J D Davies - Historian and Author

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Restoration navy

The Real Gentlemen Captains, Redux, Part I

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In the lead-up to my appearance on 13 March at Weymouth Leviathan, Britain’s first maritime literary festival, I thought I’d reblog some of my very earliest posts on this site, from November 2011, about some of the characters who will be making appearances during my talk. Here’s the first of them!

People often ask me to what extent the characters in the Quinton Journals, especially Matthew himself, are based on real people. I thought I’d use my next few blog posts to introduce some of the real-life individuals whose careers in Charles II’s navy provided the inspiration for Matthew and some of his adventures; and yes, occasionally the lives of these officers provide a few clues to some of the story lines in future books of the series! In future blogs I’ll also go on to detail some of the ‘tarpaulin’ officers who provided the inspiration for the character and career of Kit Farrell.

Captain Francis Digby – Probably born in about 1645, he was the second son of George Digby, second Earl of Bristol, one of Charles I’s most important (if catastrophic) advisors during the Civil War. He went to sea just after the Restoration, aged about fifteen, and fought at the Battle of Lowestoft in 1665 as a volunteer with Sir John Lawson, vice-admiral of the Red Squadron. In March 1666 he became lieutenant of the flagship Royal Charles, and his good service in that role during the Four Days Battle at the beginning of June led to his promotion to captain of the Fourth Rate frigate Jersey. His bravery is indicated by the fact that when the Jersey went in for repair after the St James’s day fight, Digby asked permission to go back to sea on another ship as a volunteer (a request rejected by the admiral, the grumpy old Duke of Albemarle). In 1667 he commanded the frigate Greenwich, which seems to have been given to him by King Charles II principally as a means of trying to restore the Digby family fortune, which had been ruined by the civil war. In 1668-9 he commanded the Third Rate Mountague in the Mediterranean. Digby’s manuscript journal for these commands, preserved at the British Library, reveals that despite his aristocratic background, he gradually became a highly competent seaman; on one occasion only his quick thinking prevented the fleet being wrecked on the North African coast.

Digby spent March and April 1672 in France, ‘fine tuning’ the naval agreement by which a combined Anglo-French fleet would attack the Dutch to fulfil the terms of the secret Treaty of Dover (1670). Digby met Louis XIV at Versailles on 1 March and during the next few days had several meetings with the king’s chief minister, Colbert. Not surprisingly the French rejected out of hand Digby’s suggestion that their captains and ships should have English commissions and colours, on the grounds that ‘his Christian Majesty never could suffer his captains to take commissions but from himself’. Despite this and some other disagreements, Digby’s negotiations were complete by 12 March. After leaving Paris he undertook a tour of inspection to Brest and La Rochelle before returning to England to take command of the Second Rate Henry. Digby was apparently somewhat disappointed by this, believing that he was already qualified to be a flag officer; indeed, if he had lived there is little doubt that he would have been an admiral before the end of the third Anglo-Dutch war, as several men junior to him were promoted to such rank during it. But on 28 May 1672 the Dutch under Michiel De Ruyter launched a surprise pre-emptive attack on the Anglo-French fleet as it lay in Solebay. The Henry was in the admiral’s division of the Blue Squadron, which bore the brunt of the fighting; the flagship Royal James was burned by a fireship and her admiral, the Earl of Sandwich, killed. The Henry had the next highest number of casualties in the squadron, with 49 killed. Francis Digby was one of them. He was buried at Chenies in Buckinghamshire, the mausoleum of the Russell family, Earls and later Dukes of Bedford; his mother was a daughter of the fourth Earl.

Digby was one of the many suitors of Frances Stuart, the model for the original image of ‘Britannia’ and later the Duchess of Richmond. Digby’s pursuit of her, like King Charles’s own, proved to be hopeless. He was said to have been driven to distraction by her ‘cruelty’, and after his death at Solebay Dryden wrote ‘Farewell, Fair Armida’, a poignant epitaph to unrequited love:

Farewell, fair Armida, my joy and my grief!
In vain I have loved you, and hope no relief;
Undone by your virtue, too strict and severe,
Your eyes gave me love, and you gave me despair:
Now called by my honour, I seek with content
The fate which in pity you would not prevent:
To languish in love were to find, by delay,
A death that’s more welcome the speediest way.
On seas and in battles, in bullets and fire,
The danger is less than in hopeless desire;
My death’s wound you give me, though far off I bear
My fall from your sight—not to cost you a tear:
But if the kind flood on a wave should convey,
And under your window my body should lay,
The wound on my breast when you happen to see,
You’ll say with a sigh—it was given by me.

Pepys Show and Tell

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These days, I approach major exhibitions dealing with subjects I know something about with a considerable degree of trepidation. Maybe there’ll be massive omissions, or catastrophic errors of emphasis, that wreck the whole thing. Perhaps right-on organisers will have applied a gut-wrenchingly awful, unhistorical, and anachronistic interpretative slant. Maybe the layout of the exhibition space and/or the exhibits themselves will be disastrously misconceived. Perhaps it’ll pitch the subject matter in such a dumbed down, lowest-common-denominator way that it makes ITV’s Saturday night schedule look like The Ascent of Man. Maybe it’ll have one of those patronising audio tours voiced by an actress who failed the auditions for Downton Abbey. And so forth.

Consequently, I went along to the official opening of the National Maritime Museum’s new winter exhibition, Samuel Pepys: Plague, Fire and Revolution – aka #PepysShow – with somewhat ambivalent expectations. Quite apart from the issues I’ve listed above, there was the particularly awkward social dilemma that I knew several of those who had put the exhibition together. If it was truly awful, should I dare tell the truth in this blog? Should I risk being ostracised by those good folk, and being banned for ever from the gorgeous acres of Greenwich?

Probably the best exhibition bookshop in the world.
Probably the best exhibition bookshop in the world.

Fear not, gentle reader, all was well – for pretty much the first thing one sees on entering the shop at the entrance to the exhibition is my book Pepys’s Navy, prominently displayed.

Therefore, I can say categorically that this is the greatest exhibition that London – nay, the world – has witnessed since the much less impressive affair in the Crystal Palace in 1851.

In case any of you doubt my objectivity, I call as witnesses the other invitees and fellow members of the prawn sandwich brigade who attended the opening – although whether it’s appropriate to use that term in this instance might be doubtful, as one of them was the current Earl of Sandwich himself, who is surely the ultimate arbiter of whether something is or is not a prawn sandwich event. (Another of the attendees was Jeremy Paxman – who really does pull those facial expressions all the time, so it’s not just an affectation for the TV.)

Anyway, to the exhibition itself. Even laying aside the bias that I’ve now declared, this is very impressive on almost all criteria – beginning with the execution of Charles I (which Pepys famously bunked off school to witness) and running through the Commonwealth to the Restoration, where the focus switches to a thematic approach based on the principal interests of Pepys’ life. Cue sections on the royal court and mistresses, the theatre, science, London civic life, and so on. Many of the exhibits are absolutely fascinating, and often stunning – ranging from the very grand (such as Charles II’s huge coronation portrait) to the intimate (a snuffbox given to Nell Gwyn by Charles II) to the humbling (Sir Isaac Newton’s telescope) to the globally important (e.g. the letter of invitation to William of Orange from the ‘immortal seven’). Several of them gave even this jaded old veteran of seventeenth century studies pause for thought, and some new insights into the period. For example, James II’s wedding outfit and light cavalry armour (the latter being the last armour ever made for a British monarch) made me realise that he was much shorter and slighter than I’d always imagined him to be. You really do learn something new every day.

The centrepieces of the exhibition, both in a thematic sense and in terms of their physical placing within the space available, are the displays on the Plague – possibly a bit understated – and the Great Fire of London, with a decent CGI show accompanied by readings from Pepys’ diary, together with a large section on Pepys and the Navy, which obviously gladdened my heart. The latter includes the superb contemporary model of the St Michael, and the great Verrio painting of ‘The Sea Triumph of Charles II’, originally from Windsor Castle; both of these will be featuring heavily in my new book, Kings of the Sea, so it was great to see them ‘in the flesh’. Pepys’ trip to Tangier in 1683 is also well covered, and his shorthand ‘Tangier journal’ is on display. However, this serves to emphasise the most obvious omission from the exhibition – namely, the diary itself. Here, though, the organisers were hamstrung by Pepys, who specified that the contents of his library at Magdalene College, Cambridge, the diary included, should never leave the premises. Honestly, some people just show no consideration whatsoever for those who come after them…

If I was going to be nitpicking, it wouldn’t really be about the omissions – after all, these are principally a matter of interpretation and personal opinion, but I’d have liked to have seen, say, more on Pepys’ family background, and, obviously, a lot more on his dealings with the officers and men of the navy (e.g. couldn’t there have been just one more of the ‘Flagmen of Lowestoft’ portraits, say the one of Sir William Berkeley, to flag up the ‘gentlemen vs tarpaulins’ issue that occupied Pepys for so long?). But the exhibition complies with the modern orthodoxy that such things have to be minimalist: hence lots of empty space, both between exhibits and on the walls, and very brief explanatory panels (although, thankfully, the latter aren’t dumbed down, and are more Ascent of Man than X Factor). I know this is probably heresy in museum circles these days, but surely it’s possible to fit in a bit more without reverting to Pitt Rivers Museum jumble?

Still, none of this detracts from an exhibition that undoubtedly has to be rated a triumphant success (as does the splendid accompanying catalogue), and which should fulfil the vital objective, as far as I’m concerned, of raising awareness of the late seventeenth century as a whole, and especially its naval history. And, of course, if only a tiny number of those who visit it buy that rather good looking book on Pepys’s Navy…ahem.

 

 

 

 

The Lost Journal of Captain Greenvile Collins, Part 1

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This is the first part of an article that I wrote in the early 1990s, and which, for one reason or another, never made it to its intended home in an academic journal. I originally published it on my old website, but re-posting it in the blog seemed to be a better way of bringing it to a wider audience. I’ve not attempted to update the references in the light of new work undertaken, and new material published, since I revised it slightly in 2004, although I know that Collins is the focus of ongoing research. When I originally wrote the piece, too, the National Library of Wales didn’t permit photography. It now does, so at some point I hope to get back to Aberystwyth to take some pictures of the journal (which contains many examples of Collins’ splendid draftsmanship) and post them on this site. The second part will be posted here next week.

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The fame of Captain Greenvile Collins rests chiefly on three voyages. Firstly, his journal aboard the Speedwell in 1676 records an important, if abortive, English attempt to discover the North West Passage, an attempt that came to grief on the rocks of Novaya Zemlya. Secondly, his journal in the Mediterranean aboard various ships between 1676 and 1679 provides an important record of the wars against the North African corsairs. The journal is amply illustrated and suggests Collins’s skill as cartographer, navigator and amateur artist; it was examined in detail by Miss Florence Dyer in an article in the Mariner’s Mirror of 1928[i]. Thirdly, from 1681 onwards Collins was tasked with ‘the first comprehensive survey of the coasts of Britain’ as commander of the Merlin Yacht. In effect he became the first hydrographer royal, and his charts of the coasts of England and Scotland were published in 1693 as Great Britain’s Coasting Pilot, a seminal event in the history of navigation and hydrography.

The cover of Great Britain's Coasting Pilot
The cover of Great Britain’s Coasting Pilot

Collins himself received further coverage from Stuart Mountfield in the Mariner’s Mirror in 1970; a concise biography of him by Elizabeth Baigent appears in the recent Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; and the Coasting Pilot has even received that ultimate twenty-first century accolade, a ‘pop history’ TV programme devoted to it[ii]. Yet all of these authorities are unaware of an important interlude in Collins’s career, and Dyer implied that he did not serve at sea between his brief command of the Lark in 1679 and his commencement of the great survey of Britain’s coasts in 1681[iii]. In fact, Collins returned to the Mediterranean in the intervening years as master of the frigate Leopard. In many respects this post turned out to be less eventful than his previous spell of Mediterranean service; unlike the ships on which he had served in 1676-9, namely the Charles Galley, James Galley and Newcastle, the Leopard was not directly involved in the ongoing war against the Algerine corsairs and spent most of her time in the normal routine of convoy work. On the other hand, the Leopard’s cruise was of peculiar significance to contemporaries because she was carrying Henry Fitzroy, duke of Grafton, the seventeen-year-old second eldest of the surviving illegitimate sons of King Charles II[iv]. Grafton had already served in the Mediterranean as a volunteer for over a year, and had displayed a genuine interest in navigation which impressed many, including his father and Samuel Pepys. Early in 1680, therefore, it was decided to send him to sea again for a year to improve his knowledge, and it was said that the king intended him for the post of Lord High Admiral on his return[v]. Grafton’s doings as a whole, and such a high profile putative appointment, were especially significant as Charles II was then embroiled in the ‘exclusion crisis’, the effort to remove the Catholic duke of York from the succession in favour of Grafton’s elder half brother, the duke of Monmouth. It is possible (although there is no firm evidence to support this) that Collins, who already possessed a considerable reputation as a navigator, was deliberately selected for the Leopard’s voyage to ensure that Grafton could learn from the best tutor available. As will be seen, it is rather more certain that the interaction of Grafton, Pepys and King Charles II was the key to explaining the choice of Collins to undertake the coastal survey, and the previously unknown voyage of the Leopard gives a new perspective to his appointment.

Henry Fitzroy, 1st Duke of Grafton
Henry Fitzroy, 1st Duke of Grafton

The fact that Collins’ journal for the Leopard’s Mediterranean voyage has remained unnoticed by maritime historians can be attributed to its somewhat chequered provenance and rather unlikely current resting place. It was deposited at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, in 1957 by its then owner, the Reverend Elias Hughes of Blaenau Ffestiniog (later the rector of Llanfair Mathafarn Eithaf in the diocese of Bangor), and is now catalogued there as MS Deposit 38B[vi]. In many respects, the Leopard journal is similar to Collins’ previous Mediterranean journal. In particular, it contains several more splendid examples of Collins’ skill as a hydrographer and draughtsman, including both full-page charts and smaller illustrations of anchorages and towns. The format of the two journals is practically identical, with the Leopard journal again providing ample evidence of Collins’ technical expertise as a navigator. However, the very different services of the ship (compared to his previous Mediterranean voyage) give the Leopard journal its distinct importance. Her cruise took her to the Aegean, enabling Collins to record his impressions of Smyrna (Izmir), the Greek islands and the approaches to the Dardanelles. Moreover, her convoy duties provide interesting and important insights into the organisation of Britain’s (and, to a degree, other states’) maritime trade in the Mediterranean during the 1680s, a period when the resurgent Ottoman Turks were advancing once again in the jihad that would carry them to the gates of Vienna in 1683.

The Leopard (possibly; identification not certain). National Maritime Museum, with thanks to Frank Fox
The Leopard (possibly; identification not certain). National Maritime Museum, with thanks to Frank Fox

Collins received his warrant as master of the Leopard on 7 January 1680 and joined the ship at Sheerness on the thirteenth. The next weeks were spent entering men, taking in stores and making all the other necessary preparations for a Mediterranean voyage. On 24-25 January the ship sailed into the Hope, between Erith and Gravesend, and on the twenty-seventh a change of command took place when Henry Killegrew, the ship’s captain since the beginning of the month, was transferred to the Foresight, her intended consort for the Mediterranean voyage, to be replaced by one of the navy’s most senior and experienced sea-officers, Sir John Berry – another move which might have been designed to give the duke of Grafton the best possible maritime education[vii]. The Leopard sailed on 14 February in company with four Levant Company ships bound for Smyrna, and moved slowly round to the Downs, where she anchored on the twenty-first[viii].  She lay in the Downs for the next month, eventually sailing on 21 March with the Foresight and eighteen merchantmen. After a brief stopover at Plymouth, the convoy proceeded south. On 5 April it passed Cape St Vincent, and on the following day Killigrew was detached with five merchant ships for Cadiz. The Leopard and the rest of the convoy proceeded on to Tangier, England’s isolated North African outpost, and anchored there on the seventh. They found a city under siege. The Moors were surrounding Charles Fort, defended by 150 soldiers with six months’ provisions, and attempting to undermine its defences. To help defend the city and its outlying forts, the Mediterranean or Straits fleet under Admiral Arthur Herbert lay in the anchorage, a fleet then comprising the third rate Rupert, the fourth rates Bristol (Herbert’s flagship), Hampshire, Charles Galley and Adventure, along with the fifth rate Swan[ix]. The Leopard was independent of Herbert’s command and sailed from the beleaguered colony on the ninth in company with eleven merchantmen. At night they encountered the Hampshire and Adventure, which had left Tangier earlier and ‘had Chaced an Algiereene into the Straits mouth, but [he] gott away in a Calme with his Oares’. After brief stopovers at Malaga on the tenth and Alicante on the fourteenth, the Leopard and her charges proceeded east into the Mediterranean.

Tangier under English rule, by Wenceslas Hollar
Tangier under English rule, by Wenceslas Hollar

Throughout the voyage, Collins noted the inadequacy of the contemporary state of knowledge of navigation. When the little fleet passed Toro or Touro, at the southern tip of Sardinia (and which even Collins mistakenly assumed to be an island until he learned better on the return journey), he observed that ‘from which Isle to Cabrera I have made 81 leagues meridian distance, which is more than our English Chartes make it’; off Cape Bon, ‘we found the ship much to the northward of our expectation’; at Cape Passaro, ‘note that the land lyeth more southerly than it is layd down in our Chartes…note that from Malta to Pantaleria the course is more southerly then laid downe in our Chartes’[x]. Collins also took care to note the peculiarities of the anchorages that they passed. Off Cape Passaro, for example, he noted that ‘there is good anchoring to the Northward of the Cape just under the Castell where small vessalls doe proteck them selves from the Turkish Pyretts’[xi]. Meanwhile, the size of the fleet had diminished as merchant ships sailed away to their destinations. When a pink left them off Passaro on 22 April, bound for Venice, the Leopard and Foresight were left with only five Levant Company ships in their convoy. This fleet passed Cape Matapan on the twenty-seventh and began to make its way into the Aegean. On 1 May Killigrew was again detached, ‘being ordered by Sir John Berry to convoy the Smyrna Merchant and the Primrose as far as the Dardanelles in their way for Constantinople’, while the Leopard and the remaining merchant ships sailed east-north-east between ‘Xio’ and ‘Ipsera’ (Khios and Psará), observing three galleys rowing ‘under Xio’. On the following day, shortly after encountering the Dutch Symrna fleet beginning its journey home, the English ships came to anchor at Smyrna.

Sir John Berry
Sir John Berry

The Leopard lay in the anchorage for over a fortnight. The Foresight returned on the seventh, the same day that Collins noted ‘past by us a Merchant Galley which came from Alexandria and went in for Smyrna’, but for many of the English officers and local merchants the visit was evidently an excuse for socialising, a normal state of affairs rendered abnormal by the presence of the king’s son. The English consul and several merchants were quick to make their way to dinner on the Leopard, and Grafton subsequently went ashore incognito to visit the consul’s country house, several miles inland[xii]. The social round ended on 19 May when the Leopard, Foresight and the merchant ship Unity sailed for Tenedos. On the following morning they saw a fleet of thirty-one galleys ‘under ye shoar of Mettelena’ (Mitilini, or Lesbos)[xiii]. The galleys began to pursue the English vessels, which cleared their decks and kept on a northerly course, but the lack of wind permitted the galley fleet to catch them by ten o’clock. The flagship made a signal to speak with the English commander, and Berry despatched his lieutenant, John George, to her. The ‘Admirall Pasha’ of the Turkish fleet demanded to know why the English ships did not salute him, and requested to speak directly to Berry and Killigrew. Berry refused, stating that ‘it was not the Custome of the King of England’s captains to goe out of their ships’, but he then conferred with Killigrew on the advisability of saluting the admiral, ‘for feare they might offer some abuse on our merchants or their shipps’, and an eleven-gun salute was fired. No reply was received, and the galleys went away satisfied. This interesting incident provides evidence that English naval officers of the late seventeenth century were not always as rigorous in enforcing the punctilios of saluting and the concept of British ‘sovereignty of the seas’ as has sometimes been assumed: on several other occasions, captains in the Mediterranean saluted foreign forces because they were concerned that trade might suffer[xiv]. Collins’ private account of the deliberations between Berry and Killigrew suggests that this was a genuine concern, not just a convenient excuse for preferring discretion to valour; but perhaps at the back of their minds, too, might have been the potentially hideous diplomatic ramifications (and the equally hideous implications for their own futures) if King Charles II’s son had been killed by an Ottoman cannonball.

(To be continued)

[i] F E Dyer, ‘The Journal of Grenvill [sic] Collins’, MM, 14 (1928), 197-219. The journal is catalogued at the National Archives, Kew (referred to hereafter as TNA), as Adm. 7/688.

[ii] S Mountfield, ‘Captain Greenvile Collins and Mr Pepys’, MM, 56 (1970), 85-96; E Baigent, ‘Collins, Greenvile’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004); Tern television for the BBC, ‘Map Man’, first broadcast on BBC2, October 2004.

[iii] Dyer, ‘Journal’, 216; Mountfield, ‘Collins’, 90.

[iv] Grafton only became the second eldest during his voyage on the Leopard, when his half-brother the earl of Plymouth died during the siege of Tangier in October 1680.

[v] A Descriptive Catalogue of the Naval Manuscripts in the Pepysian Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge, ed. J R Tanner, iv (Navy Records Society, 1923), 609; Bodleian Library, Oxford, Rawlinson MS A394, fos. 39-40, Pepys to Henry Shere, 14 August 1679; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1679-80, 397; A Fitzroy, Henry, Duke of Grafton, 1663-90 (London, 1921), 9.

[vi] National Library of Wales, Annual Report 1957-8 (Aberystwyth, 1958), 38. Its current ownership is uncertain: letter to the present writer from Dr David Moore, then assistant archivist at Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / The National Library of Wales, 23 July 1996.

[vii] Leopard, fourth rate, 54 guns, built at Deptford, 1659; Foresight, fourth rate, 48 guns, built at Deptford, 1650. For Killigrew and Berry, see the entries by J D Davies in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). Unless stated otherwise, all subsequent references are to Collins’ journal, which is not foliated or paginated. All dates are given as in the journal, ie Old Style.

[viii] Collins identifies the Levant Company ships only as ‘fouer Merchant ships’; the more precise identification is from TNA, Adm. 51/3880, pt 7, log of Leopard by Lieutenant John George. Though less detailed, George’s journal occasionally provides useful supplementary information. Further insights into the preparation of the Leopard for the voyage, and its early stages, can be gleaned from TNA, Adm. 106/347/133-147, Sir John Berry to the Navy Board, 10, 11, 13, 15, 21 February; 1, 13, 17 March, 1680.

[ix] The siege had begun on 25 March. Charles Fort, to the west of Tangier, was the largest in the defensive outer ring around the city. E M G Routh, Tangier: England’s Lost Atlantic Outpost (1912), 167-78; A J Smithers, The Tangier Campaign: The Birth of the British Army (2003), 102-14.

[x] Collins’ journal, 17, 20, 23 April, 20 September 1680.

[xi] Collins’ journal, 23 April 1680.

[xii] Collins’ journal, 3, 8 May 1680.

[xiii] George’s journal, 20 May 1680.

[xiv] E.g. TNA, SP 93/1/214 (State Papers, Foreign, Sicily and Naples), Sir William Jennens to Mr Dodrington, English consul at Venice, 22 Aug. 1671; SP 71/2/144 (State Papers, Foreign, Algiers), deposition by gunner of Quaker Ketch, Aug. 1676; SP 101/80, unfoliated (State Papers, Foreign, Tuscany), newsletter of 8 Feb. 1683. Cf J D Davies, Gentlemen and Tarpaulins: The Officers and Men of the Restoration Navy (Oxford, 1991), 63-4.

Saints and Soldiers: The Naming of Stuart Warships, c.1660-c.1714, Part 3.

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Time for the third and final part of my discussion of warship naming under the later Stuarts. This topic has generated some interesting discussion, so I hope to return to it one day, particularly as more and more interesting connections keep coming out of the woodwork. For example, and despite the fact that the information is available in Warlow’s book on Royal Navy shore establishments, I’d never really registered the fact that some of the most illustrious Stuart warship names, like Royal Charles, Royal James and Royal Prince, were revived for some of the bases established in liberated France and Germany at the end of World War II, and that the historically aware ships’ names committee of the day even added Royal Rupert. At the National Archives last Friday, I also had a look at the papers relating to the establishment in 1945 of HMS Pepys as the shore base for the Far East Fleet at Manus in the Philippines, plus some evidence suggesting that George V didn’t only reject Oliver Cromwell as a battleship name in 1911 but also vetoed Hero for some reason. Moreover, my statement in last week’s post that the navy never had a second ship called St Michael was very nearly wrong; it seems that the ‘fleet submarines’ contemplated in 1925 were to have been given saints’ names, and St Michael would have been the third of these. (The first two would have been St George and St Andrew, also revivals of great 17th century warship names, although there was also a strong campaign to use the name St Christopher too.)

But back to the seventeenth century and some real ships with real names! First, just to clarify one of the points in last week’s post – Pepys’s letter to the Navy Board on 14 April 1679 makes it clear that Charles II had given the name Sandwich to the Third Rate building at Deptford by mistake, as he had ‘from the first design of building the thirty ships determined upon conferring it upon one of the Second Rates out of the regard he is pleased out of his great goodness he bears to the memory of the late noble lord of that name’, so he ordered the Third to be renamed Hope and the Second building at Harwich to be named Sandwich. So – simultaneous proof that Charles II did have a rough plan for the names of at least some of the thirty ships from the very beginning, and that his memory sometimes failed him!

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King James II and VII named few ships during his brief reign, but those that he did select are deeply revealing of the king’s thinking and of the personality flaws that cost him his throne. The last of the ‘thirty new ships’, launched on 23 May 1685, was naturally named Coronation after the event that took place exactly thirty days earlier. Three Fourth Rates were launched in 1687; these were named Deptford, Sedgemoor and St Albans. The Sedgemoor harked back to the naming policy of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, when many ships were named after parliamentary victories of the civil war; but both then and in 1687, naming ships after battles in which Englishmen killed Englishmen was hardly a gesture of tolerance and reconciliation. Instead, the name Sedgemoor shows James exulting in his military triumph, and by doing so undoubtedly sending out a subliminal message to other potential rebels. (On the other hand, James did not change the name of the Monmouth; this contrasts with the situation in 1715, when the name of the new Fourth Rate Ormonde was swiftly changed to Dragon following the second Duke of Ormonde’s defection to the Jacobites.) The seemingly bland name St Albans, nominally honouring the town in Hertfordshire, is more likely to have been a reference to England’s first Christian martyr, and might have presaged a succession of other ‘saintly’ ship names if James’s Catholic rule had continued (thus corresponding more closely to naming policy in France and especially in Spain); limited confirmation of this might be the renaming of the Charles as the St George in October 1687, when the old Second Rate of that name was discarded.

The ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688-9, which saw the overthrow of James and the installation of his daughter Mary and son-in-law William as joint monarchs, was not accompanied by an immediate mass renaming of the fleet as had taken place in 1660. The legal and emotional ambiguities of James’s alleged ‘abdication’ of his thrones, with many of even the new regime’s supporters having doubts about its legitimacy, led to caution and an awareness of sensibilities; even the Royal James retained its name until 3 March 1691, when it was renamed Victory. Moreover, in 1660 the incoming regime took the view that all public acts of its predecessor were not only illegal, but were entirely null and void, as shown by the insistence on counting that year as the twelfth of the reign of King Charles II. There was no equivalent attempt to cancel an entire period of history after 1688; no-one denied that the reigns of Charles and James had happened[i]. The only other significant renamings of William’s reign and the early part of Anne’s took place when ships were rebuilt, and an opportunity was taken to acknowledge the new political realities. Thus in 1692 the Royal Prince became the Royal William, in 1693 the Royal Charles was renamed Queen for Mary II (there was already a Mary and a Mary Galley, so presumably Royal Mary would have caused too much confusion), in 1701 the Duke became the Prince George and in 1703 the St Andrew became the Royal Anne. Finally, the Albemarle was renamed Union on 29 December 1709 to commemorate the new Anglo-Scottish polity. However, the largest single batch of renamings of major warships before the Hanoverian succession occurred on 18 December 1706, when no fewer than three Second Rates were renamed to reflect the triumphs of the Duke of Marlborough: the St Michael became the Marlborough, the Royal Katherine became the Ramillies, while the Windsor Castle, which had already changed its name in short order from Princess Anne and previously from Duchess, became the Blenheim. These changes were undoubtedly part of the shower of rewards heaped upon Marlborough’s head when he returned to Britain on 26 November 1706 after the triumphant Ramillies campaign; his brother George, effective head of the Admiralty under Prince George of Denmark, was in a position to facilitate what must surely rank as the most notable naval tribute ever paid to a soldier[ii].

The great majority of new builds of the post-1689 era were seemingly given neutral geographical names, such as Devonshire, Dorsetshire, Cumberland and Torbay, all names that were repeated time and time again down the years. However, a few of these had a double meaning, for some, like Shrewsbury and Pembroke, also represented the titles of great political figures of the late Stuart regime, while Torbay, of course, was where William had landed on 5 November 1688. A small number of great ships were given names that harked back to the more overtly partisan and triumphalist policies of earlier eras: these included Association, named after the popular movement of 1696 that took oaths of loyalty in response to an assassination attempt on William III, Barfleur after Admiral Russell’s great victory over the French in 1692, and Boyne after William’s victory in Ireland in 1690. The question of who actually decided on the names of ships after the Glorious Revolution is also much less clear. The first warships launched in William’s reign were a group of five fifth rates, launched between December 1689 and March 1691, but it is apparent that the king could not have been personally responsible for naming most of these as he was campaigning in Ireland for much of that time. However, there is evidence to suggest that the Admiralty, too, did not name the larger ships (although it does seem to have named smaller ones), in which case it seems highly likely that at least some of the names were decided upon by William’s wife, and equal co-monarch, Queen Mary II.

(Finally, big ‘thank you’s’ to Rif Winfield, whose tremendous magnum opus on British warships in the age of sail provided much of the information on dates, etc, and to Richard Endsor, Frank Fox and Peter Le Fevre, who contributed much invaluable information and many stimulating ideas during our email exchanges about the subject matter in the three blogs on this topic.)

[i] However, it is interesting to speculate on whether the name Sedgemoor would have been retained; but that ship was lost on 2 January 1689, before the new regime was established. As it was, many names that were essentially personal to Charles and James were retained: these included the Coronation and the yachts named after Charles’s mistresses, such as the Fubbs and Cleveland.

[ii] The Duke of Wellington has had more ships named after himself and his victories (including the present HMS Iron Duke), but certainly not three on the same day.

A Hope and A Sandwich: The Naming of Stuart Warships, c1660-c1714, Part 2

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Back to post-Olympics reality! As promised, today’s post is the second part of my study of post-1660 warship names, originally intended for publication in an academic journal. I originally thought that this would be the concluding part, but I think the remaining material is too long for just one post, so I’ll postpone the conclusion until next week when I’ll actually be in north Wales on another research trip. However, I’ve also just realised that today, 13 August, marks the first anniversary of this Gentleman and Tarpaulins blog! I can’t really believe it’s been a year…just where did the time go? It would be remiss of me to let the occasion pass without thanking you, my readers, for your support over the past year, and for your stimulating and always greatly appreciated comments. As for future plans… Over the autumn and winter I’ll be building up to the publication of my latest books, Britannia’s Dragon: A Naval History of Wales and the fourth title in the Quinton series, The Lion of Midnight, so there’ll be plenty of posts tied in to them. I have a few ideas for the rest of the summer, notably an account of my sometimes surreal experiences as an officer in the RNR (CCF), but please let me know if there are any topics related to my writing or naval history generally that you’d like me to cover. Also, I’ve been wondering about having the occasional guest blogger; would people welcome this or not? I’d love to have your feedback!

Anyway, on with the matter in hand…

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In 1677 Parliament voted for the funds for a huge new construction programme of thirty ships, intended to eliminate the French navy’s perceived superiority in numbers, and the ships began to be named and launched from the spring of 1678 onwards. The first three names were essentially personal to Charles. Lenox was named after Charles, Duke of Richmond and Lennox, his illegitimate son by the Duchess of Portsmouth and thus by extension probably honours the mother as well, as the names Richmond and Portsmouth were already taken. The idiosyncratic spelling seems to have been Charles’s own, as both the ducal patent and all historical precedents spell the name ‘nn’. (A project has been launched to build a replica of Lenox at Deptford, inspired by the outstanding book on the ship by my good friend Richard Endsor.) The second, Restoration, was launched on 28 May 1678, the day before the eighteenth anniversary of the event her name commemorated. The third was named Hampton Court; arguably an unusual choice as Charles spent little time there, although he and Catherine of Braganza had honeymooned there in 1662. The Captain (July 1678) was presumably named in honour of the Duke of Monmouth, who had been appointed captain-general of the English army in April.

Before the next batch of ships was launched, the ‘Popish Plot’ had erupted. It is possible that Charles responded to this by selecting names that pandered more to Protestant and patriotic sentiment: hence Anne in November 1678, to honour a Protestant and legitimate member of the king’s family, Windsor Castle, after one of the monarchy’s most obvious symbols, and three names that recalled the Elizabethan navy, Eagle, Vanguard and Elizabeth itself. The Hope, launched on 3 March 1679, also recalled the triumph against the Spanish Armada (a galleon of that name had fought in the action), but the timing of the launch suggests that the name might have had a double meaning, possibly to reflect the optimism surrounding the meeting of the first new parliament for eighteen years (it opened on the 6th); this was short-lived, as relations between Charles and this parliament rapidly deteriorated. This might also provide an explanation for the suggestion that the Hope was originally intended to be named Sandwich. The new name, reflecting a very brief moment of optimism in national politics and Charles II’s own thinking, could have been assigned to the ship at short notice, with the original name of Sandwich then being reassigned to one of the hulls that would be launched a few weeks later.

No fewer than seven ships were named in May 1679, the month when Charles’s difficult relationship with the ‘first exclusion parliament’ culminated in its prorogation. One, the Sandwich, recalled an architect of the Restoration who had been killed at the same time of year, seven years before. Grafton was named after another of the king’s illegitimate sons; she was followed in June by Northumberland, named after his brother. Duchess might have been named for the Duchess of York, Mary of Modena, so her naming might have been a subtle gesture of defiance against the exclusionists; an alternative candidate would be the Duchess of Portsmouth, which would have been equally provocative. (Of course, it is equally possible that the name simply recognised the generic title.) Kent and Essex seem to be purely geographical names, honouring counties which made particularly substantial contributions to the Royal Navy, and they also revived the names of warships lost earlier in the reign. On the other hand, the name Essex might have had a double meaning which could have been a gesture towards Charles’s opponents – Arthur, Earl of Essex, was a key figure in the newly remodelled Privy Council that was meant to bring about national reconciliation (and his brother was First Lord of the Admiralty at the time), while the navy’s previous Essex had been named after Parliament’s captain-general in the Civil War.

The other ships launched in the summer of 1679 were the Berwick (May) and Stirling Castle (July). These seemingly odd choices, given Charles II’s well-known dislike of Scotland and its environs, might have been a response to the almost exactly contemporary covenanter rebellion that culminated in the battle of Bothwell Brig, i.e. emphasising the strength of the fortresses that faced potential rebels and thus by implication the strength of royal control of Scotland; the name Stirling Castle in particular could be an assertion of royal rule after the defeat of that rebellion, by choosing the name of one of the most obvious symbols of that rule in Scotland.

The two names given in September 1679, Expedition and Bredah, were fairly neutral, although the latter can only be a reference back to the Declaration of Breda in 1660 – a fairly odd name to choose at that point given the suspicion of Charles for failing to implement the terms he had agreed in that document, but with a new parliament due to meet in October (although it was later postponed), one that was again likely to be heavily influenced by urban dissenter opinion, it might have been his way of suggesting that he would now be more inclusive towards dissent, as he had originally promised at Breda.  The Burford, launched in November 1679, reverted to type in the sense that it was named after one of his illegitimate sons – but interestingly, it was not named after the eldest of the brood still not to have a ship named after him, the Duke of Southampton (who actually never received this honour, perhaps suggesting that Charles was never wholly confident of the paternity that he had acknowledged in 1670), but after a mere earl, his son by Nell Gwyn, ‘the Protestant whore’, so perhaps once more this was actually a subtle nod toward Protestant sensibilities. Pendennis was launched on 25 December 1679, shortly after Shaftesbury and the whigs began a campaign of petitioning to demand that the exclusion parliament should be allowed to sit. This name might have been a gesture of defiance by Charles toward his critics – Pendennis Castle was the last garrison in England to hold out for Charles I during the civil war, so the name might reflect a determination to persist against overwhelming odds and regardless of the consequences. When added to Windsor Castle, Stirling Castle and Berwick, there certainly seems to be some sort of running theme of deliberately linking ship names to the great fortresses of the kingdoms, i.e. the strongholds that existed to suppress discontent.

In the spring of 1680 Charles seemed to return to purely geographical names, christening two ships the Exeter and Suffolk. It is difficult to see a political rationale behind these names, but there is less difficulty with the other 1680 launch; in October, the month when parliament was finally due to convene, he named the Albemarle, recollecting another great figure of the restoration. Following the dissolution of the third exclusion parliament in March 1681, Charles could again select ship names that did not pander to or respond to the broader political situation, and which reflected his own aspirations. Thus he named the Ossory after one of his recently deceased close friends, the Duke probably in honour of his brother James, whose place in the succession had now been secured, and the Britannia and Neptune, reflecting the broader concern to assert his sovereignty over the seas that had been apparent since his restoration.

Of course, all of this begs a question – had Charles mapped out a rough, or even a pretty precise, idea of what he was going to call at least some of the thirty ships when the programme commenced, or did he make it up as he went along? Clearly some of the names were responses to events that couldn’t possibly have been envisaged in 1677-8 (Ossory, Coronation) but it’s possible that he decided on others in batches (e.g. a couple of palaces, some fortresses, Sandwich and Albemarle, his children, etc). The problem, of course, is that we are very unlikely ever to turn up any source material to enable us to come up with definitive answers, because the naming process essentially took place in Charles’s head. The lack of evidence in Pepys’s papers suggests that he, and later James II & VII, did not consult Pepys, perhaps the one man whom they might have been expected to consult on such matters.

(To be concluded)

 

Fubbs Yes, Mum No: The Naming of British Warships, c.1660-c.1714, Part 1

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The material in this week’s post (to be continued in a fortnight – I’ll be at the Olympic Stadium in a week’s time!) was originally intended as the basis for an article in an academic journal. Two things changed my mind, and made me decide to publish it here instead: firstly, I didn’t really have the time to do the research on the other themes I wanted to cover to turn it into a full-scale article; secondly, I’ve become increasingly disillusioned with the very narrow, introverted world of academic publishing in naval history, particularly with the editorial policy of certain supposedly eminent journals and also the extortionate prices demanded both by the publishers of academic books and the profit-hungry cartels which control the dissemination of academic journals. The UK government’s recent commitment to make scientific research free of access is welcome, but I see no reason why that principle shouldn’t apply to historical research as well – so in future, I’ll be making some of my research freely available here and on my website.

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The naming of warships has always been an essentially political act; witness King George V’s vetoing the name Cromwell for a battleship, the somewhat cynical reasons underpinning the choice of the names Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales for Britain’s new aircraft carriers, and in the United States, the ongoing spats over choosing the names of predominantly Republican presidents for new aircraft carriers and giving other warships the names of living politicians. (See last week’s post for more on this.) However, perhaps no period demonstrates this truth as clearly as British warship-naming in the half-century or so from 1649 onwards.

For many years, if not centuries, monarchs had taken personal responsibility for naming at least some of their ships, particularly the most prestigious ones. For example, Henry VIII dedicated the Henry Grace a Dieu on 13 June 1514, a lavish ceremony also attended by ‘the Queen, the Princess Mary, the Pope’s ambassadors, several bishops, and a large number of nobles’. In January 1610 James I attended the double launching of two East Indiamen  at Deptford, naming them Trade’s Increase and Peppercorn.  He was also present at Woolwich on 24 September 1610 for the failed first attempt to launch the great ship which became the Prince Royal (she was successfully launched in the night following, with Prince Henry performing the naming ceremony).  In late 1620 James viewed and named the Happy Entrance and Reformation at Deptford, although it isn’t clear whether he was present for the actual launchings.  Charles I was on hand for the failed launching of what became the Sovereign of the Seas on 25 September 1637, but confided the name to Sir Robert Mansell who performed the naming ceremony after they finally got her afloat on the night of 13/14 October.1 The tradition was naturally interrupted under the Commonwealth and Protectorate, when ships were named by the republican regimes and later by Oliver Cromwell himself,2 but returned at the Restoration. Indeed, one of Charles II’s first executive acts was to change those ship names that reflected the triumphs and personalities of the English Republic into rather more politically correct ones for a monarchy. Pepys witnessed the event, on 23 May 1660, and makes it clear that the process was conducted entirely by the king and his brother the Duke of York, who was about to enter into the office of Lord High Admiral for which he had been intended from childhood:

After dinner the King and Duke altered the name of some of the ships, viz. the Naseby into Charles; the Richard, James; the Speaker, Mary; the Dunbar (which was not in company with us), the Henry; Winsby, Happy Return; Wakefield, Richmond; Lamport, the Henrietta; Cheriton, the Speedwell; Bradford, the Success. 

The name changes are all easily explicable – five of them are for the royal siblings and the Richmond for their cousin, the head of the ‘Lennox Stuart’ line, while Speedwell and Success are natural emotions reflecting the family’s mood at the Restoration. On the other hand, Speedwell was also a traditional warship name – there had been two ships of the name in the Elizabethan navy. The displaced names were overtly political: Naseby, Dunbar, Winceby, Wakefield, Langport, Cheriton and Bradford were all Parliamentarian victories, and by replacing Naseby with the name he shared with his father, the king who had been defeated in that battle, Charles could not have made a more potent symbolic statement. Similarly, Richard had been named after Oliver Cromwell’s son and successor, so there was an interesting symmetry in Charles renaming her after his own heir. Two of the new names actually duplicated ones already on the navy list, a James launched in 1634 and a Success acquired in 1660. Whether nobody thought of, or dared to inform the royal brothers about, this inconvenient clash, or whether Charles and James already knew of it and decided simply to disregard it,  will probably never be known; but as a result, the existing ships had to be swiftly rechristened Old James and Old Success.

For the first fifteen years or so of Charles II’s reign, naming policy closely followed the precedent laid down in May 1660: a heavy emphasis on names that honoured members of the Stuart family, the dynasty as a whole, or key players in the Restoration, together with the revival of well-established warship names which particularly revived memories of the ‘glory days’ of Elizabethan England. Charles followed these principles when changing the remaining interregnum names: Marston Moor became York; Bridgwater, Anne; Torrington, Dreadnought; Tredagh (= Drogheda), Resolultion; Newbury, Revenge; Lyme, Montagu; Preston, Antelope; Maidstone, Mary Rose; Taunton, Crown; Nantwich, Bredah (where Charles had signed the declaration promising liberty of conscience which guaranteed his restoration).  Entirely new names included Royal Katherine, after his wife; Royal Oak; Rupert, after his cousin; Cambridge and Edgar, after short-lived nephews; Monmouth, after his eldest illegitimate son. Other revivals of Elizabethan names to set alongside the likes of the newly rebranded Dreadnought and Revenge included Defiance and Warspite. 

There were some idiosyncratic quirks, too. Sweepstakes reflected the court’s love of gambling, while the Fubbs Yacht was named after his mistress, Louise de Keroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth (specifically, after the chubbiness of her naked form!). More significantly, the choice of St Michael in 1669 for a large Second Rate raises some fascinating questions. The name St Michael had never been used for an English warship before, and it would never be used again. (However, a similar name had been used for the greatest of all Scots warships, launched in 1511.) The launching ceremony was planned for Michaelmas Day, 29 September, which was one of the most important feast days in the royal liturgical calendar; in the event, though, unspecified ‘difficulties’ forced the postponement of the launch until the next morning. However, the timing of the launch also coincided with Anglo-French negotiations for a military and naval alliance against the Dutch entering a critical phase, with Charles talking in increasingly belligerent terms of obtaining revenge for the humiliation he had suffered at Chatham in 1667, and with the king expressing to his most intimate confidantes an apparently sincere determination to announce his conversion to Roman Catholicism. Thus there may have been several complex reasons underpinning Charles II’s decision at this particular time to name a great man-of-war after this particular saint, the only one (other than national patrons) that he honoured in this way: Michael, the avenging archangel, the protector of Israel and patron saint of warriors, the bearer of the flaming sword of vengeance and justice; the victorious commander of the armies of the righteous in the final battle against the forces of evil.

Finally, there was one glaring omission from the list of names chosen by the king. Intriguingly, Charles did not name a ship Henrietta Maria after his mother, although there had been a Second Rate of that name before (launched in 1633, she was renamed Paragon in 1650, thereby displaying a delicious irony not always associated with the Rump Parliament; the ship was lost in 1655). Perhaps this omission was a reflection of the famously strained relationship between mother and son.

(Next time, I’ll take a detailed look at the naming of the ‘thirty new ships’ and will make a few points about naming policy after Charles II’s reign.)

1 Ex info Frank Fox

2 For the naming policy of the period 1649-60, see M J Seymour’s article in The Mariner’s Mirror, 1990.