Sir Peter Parker was appointed in October 1773 to the 2nd-rate Barfleur, part of the squadron held in permanent readiness at Portsmouth. In October 1775, after the outbreak of the American War of Independence, he became a commodore, with his broad pendant in a new Bristol;, a 4th-rate, ordered to the North America station. With transports carrying 2,500 men, he sailed to join General Sir Henry Clinton in support of a loyalist uprising in the Carolinas, but was delayed by storms and failed to arrive in time. He then persuaded Clinton to attack Charleston, South Carolina, on 28 June 1776. The troops were landed, but when they failed to reach the harbour defences Parker attacked with his ships alone. After several hours fighting, he was driven off with the loss of a frigate and nearly two hundred casualties, including forty-six dead on his own flagship. He himself was wounded in the thigh and was reported by the colonial newspapers as having lost his breeches. In the 4th-rate Chatham, he later took part in the capture of Long Island, New York, in August 1776 and of Rhode Island in December 1776.
Parker was promoted to rear-admiral of the Blue on 20 May 1777 and took up appointment as C-in-C, Jamaica, at the end of the year. He became a rear-admiral of the White on 23 January 1778, rear-admiral of the Red on 29 January 1778, vice-admiral of the Blue on 29 March 1779 and vice-admiral of the White on 26 September 1780. As hostilities in American waters drew to a close, he returned home in the 2nd-rate Sandwich in August 1782. His ship also carried the French Admiral De Grasse, taken prisoner at the Battle of The Saints (Iles des Saintes) (12 April 1782). Parker was awarded a baronetcy on 13 January 1783 and was promoted to admiral of the Blue on 24 September 1787. He sat as Member of Parliament for Seaford, Sussex, from 1784 to 1786, and for Maldon, Essex, from 1787 to 1790. At the beginning of the French Revolutionary War in 1794, Parker was appointed C-in-C, Portsmouth, where he remained, with promotion to admiral of the White on 12 April 1794 until 16 September 1796, when he became admiral of the fleet. He died at his house in Weymouth Street, London, on 21 December 1811.
He had a reputation for making full use of his powers of patronage, exemplified by his appointment in March 1779 of his son Christopher as a captain of a frigate at the age of 18, and of his nephew George as a lieutenant at the age of 13. He was also responsible for the early advancement of Horatio Nelson (nephew of the then Comptroller of the Navy) by taking him into his own flagship in July 1778 and giving him command of the brig Badger five months later. His wife Margaret, a member of the influential Nugent family, seems also to have taken a kindly interest in the young Nelson, and Sir Peter Parker was chief mourner at Nelson’s funeral. They had one daughter and a son, Christopher, who, after his early promotion, rose to become a vice-admiral and predeceased his father in 1804. Christopher Parker’s son, who inherited the baronetcy, became a captain in the Navy and was killed in a shore action during the American War of 1812.
PARKER
Sir WILLIAM, 1st Baronet, GCB (1781–1866) [26]
William Parker, the third son of a country gentleman, George Parker, of Almington, Staffordshire, and the grandson of Sir Thomas Parker, an influential Whig politician, was born on 1 December 1781. George Parker’s sister, Martha, married Captain Sir John Jervis, the future Earl of St Vincent [12]. William Parker joined the Navy on 5 March 1793, shortly after the beginning of the French Revolutionary War, as captain’s servant in the 3rd-rate Orion, commanded by Captain (later Admiral Sir) John Duckworth. After serving in this ship in the West Indies, he took part in the major fleet action of the Glorious First of June (1 June 1794) in the Channel. In March 1795 Parker followed Duckworth to the 3rd-rate Leviathan in which he returned to the West Indies and was present at the capture of numerous enemy vessels as well as the unsuccessful British attack on the French colonial port of Leogane, Haiti (21–23 March 1796).
Parker became an acting lieutenant in the 5th-rate Magicienne, followed by appointment in May 1798 as acting lieutenant in the 2nd-rate Queen, flagship of the C-in-C, West Indies, Sir Hyde Parker (no relation). He commanded successively the 6th-rate Volage and the sloops Amaranthe and Pelican, and was confirmed as lieutenant on 5 September 1799. He was promoted to commander on 10 October 1799 and was briefly in command of the 4th-rate Abergavenny before being appointed to the sloop Stork in November 1799. He served in this ship until 1801, serving in the West Indies, the Channel and the Mediterranean, taking the French packet Légere and supporting the capture of the Spanish privateer El Cantara. In October 1801 he became captain of the 5th-rate Oiseau, shortly before the armistice with France leading to the Treaty of Amiens (27 March 1802). An interesting legal problem arose in that Admiralty regulations required courts-martial to be composed of all captains present in the harbour where the proceedings took place. On the other hand, persons not having reached the age of legal majority (at that time twenty-one years) could not sit in judgement. As Parker was aged only nineteen on his first promotion to captain, the problem was solved by sending his ship to sea so that a court-martial could be convened in his absence.
Escaping the post-war reductions, Parker was given command of the 5th-rate Alarm in March 1802, where he remained until appointed in October 1802 to the 5th-rate Amazon, which he commanded for the next nine years. Following the renewal of hostilities with France in May 1803 he served under Nelson in the Mediterranean off Toulon, and was with him in the pursuit of the French fleet to the West Indies and back during the summer of 1805. His prizes included three privateers and a share in the French ship of the line Marengo and frigate Belle Poule, taken in March 1806. He was mentioned in despatches for this action and for landing with a party of seamen at Ferrol in the summer of 1809 to support the Spanish insurgency in Galicia. In June 1810, while Amazon underwent a lengthy refit at Plymouth, Parker married Frances Biddulph, the youngest daughter of a wealthy baronet. During 1811 he served in the blockade of Brest and captured the privateer Cupidon. After the worn-out Amazon was paid off in January 1812 Parker spent the rest of the Napoleonic war on half-pay. He used his prize money to buy an estate, Shenstone Lodge, near Lichfield, Staffordshire, a county where he had family connections, and settled there with his young wife to raise a family of two sons and six daughters.
Parker returned to sea in October 1827. He declined the offered appointment of C-in-C, Cape of Good Hope, on the grounds that no officer who had not previously commanded a ship of the line should serve as a commodore or flag officer, so instead was given the 3rd-rate Warspite. He then served in the Mediterranean under Vice-Admiral Edward Codrington and was on the coast of Greece during 1828, at a time of international tension with Turkey arising from the Greek War of Independence. Parker returned home late in 1828 and was appointed to the royal yacht Prince Regent. He became a rear-admiral of the Blue on 22 July 1830 and second-in-command in the Channel, again serving under Codrington, in April 1831, with his flag in the 1st-rate Prince Regent. Between September 1831 and June 1834, with his flag in the 2nd-rate Asia, he commanded a squadron in the mouth of the Tagus, during a civil war in Portugal ending with the accession of the British-supported Queen Maria II. He became a KCB in July 1834.
From July to November 1834 Sir William Parker was a Lord Commissioner of the Admiralty in the Board headed by Lord Auckland. When Sir Robert Peel became Prime Minister in December 1834 a new Board was formed, but in April 1835, after the fall of Peel’s administration, Parker returned to the Admiralty with Auckland. He became rear-admiral of the White on 10 January 1837 and rear-admiral of the Red on 28 July 1838. Early in May 1841, during the First China War, he was appointed C-in-C, East Indies, with his flag in the 3rd-rate Cornwallis. He arrived at Canton (Guangzhou), on the south coast of China in July 1841, where, as the senior officer, he took over the supreme command of British forces there from Major General Hugh Gough. Parker was promoted to vice-admiral of the Blue on 23 November 1841. He got on well with the fire-eating Gough and both officers personally took part in combined operations along the coast of southern China and up the Yangtse River until the end of hostilities in August 1842.
/> Parker was granted a substantial pension in April 1844 and returned home with the award of a baronetcy in December 1844. He was appointed C-in-C, Mediterranean, with his flag in the 1st-rate Hibernia, in February 1845 and was given the additional command of the Channel Squadron in May 1846, at a period of renewed civil war in Portugal. Auckland, who returned to the Admiralty as a member of Lord John Russell’s Cabinet in July 1846, then offered him the post of first naval lord, but he declined on the grounds that his health was not up to the work and that his eyesight could not cope with working by candlelight.
He became a vice-admiral of the White on 9 November 1846 and remained at sea (shifting his flag to the 1st-rate Queen in September 1849) until April 1852, becoming a vice-admiral of the Red on 8 January 1848 and an admiral of the Blue on 29 April 1851. Parker gained a reputation as an exacting C-in-C, demanding the highest standards of smartness in his fleet’s sailing drill, forbidding officers in his flagship to use tobacco and encouraging officers to wear caps with slashed peaks (a style he pioneered, and which on that account became known as “promotion peaks”). He became an admiral of the White on 17 September 1853 and was C-in-C, Plymouth, from May 1854 to May 1857. During the Crimean War his advice was sought by the Admiralty on a proposal by the Earl of Dundonald (more famous as the dashing frigate captain, Lord Cochrane) for using poison gas against the Russian Baltic fleet. He became admiral of the Red on 25 June 1858 and admiral of the fleet on 27 April 1863. Parker died of bronchitis on 13 November 1866 and was buried in the parish church of St John the Baptist, Shenstone. He was succeeded as second baronet by his son, a captain (later admiral) in the Navy.
PHIPPS-HORNBY
GEOFFREY THOMAS, see HORNBY, Sir GEOFFREY
THOMAS PHIPPS [45]
PHILIP
HRH Duke of Edinburgh, KG, KT, OM, GBE, AC, QSO
(1921–) [99]
Prince Philip of Greece was born in Corfu on 10 June 1921, the only son in a family of five children born to Prince Andrew of Greece and his wife Princess Alice, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Prince Andrew was a younger brother of King Constantine I of the Hellenes, and a nephew of Alexandra, the queen of Edward VII [44] and daughter of Christian IV of Denmark. Princess Alice, in her youth, was said to be the most beautiful princess in Europe. A woman of determined character, who overcame the challenge of being born profoundly deaf, she devoted much of her life to charitable activities and worked with the Red Cross during the Balkan War of 1912 nursing sick and wounded Greek soldiers. In later life she became a nun and founded the Greek Orthodox Christian Sisterhood of Martha and Mary. Her father, Prince Louis of Battenberg [74], made his career in the Royal Navy and became First Sea Lord but, after the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, was driven to resign from this office on account of his German origins. When the British Royal Family disclaimed its German titles in 1917 Battenberg anglicized his name as Mountbatten and was granted a peerage as the Marquess of Milford Haven. The marquess’s younger son, Lord Louis Mountbatten, later created Earl Mountbatten of Burma [102], was thus a brother of Princess Alice of Greece and the uncle of her only son, Prince Philip.
Prince Andrew, narrowly escaping execution at the hands of Greek republicans for his part in a disastrous campaign against Turkey, went into exile with his family in 1923. After escaping to Italy on the British cruiser Calypso, they took refuge with relatives in Paris, from where Philip was sent, in 1930, to Cheam Preparatory School. In 1934, he spent two terms in Germany, before going to a new school at Gordonstoun in the Scottish Highlands, founded by a prominent German educationalist. His four sisters, one of whom was later killed with her husband and children in an air crash in 1937, all married German princes.
Prince Philip decided on a naval career and became a cadet at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, in May 1939. On the advice of Lord Louis Mountbatten, he sought naturalization as a British subject when the Second World War began in September 1939, but found that this process had been placed in abeyance for the duration of hostilities. Like his contemporaries, he looked for employment in an active theatre of war, but as the national of a neutral state, it was judged that it would be politically embarrassing if he fell into Axis hands. This was compounded by the circumstance that, like other princes whose family ties stretched across international borders, his three surviving brothers-in-law were serving in the German Armed Forces, where one was later killed and two wounded. He was appointed to the battleship Ramillies on convoy escort duty in the Indian Ocean, and when Ramillies was temporarily sent to the Mediterranean, was transferred successively to the cruisers Kent and Shropshire on the East Indies station. In October 1940 the Italian invasion of Greece brought his native country into the war. This allowed his subsequent appointment to the battleship Valiant in the Mediterranean, in which he served at the battle of Matapan (28 March 1941) and was mentioned in despatches.
Prince Philip subsequently served in a troopship on passage home and to the West Indies, where, with others, he volunteered to take the place of a group of Chinese stokers who had deserted, and qualified as a coal-trimmer. After attending his promotion courses and enjoying occasional leave visits to the Royal Family at Windsor, he was promoted to lieutenant on 16 January 1942 and was appointed to the destroyer Wallace, based at Rosyth. During 1943 his ship was deployed to the Mediterranean and supported the invasion of Sicily (July 1943). In 1944 Philip was appointed first lieutenant of the destroyer Whelp and joined the Eastern Fleet. He served in this ship in the British Pacific Fleet in the closing stages of the war against Japan and was present at the signing of the instrument of Japanese surrender in the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay (2 September 1945).
Prince Philip briefly commanded Whelp in reserve after returning home in 1946, followed by another brief appointment to the recruit training establishment Glendower, Pwllheli, Carnarvonshire, from which he transferred to the petty officers training school Royal Arthur, Corsham, Wiltshire. His name became increasingly linked with that of his distant cousin Princess Elizabeth, heiress to George VI [86]. After disclaiming his title as a prince of Greece and renouncing his place in the succession to the Greek throne, he was granted British citizenship in March 1947. Largely through the influence of his uncle, who had made the name famous by his exploits, he took the surname Mountbatten. Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten and Princess Elizabeth were married in Westminster Abbey on 20 November 1947. On the following day he was granted the style of Royal Highness and was created Duke of Edinburgh, a title dormant since the death of Queen Victoria’s second son, Alfred [49]. Edinburgh returned to sea in October 1949 in the destroyer flotilla leader Chequers in the Mediterranean and was promoted to lieutenant-commander on 16 July 1950. From August 1950 to July 1951 he was the commanding officer of the frigate Magpie. Princess Elizabeth succeeded to the throne on 6 February 1952 and Edinburgh’s naval career came to an end as he took up the duties of a Royal consort. He became an admiral of the fleet, a field marshal in the Army and a marshal of the Royal Air Force on 15 January 1953. His many interests included a special concern for young people, exemplified by his creation of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme to encourage endeavour and self-reliance. In 1957, marking their tenth wedding anniversary, Queen Elizabeth II created her husband a prince of the United Kingdom.
POLE
Sir CHARLES MORICE, 1st Baronet, GCB (1757–1830) [15]
Charles Pole was born on 18 January 1757, the second son of Reginald Pole, Esquire, of Stoke Damerell, Devonshire. He attended the Royal Naval Academy, Portsmouth, from 1770 until 1772 and was then appointed to the 5th-rate Thames. In December 1773 he joined the 4th-rate Salisbury in which he served in the East Indies. After the outbreak of the American War of Independence he was promoted to lieutenant on 26 June 1777 in the 6th-rate Seahorse. In 1778 he was appointed to the 4th-rate Ripon under Commodore Sir Edward Vernon, C-in-C, East Indies, and served at sea against a French squadron off Pondicherry (9 August 1778), and ashore in the subsequent siege of Pondicherry (capitulated 17 Oct
ober 1778). He was then given command of the sloop Cormorant and sent home with the despatches as a mark of distinction. On 22 March 1779 Pole became captain of the 1st-rate Britannia, flagship of the second-in-command in the Channel. In 1780 he was appointed to the 6th-rate Hussar, in which he was wrecked off Hell Gates, New York. He was acquitted at the subsequent court-martial and given the 5th-rate Success. In May 1782, while escorting the storeship Vernon to the blockaded fortress of Gibraltar, he encountered the large Spanish frigate Santa Catalina in the Bay of Biscay on 16 March 1782. Determined to save Vernon, he approached under Dutch colours, and then revealed his true ones and opened fire simultaneously. After an engagement lasting some hours, the Spanish ship was dismasted and surrendered. She later sank after being set on fire on the approach of an unidentified squadron, which, too late, was found to be British. Pole thus not only lost his prize-money but was left with so many prisoners as to threaten the security of his own ship.
After the conclusion of hostilities in 1783 he commanded the 3rd-rate Crown for three years and then in 1788 was appointed groom of the bedchamber to Prince William, Duke of Clarence [11]. During 1790, when there was a threat of war with Spain over the possession of Nootka Sound (Vancouver, British Columbia), Pole was appointed to the 5th-rate Melampus and deployed to observe the French fleet at Brest. In 1791 he commanded the 3rd-rate Illustrious and in 1792 he married Henrietta, the daughter of John Goddard, a wealthy merchant of Woodford Hall, Essex.
Following the outbreak of the French Revolutionary War in February 1793 Pole was given command of the 3rd-rate Colossus and sent to the Mediterranean, where he captured the small French privateer Vanneau on 6 June 1793 and served from August to December 1793 in the blockade of Toulon. During 1794 he was with Colossus in the Channel fleet, off Ushant. He became rear-admiral of the Blue on 1 June 1795 and from November 1795 to October 1796 was second-in-command on the West Indies station, with Colossus as his flagship. In March 1797 he was appointed first captain (captain of the fleet) in the 1st-rate Royal George, flagship of Lord Bridport (Sir Alexander Hood) as C-in-C in the Channel. A month later he was despatched in haste from Portsmouth to inform Earl Spencer, First Lord of the Admiralty, that the Channel fleet was in a state of mutiny. Pole returned with a party of flag officers sent to negotiate with the seamen’s delegates, but when his senior officer, Vice-Admiral Sir Alan Gardner, threatened to hang every fifth man in the fleet, the talks ended in a scuffle and the negotiators were put ashore. He became a rear-admiral of the White on 14 February 1799 and joined the blockade of Rochefort, with his flag in Royal George.
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