Calthorpe was promoted to commander on 1 January 1896 in recognition of his services at the beginning of the Fourth Ashanti War (December 1895-January 1896). He was then appointed commander of the armoured cruiser Impérieuse, flagship of the Pacific station, and returned home in the summer of 1899. In 1900 he married Effie Dunsmuir, of Victoria, British Columbia. He spent most of this year as a supernumerary at Vernon before being given command of the torpedo gunboat Halcyon in the Mediterranean in September 1900. Calthorpe was promoted to captain on 1 January 1902. He spent the next three years as naval attaché to Russia, Sweden and the newly-independent Norway, and then commanded successively the cruiser Roxburgh and the battleship Hindostan. In December 1909 he was appointed commodore 1st Class and captain of the fleet to Sir Henry May [65], C-in-C, Home Fleet, in the battleship Dreadnought until promoted to rear-admiral on 27 August 1911. During 1910 he adopted the surname Gough-Calthorpe.
Between 1912 and 1913 Gough-Calthorpe was second-in-command of the First Battle Squadron, with his flag in the battleship St Vincent, and from 1914 to 1916, in the early years of the First World War, commanded the Second Cruiser Squadron, with his flag in the cruiser Shannon. He was promoted to acting vice-admiral on 11 March 1915 and was awarded the KCB. Sir Somerset Gough-Calthorpe served during 1916 as Second Sea Lord at the Admiralty and became Admiral commanding the Coastguard and Reserves at the end of that year. He was confirmed as vice-admiral on 26 April 1917 and was appointed C-in-C, Mediterranean Fleet, in July 1917, with his flag successively in the battleships Superb and Iron Duke. As president of a committee of British, French, Italian and Japanese admirals, he was at the head of Allied naval operations in the Mediterranean, and by the end of the war also had ships of the United States and Royal Greek Navies under his control.
In October 1918 Gough-Calthorpe was authorized to act as sole Allied negotiator in response to Turkish proposals for an Armistice. He sent a cruiser from his base at Mudros to collect the Turkish representatives and concluded an agreement with them on 30 October 1918. The French premier, Clemenceau, protested that the Allied supreme commander in the Mediterranean, Admiral Gauchet, had not been fully informed of the negotiations, nor been present when the armistice was signed, but the Admiralty gave Gough-Calthorpe its full backing and sent him additional battleships to match the numbers of the French. It also insisted that any Allied warships entering the Black Sea should be under Gough-Calthorpe’s command and that when the Allied fleets steamed into Constantinople (Istanbul) on 13 November 1918 the British C-in-C should be at their head.
Gough-Calthorpe was given the additional appointment of British High Commissioner in Turkey pending the establishment of a peace treaty. He was promoted to admiral on 31 July 1919. After a period of intense postwar diplomatic activity, with Anglo-French rivalry over former Turkish territory compounded by the continuation of civil war in Russia, he returned home late in 1919. Sir Somerset Gough-Calthorpe served from 1920 to 1923 as C-in-C, Portsmouth, followed by promotion to admiral of the fleet on 8 May 1925. He retired in 1930 and died at Ryde, Isle of Wight, on 27 July 1937.
HAMOND
Sir GRAHAM EDEN, 2nd Baronet, GCB (1779–1862) [24]
Graham Hamond, born in London on 30 December 1779, was the only son of Captain Sir Andrew Snape Hamond, who had served the Navy during in the Seven Years War and the American War of Independence, and was later awarded a baronetcy. In September 1785 Graham Hamond was entered as captain’s servant on the books of the 3rd-rate Irresistible, commanded by his father as commodore and C-in-C in the Medway. In 1790 he became a midshipman and subsequently served under his father successively in the 3rd-rates Vanguard and Bedford and the 2nd-rate Duke until the outbreak of the French Revolutionary War in 1793. He then joined the 5th-rate Phaeton, commanded by his cousin, Sir Andrew Snape Douglas, in the Channel fleet, shortly before Sir Andrew Hamond became Comptroller of the Navy. In the first year of the war Phaeton was present at the capture of the French brig General Dumouriez and her prize the Spanish St Iago (both carrying valuable cargoes), the French frigate Pompée, the corvette Blonde and a privateersman. Hamond followed his cousin in April 1794 when the latter was given command of the 1st-rate Queen Charlotte, flagship of Earl Howe [9] as C-in-C of the Channel Fleet, and served with him at the battle of the Glorious First of June (1 June 1794). After serving as acting lieutenant in the 5th-rate Aquilon and the 3rd-rate Zealous, he joined the 1st-rate Britannia, flagship of Admiral Sir William Hotham, C-in-C of the Mediterranean Fleet, in June 1795, and was at the battle of Toulon (13 July 1795). He was confirmed as lieutenant on 19 October 1795 and, after serving in the 5th-rate Aigle in the Mediterranean in 1796, returned home from Lisbon in the 5th-rate Niger during 1797.
On 20 October 1798 Hamond became commander of the sloop Echo, deployed in the Channel and North Sea on blockade and convoy escort duties. He was promoted to be captain of the 6th-rate Champion on 30 November 1798 and served during 1799 in the Baltic, the North Sea, and the Arctic, capturing the French privateer Anacreon and escorting a convoy from Archangel (Arkhangelsk). Early in 1800 he took part in the blockade of the French in Malta and served ashore in the siege of Valetta, before exchanging to the 3rd-rate Lion on medical grounds and returning home. He was then appointed to the 5th-rate Blanche, in which he served in the Baltic under Sir Hyde Parker at the battle of Copenhagen (2 April 1801). In the fleet reductions that followed the Treaty of Amiens (27 March 1802), Blanche was paid off in September 1802.
Late in February 1803, shortly before the renewal of the war with France, Hamond was given command of the 3rd-rate Plantagenet. He captured the French brig Courier de Terre Neuve and the corvette Atalanta before giving up his command on medical grounds in November 1803. On July 1804 he was appointed to the 5th-rate Lively. By the autumn of 1804 it became clear that the Spanish government, under pressure from Napoleon, was prepared to place its fleet at the disposal of the French. The British protested at Spanish breaches of neutrality and moved to intercept the flow of silver from Mexico to Spain. On 5 October 1804 Hamond was involved in the capture of three Spanish frigates carrying treasure, and the destruction of a fourth, for which he was mentioned in despatches. On 7 December 1804 he was at the capture of the Spanish treasure ships San Miguel and Santa Gertruyda off Cape St Vincent. As the outraged Spaniards did not declare war until 12 December 1804, the Admiralty ruled that only one quarter of the proceeds was allowable as prize money. Hamond was even less fortunate when he brought the treasure (totalling five million Spanish dollars) home in the following March, as the payment of freight-money for the conveyance of treasure was suspended after the outbreak of hostilities. Returning to his station, he engaged the Spanish 74-gun ship Glorioso in an indecisive single-ship duel off Cadiz on 29 May 1805. In November 1805 he carried troops to Naples, where a combined British and Russian force landed to threaten Napoleon’s southern flank. In June 1806 he returned home, where on 30 December 1806 he married Elizabeth Kimber, the daughter of a country gentleman of Fowey, Cornwall. They later had a family of three daughters and two sons, both of whom became officers in the Navy.
Between December 1808 and September 1809 Hamond commanded the 3rd-rate Victorious on the Home station and was in the fleet covering the British expedition to Walcheren (July-August 1809). From May 1813 to March 1814, when Napoleon abdicated, he commanded the 3rd-rate Rivoli in the Mediterranean. In March 1824 Hamond was appointed to the 3rd-rate Wellesley in which he went to Brazil with a British diplomatic mission. On promotion to rear-admiral of the Blue on 27 May 1825, he returned home in the 3rd-rate Spartiate and later succeeded to his father’s baronetcy on 12 September 1828. Sir Graham Hamond became a rear-admiral of the White on 22 July 1830 and returned to the South American station as C-in-C in September 1834, where he remained, with his flag successively in Spartiate and the 5th-rate Dublin until May 1838. He became a vice-admiral of the Blue on 10 January 1837, vice-admiral of the Red on 23 November 1841, admiral of the Blue on 22 January 1847, admiral of the White on 15 Septembe
r 1849 and admiral of the Red on 5 July 1855. Hamond was promoted to admiral of the fleet on 10 November 1862. He died at Freshwater, Isle of Wight, on 20 December 1862 and was succeeded in his baronetcy by his son, Vice-Admiral Andrew Snape Hamond.
HAWKE
Sir EDWARD 1st Baron Hawke, KB (1705–1781) [7]
Edward Hawke, the only son of a barrister-at-law, was born in London in 1705. On his father’s death in 1718 he became the ward of his mother’s brother, Colonel Martin Bladen, a wealthy Yorkshire landowner, then Commissioner of Trade and Plantations. Hawke joined the Navy on 20 February 1720 as a volunteer in the 6th-rate Seahorse, in which he served on the North America and West Indies station until June 1725. He then passed for promotion to lieutenant and joined the 5th-rate Kingsale in which he served off West Africa and in the West Indies until July 1727 as a supernumerary officer (held on the books as an able seaman). He was appointed third lieutenant of the 4th-rate Portland, in the Channel, on 11 April 1729. From November to December 1729 he served in the 4th-rate Leopard, and in May 1731 became fourth lieutenant of the 4th-rate Edinburgh in the Mediterranean. Between January and November 1732 Hawke was on the North America and West Indies station in the 6th-rate Scarborough, commanded by Sir Peter Warren, under whom he had served in Leopard. He was appointed first lieutenant of the 4th-rate Kingston at Jamaica in 24 December 1732, and commander of the sloop Wolf on 13 April 1733. He was promoted on 20 March 1734 to be captain of the 6th-rate Flamborough, in which he returned home in September 1735.
In 1737 Hawke married the seventeen-year-old Catherine Brook, the heiress to several estates in Yorkshire, to whose family his own was already connected by marriage. They later had seven children, three of whom died in infancy. On the approach of war between Spain and the United Kingdom (the War of Jenkins’s Ear) Hawke returned to sea on 30 July 1739 as captain of Portland on the North America and West Indies station. In November 1741 the ill-found Portland was dismasted in a gale off Boston, Massachusetts, and was fortunate to reach her base in Barbados. Catherine Hawke joined her husband there and the two returned together to England in January 1742. The war had by this time been overtaken by a wider European conflict, the War of the Austrian Succession. In June 1743 Hawke was given command of the new 3rd-rate Berwick, with which he joined the Mediterranean Fleet in January 1744 at Hyeres, Toulon. In the subsequent engagement with the combined French and Spanish fleets (11 February 1744) Hawke was one of the few officers to emerge with credit. On his own initiative, he engaged and captured the French ship Polder only for this prize to be looted and burned at a later stage in the battle by the pusillanimous Captain Richard Nortis, elder son of Sir John Norris [1]. On 3 August 1745 Hawke became captain of the 2nd-rate Neptune in which he returned home six weeks later.
Following the British victory off Cape Finisterre (3 May 1747) Lord Anson [5] had handed over his command of the Western Squadron (in effect, the Channel fleet) to Hawke’s old patron, Sir Peter Warren. Hawke became rear-admiral of the White on 15 July 1747 and second-in-command of the squadron, with his flag in the new 4th-rate Gloucester, three weeks later. Shortly afterwards, with Warren suffering from scurvy, Hawke succeeded to his command. On 12 October 1747, with his flag in the 3rd-rate Devonshire, he encountered a large convoy of French West Indiamen off La Rochelle. The convoy escaped, but seven of its nine major escorts were captured and most of the merchantmen were taken later by British warships (forewarned by Hawke’s despatches) in the West Indies. Hawke was awarded the KB on 15 November 1747 and spent most of the remaining months of the war in the Bay of Biscay with Warren again in command. Sir Edward Hawke entered Parliament in December 1747 as Member for Portsmouth, a seat in the gift of the Duke of Bedford, (at that time First Lord of the Admiralty) and continued to represent that borough until he was elevated to the peerage. He was promoted to vice-admiral of the Blue on 26 May 1748 and succeeded Warren in command of the fleet in home waters from 26 July 1748 to November 1752.
Hostilities with France in North America were resumed in May 1754. Although the two nations were not formally at war until after the outbreak of the Seven Years War in 1756, the British Cabinet decided to prevent French reinforcements reaching Canada. In February 1755 Hawke was appointed to the 1st-rate St George. The Duke of Newcastle, Prime Minister of the day, originally considered giving him no definite instructions, so that Hawke, rather than the ministers, would be blamed if anything went wrong. In July 1755 he was sent to cruise off Brest, with orders to attack any French ships he met, but there was no contact, and sickness among his crews and the poor state of his ships forced him back to Portsmouth at the end of September. During the early part of 1756 Hawke was again in the Bay of Biscay, blockading the French naval base at Rochefort. In June 1756, in the 4th-rate Antelope, he sailed for the Mediterranean, where Admiral John Byng had been removed from command after failing to relieve Minorca. Hawke hoisted his flag in the 2nd-rate Ramillies at Gibraltar on 4 July 1756, but found that the British garrison of Minorca, after holding out for seventy days, had surrendered on 28 June. The French fleet returned to Toulon and at the end of 1756 Hawke, saddened by the death of his wife in October that year, was recalled to England with most of his ships. He was promoted to admiral of the Blue on 24 February 1757.
In June 1757 William Pitt the Elder became the dominant figure in the Cabinet. As part of his policy of waging war from the sea, Pitt planned a descent on Rochefort in September 1757. Hawke, with his flag in Ramillies, commanded the naval element and covered the initial landings, as well as the subsequent re-embarkation when the military commanders decided that a further advance was impracticable. He was given command in the Channel on 5 March 1758 and made another raid on the approaches to Rochefort in April 1758, destroying coastal fortifications and preventing the departure of French reinforcements for Canada. After returning to Portsmouth, Hawke was waited upon on 10 May 1758 by Captain Richard Howe [9], who had been selected to command the naval element of a new raid. Hawke assumed that this was another attack on Rochefort, where he had twice been in charge of the naval operations, and took Howe’s appointment as a personal affront. In protest, he struck his flag without orders, only to discover, after being summoned to the Admiralty to explain his conduct, that Howe was going not to Rochefort but to St Malo. His previous services saved him from public censure for this grave breach of discipline, but he was not allowed to resume command of his fleet. Instead, Lord Anson [5], then First Lord of the Admiralty, felt obliged to take command in person. Hawke rehoisted his flag as second-in-command, but after two weeks at sea, covering the raid on St Malo, returned to Portsmouth on medical grounds.
Hawke was restored to command of the Western Squadron on 9 May 1759. He resumed the blockade of Brest, where the French had collected a fleet of twenty-one ships under an experienced admiral and marshal of France, the Comte de Conflans. Further south, in Quiberon Bay, a French army was assembled for the invasion of England. In the middle of November 1759, with Hawke driven to Torbay by bad weather, Conflans sailed for Quiberon Bay to join the troop transports. Hawke, with his flag in the 1st-rate Royal George, caught up with him on 20 November 1759. Accepting the risks of combat in heavy swell and gale-force winds, in confined waters on a short winter day, Hawke destroyed seven French ships for the loss of two British. With the rest of the French fleet forced to take refuge in nearby estuaries, the battle of Quiberon Bay was one of the most important British victories of the war. Hawke remained with his blockading ships until early January 1760 when, with his flag in the 2nd-rate Torbay, he returned home.
In August 1760 Hawke sailed in Royal George to resume command of the blockade. In October he was asked by Anson to report on the best place for a landing on Belle-Ile. He replied with an alternative plan, for a landing in the Quiberon area, but was overruled by Pitt, who had selected Belle-Ile. Hawke remained on blockade for another winter and then returned to Portsmouth in March 1761. Belle-Ile, where General Studholme Hodgson (a veteran of the unsuccessful expedition against Rochefort in 175
7) landed early in April 1761, surrendered to the British eight weeks later. In April 1762 he was appointed C-in-C in the Channel, the Soundings, the coast of Ireland and in the Bay of Biscay. Despite the vast extent of this command, with detached squadrons at sea in the Downs and off Le Havre and Rochefort, he was ordered to sea with another squadron in June 1762, to ensure the Spanish fleet remained in Ferrol during the closing months of the war. He was promoted to admiral of the White on 21 October 1762.
In December 1766 Hawke became First Lord of the Admiralty in the Duke of Grafton’s Cabinet, with promotion to admiral of the fleet on 15 January 1768. As First Lord, Hawke had to deal with the usual problems experienced by Service ministers in a period of peace gained by a victorious war and his name featured in a jingle of the lower deck:
“Ere Hawke did bang Mounseer Conflang
You sent us beef and beer.
Now Mounseer’s beat, we’ve nought to eat
Since you have nought to fear”
As would happen some two centuries later, it was only a crisis over possession of the Falkland Islands that induced an unpopular prime minister (in this case, Lord North in 1770) to restore, at least in the short term, cuts that the Treasury had imposed on the fleet. Hawke remained in North’s Cabinet until January 1771. As First Lord he authorized the voyages of exploration by Captain James Cook, who named Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand, in his honour. Hawke was in poor health in his later years, and suffered great pain from gout and urinary calculi, or “gravel”, an illness deriving from a deficiency of Vitamin A and an inadequate intake of fresh water, both of which were common features of seafaring life in his time. His closing years were saddened by the continued mental instability of his daughter Kitty and by the deaths of his second son, Lieutenant Colonel Edward Hawke, in the hunting field, in October 1773, and of his third, the prodigal Cornet Chaloner Hawke, in a road accident in September 1777. He was granted a peerage as Baron Hawke, of Towton (one of his wife’s estates), on 20 May 1776. Lord Hawke died at his house in Sunbury-on-Thames, on 17 October 1781, and was buried near his wife and their four-day old son William in the parish church of St Nicholas, North Stoneham, Swaythling, near Southampton. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Martin Bladen Hawke.
British Admirals of the Fleet Page 18
