Williams Freeman was the first to be promoted when three new admirals of the fleet were created to mark the accession of William IV [11]. His promotion, on 28 June 1830, was marked by the presentation of the same naval baton (designed by George IV) that the new monarch himself had held as admiral of the fleet. Williams Freeman died at Hoddesdon on 11 February 1832 and was buried in his family’s vault in the nearby parish church of St Augustine, Broxbourne.

  GAGE

  Sir WILLIAM HALL, GCB, GCH (1777–1864) [23]

  William Gage was the sixth and youngest son of General the Honourable Thomas Gage, who had been governor of Massachusetts at the beginning of the American War of Independence. Born on 2 October 1777, he joined the Navy in November 1789 as a first class volunteer in the 3rd-rate Bellona at Portsmouth and became a midshipman in the 3rd-rate Captain on 1 September 1790. In subsequent years, with the outbreak of the French Revolutionary War in 1793, he served in the Channel, the West Indies and the Mediterranean, successively in the 3rd-rate Colossus; the 6th-rate Proserpine; the 3rd-rates America and Egmont; the 2nd-rate Princess Royal, in which he took part in the battles of Leghorn (Livorno) (14 March 1795) and Toulon (13 July 1795); the 3rd-rate Bedford, in which he was in action off Cadiz; and the 1st-rate Victory, flagship of Sir John Jervis [12] as C-in-C of the Mediterranean Fleet. On 19 January 1796 Gage was appointed acting lieutenant (confirmed on 11 March 1796) in the 5th-rate Minerve. He was present under the command of Captain George Cockburn [20] at the capture of the French corvette Etonnant, and, with Commodore Horatio Nelson on board, was at the capture of the Spanish frigate Santa Sabina (20 December 1796) for which he was mentioned in despatches. He served in Minerve at the battle of St Vincent (14 February 1797) and was again mentioned for his part in a boat action cutting out the French corvette Mutine (28 May 1797).

  Gage was made a commander on 13 June 1797, followed by promotion to captain of the 5th-rate Terpsichore on 26 July 1797. He returned to the Mediterranean with the British fleet in the summer of 1797, where he seized several French vessels harboured at Tunis and took part in the blockade of the French-held island of Malta. In February 1799 he carried the King of Piedmont (forced by the French to abdicate) to safety in Sardinia and in June 1799 captured the Spanish brig San Antonio. After returning home, Gage was with a group of frigates in the Channel that met a Danish convoy heading for France in July 1800. The Danes held that, as neutrals, they were exempt from the British blockade. When the convoy refused to stop and be searched, its escort, the frigate Freija, was fired upon and brought into the Downs. The incident increased international tension and played a part in the establishment of the Armed Neutrality of December 1800, whereby the Baltic states declared they would use naval action against any belligerent (in practice, the United Kingdom) interfering with the free passage of their ships. Gage was appointed to the 5th-rate Uranie in March 1801 and remained in the Channel, where on 21 July 1801 he gained his sixth mention in despatches for leading a flotilla of ships’ boats to cut out the corvette Chevrette from Camaret Bay, Finisterre. After the formal declaration of peace with France in March 1802, he was placed on half-pay.

  The war with France was renewed in May 1803. Gage returned to sea in July 1805 on appointment to the 5th-rate Thetis, which he commanded in the North Sea and the Mediterranean until 1808. In February 1813 he was given command of the 3rd-rate Indus in the Mediterranean Fleet and, off Toulon, took part in the last significant naval combat of the war (13 February 1814). In September 1814, with Napoleon exiled to Elba and the fleet subjected to the usual post-war reductions, Gage returned to half-pay. He was promoted to rear-admiral of the Blue on 19 Ju
ly 1821, rear-admiral of the White on 27 May 1825 and rear-admiral of the Red on 22 July 1830. Between December 1825 and January 1830 he was C-in-C, East Indies. During the summer of 1833, when a British fleet blockaded the Dutch coasts and the mouths of the Scheldt in support of the newly created Kingdom of the Belgians, he commanded a squadron in the Downs and was awarded the KCB in 1834. Sir William Gage was promoted to vice-admiral of the White on 10 January 1837. From April to December 1837 he was C-in-C of a British fleet sent to Lisbon to support the young Queen Maria II of Portugal at a time of continuing civil strife. He became a vice-admiral of the Red on 23 November 1841, followed in February 1842 by appointment as a Lord Commissioner of the Admiralty, where he served in the Board headed by the Earl of Haddington until the fall of Sir Robert Peel’s administration in 1846. Gage was promoted to admiral of the Blue on 9 November 1846, admiral of the White on 27 December 1847. From 1848 to 1851 he was C-in-C, Plymouth, where he became an admiral of the Red on 1 July 1851. He was awarded the GCB in 1860 and was promoted to admiral of the fleet on 20 May 1862. He retired to Thurston, near Bury St Edmund’s, Suffolk, where he died on 4 January 1864 and was buried in St Peter’s churchyard.

  GAMBIER

  JAMES, Baron Gambier, GCB (1756–1833) [14]

  James (“Jimmy”) Gambier, of Huguenot descent, was born on 13 October 1756 in New Providence, Bahamas, where his father was then lieutenant governor. His aunt became the wife of Sir Charles Middleton (later Lord Barham), a future Comptroller of the Navy and First Lord of the Admiralty. Middleton himself was related to Henry Dundas, a prominent Tory politician and a close political ally of William Pitt the Younger, Prime Minister during most of the period between December 1783 and January 1806. Gambier was in 1767 entered on the books of the 3rd-rate Yarmouth, commanded by his uncle, a future vice-admiral, and may have sailed with him when he was appointed C-in-C on the North America station in 1770. During the American War of Independence Gambier was promoted to lieutenant on 12 February 1777 and became commander of the bomb vessel Thunder on 9 March 1778. He was captured off the American coast by the French fleet later that year, but was soon exchanged for another officer of equal rank. On 9 October 1778 he became captain of the 5th-rate Raleigh, in which he served at the capture of Charleston, South Carolina, in May 1780.

  Gambier did not again serve at sea until April 1793, when, at the beginning of the French Revolutionary War, he was appointed to command the 3rd-rate Defence in the Channel. He became noted for his evangelical or Methodist views and required his crew to join him in divine worship at frequent intervals. From his prohibition of profane language and intemperance, he gained the nickname “Dismal Jimmy”. His ruling that all women on board should produce their marriage certificates caused much ill-feeling on the lower deck and made a fortune for forgers in the Portsmouth taverns. At the battle of the Glorious First of June (1 June 1794), Defence was the first ship to break the French line and suffered heavy damage. The captain of his sister ship Invincible hailed him with the text “Whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth”, but, despite this derision of his piety, he was praised by Lord Howe [9] and awarded a gold medal for his conduct. At the end of the year Gambier became captain of the 2nd-rate Prince George but did not put to sea before being appointed, in March 1795, to the Board of Admiralty headed by Earl Spencer in Pitt’s Cabinet. He was promoted to rear-admiral of the White on 1 June 1795, vice-admiral of the Blue on 14 February 1799 and vice-admiral of the White on 1 January 1799.

  Gambier became a close friend of Pitt’s wealthy supporter, the anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce, and was parodied by the poet Thomas Hood in a verse beginning “Oh Admiral Gam, I dare not mention bier, in such a temperate ear”. After the fall of Pitt’s first administration in February 1801, Gambier was appointed third in command of the Channel fleet, with his flag in the 2nd-rate Neptune. The Treaty of Amiens, signed on 27 March 1802, brought peace with France and hasty reductions in the fleet. Gambier was given the post of governor of Newfoundland. Hostilities were renewed in May 1803 and, following Pitt’s return to office early in 1804, Gambier was re-appointed to the Admiralty, serving in the Board headed by Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville. After Melville’s fall in April 1805 Gambier continued to serve under the new First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Barham, until the “Ministry of all the Talents” was formed in February 1806. When this ministry was replaced by one led by the Duke of Portland Gambier was re-appointed to the Admiralty on 6 April 1807, where he served in the Board headed by Lord Mulgrave. While at the Admiralty, in 1807 he raised the pay of naval chaplains from £11 per annum (less than that of an ordinary seaman) to £150. He also commanded the naval element of the expedition suddenly sent to Copenhagen to prevent the Danish fleet from falling into French hands. After a three-day bombardment of their capital (2–5 September 1807), the Danes surrendered their fleet and Gambier was rewarded with a peerage.

  After leaving the Admiralty in May 1807 Lord Gambier was given command of the fleet in the Channel. In March 1809 the French fleet in Brest slipped past his blockade. After a few days, they were discovered in the Basque Roads, covering the approaches to Rochefort. Gambier followed them and re-established the blockade, but the Cabinet feared they might escape again and make for the West Indies. Captain Lord Cochrane, one of the most daring and imaginative frigate captains of his day, was sent with a flotilla of fire-ships to attack the French in their anchorage. Cochrane warned the Admiralty that placing him in charge of the attack over the heads of the many officers senior to him already on station would cause problems, but the Cabinet was determined to act without delay and his reservations were disregarded. He arrived on board Gambier’s flagship to find the admiral being subjected to a furious complaint by his own second-in-command, Rear-Admiral Sir Eliab Harvey, a Trafalgar veteran, who had already volunteered to perform the task allotted by the Cabinet to Cochrane. Gambier, whose religious feelings had been shocked by the burning of Copenhagen, seems to have considered a night attack by infernal machines upon an anchored fleet almost as a war crime. He also regarded the idea of sending heavy ships into shoal water in support of the attack as unacceptably hazardous.

  Harvey made no secret of his view that Gambier’s excessive caution made him unfit to command a fleet, and that he himself had been passed over because “I am no canting Methodist, no hypocrite nor a psalm singer”. It was indeed widely believed that captains under Gambier’s command were more likely to be favoured if they shared his religious views, but Harvey had gone too far and was subsequently dismissed from his command for using grossly insubordinate language. Cochrane’s own flamboyant manner did nothing to reduce Gambier’s own indignation at being ordered to give his full support to a junior officer in an operation of which he disapproved. When the attack was made, on the night of 11–12 April 1809, it proved an initial success, but Gambier refused to send any of his ships of the line to Cochrane’s support, so that seven out of eleven French ships stranded in trying to avoid the fireships eventually escaped up-river.

  The affair was presented as a great victory by the Cabinet, whose political position it saved, and a vote of thanks was passed by its supporters in Parliament. Cochrane, sitting as a Radical MP, opposed the motion, in protest at Gambier’s inaction. Gambier then demanded a court-martial. This took place under the presidency of Gambier’s close friend, Admiral Sir Roger Curtis. Gambier was exonerated, though Cochrane’s supporters claimed that the trial had been rigged by a Cabinet unwilling to lose the political benefit of an acclaimed victory, especially as Gambier had family connections with some its members. Most sea officers seem to have felt that, despite his psalm-singing, he did not deserve humiliation at the instance of a young Scottish nobleman on the make, for whom he had obtained the KB as reward for the action in question.

  Gambier remained in command of the Channel fleet with his flag in the 1st-rate Caledonia until 1811, with promotion to admiral of the White on 31 July 1810. Thereafter he carried no further public duties apart from acting in 1814 as on
e of the British peace commissioners negotiating with the United States at the end of the War of 1812. He was promoted to admiral of the Red on 4 June 1814 and admiral of the fleet on 22 July 1830, when he was one of the three senior officers in the Navy promoted to this rank to mark the accession of William IV [11]. He had married in 1788, but had no children and his peerage became extinct. He was buried in St Peter’s churchyard, Iver, Buckinghamshire.

  GEORGE V

  GEORGE FREDERICK ERNEST ALBERT, HM King of Great

  Britain and Ireland, Emperor of India (1866–1936) [64]

  Prince George of Wales, the second son of the Prince and Princess of Wales (later Edward VII [44] and Queen Alexandra) was born at Marlborough House, London, on 3 June 1865. He was intended for a career in the Navy and joined the training ship Britannia at Dartmouth in September 1877. Together with his elder brother, Prince Albert Victor, later Duke of Clarence, George was appointed to the corvette Bacchante in 1879 and went round the world in the Flying Squadron between 1880 and 1882. Cabinet reservations at the idea of risking at sea the two princes in direct line of succession to the throne were over-ruled by the Queen. The fears of her Ministers were borne out when Bacchante lost contact with the squadron for some days in a violent storm in the Indian Ocean in May 1881 and was saved from broaching-to only by her commander, an experienced seaman, using the crew as a human sail. Some on this cruise, including George himself, reported sighting the phantom “Flying Dutchman”. Neither prince was spared the rigorous duty and bullying that went with a naval education of the times, and George later felt he had been treated the more harshly because of his royal blood. He was promoted to midshipman on 8 January 1880 and appointed to the corvette Canada, on the North America and West Indies station, in 1883. He became an acting sublieutenant on 3 June 1884, at the beginning of his promotion courses, and a lieutenant on 8 October 1885. He then served in the Mediterranean Fleet from 1886 to 1888, successively in the battleships Thunderer, Dreadnought and Alexandra, before returning home to serve in the battleship Northumberland in the Channel in 1889. Always close to his parents, and especially to his mother, George did not relish these long absences from his family and was much afflicted by home-sickness. Ashore, he consoled himself in the usual manner of princes.