Captain Francis Crozier

by Michael Smith

  The Moira dynasty was established by Major George Rawdon, a soldier from Yorkshire who sailed to Ireland in the 1630s with Captain John Crozier and who settled at Moira on Down’s border with County Antrim, just a few miles to the north of the flourishing Crozier estates at Stramore. By the late eighteenth century, George Crozier’s circle of friends included Francis Rawdon, the second Earl of Moira, the distinguished soldier and colonial statesman who later became Lord Hastings.

  Apart from powerful friends, George Crozier also had abundant luck on his side thanks to the rapid emergence of the Irish linen industry and the Industrial Revolution, which brought an explosion of commercial activity around Banbridge in the eighteenth century. Over the space of only a few decades, the once sleepy settlement on the banks of the River Bann – known as Ballyvally until the turn of the eighteenth century – was transformed into a thriving industrial community as local farmers turned to bleaching linen at the numerous falls that punctuate the river.

  Map 1: Ireland

  Map 2: Banbridge, County Down

  Birthplace of Francis Rawdon Moira rozier in Banbridge, County Down. The property, built in 1791, was originally called Avonmore House; it is known now as Crozier House.

  The gradual introduction of machinery propelled linen making from a modest cottage industry to a dynamic modern enterprise and by the time of Francis Crozier’s early childhood in the early 1800s, Banbridge boasted the largest linen market in County Down. Cloth from the town was exported to mills in England, Scotland and even America. The few miles on the River Bann between the small towns of Banbridge and Gilford were a bustling scene of activity which one eyewitness eloquently described as a ‘continued theatre of beauty, genius and commerce’.

  In 1791, George Crozier took full advantage of his prosperity and position to build a house in the centre of Banbridge. His new home, originally called Avonmore House but subsequently renamed Crozier House, was an impressive Georgian mansion situated opposite the parish church in Church Square, Banbridge. Spread over three floors and with an ample basement, the house – which still stands – features above its entrance a lunette decorated with the sleeping Venus with Cupid. Appropriately, it is today occupied by solicitors.

  It was at Avonmore House in the early autumn of 1796 that the eleventh child of George and Jane Crozier was born. The precise date of birth is not clear, though it is thought to have been 17 September. The boy, the couple’s fifth son, was named Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier after Francis Rawdon, the Earl of Moira.

  Little is known about the early life of the young Francis beyond the certainty that it was a privileged upbringing in a strongly religious household. But his birth coincided with a period of upheaval in the traditionally solid family faith. Shortly after Francis’ arrival, George Crozier abandoned the family’s support for the Presbyterian faith and transferred allegiance to the Church of Ireland. His decision was prompted by the emergence in the mid-1790s of the radical Society of United Irishmen, a revolutionary organisation with roots in Scottish Presbyterianism that aimed at uniting Catholics and Protestants into one nation so as to overthrow British rule.

  Among the many caught up in the resulting schism in Irish religious and political life was George Crozier. In the battle between radical reform and the establishment, he chose the establishment even though it meant abandoning Presbyterianism and lining up firmly behind the landed gentry of Downshire and the Church of Ireland. It was a situation that left George Crozier steering a delicate course between his friends, Downshire and Moira, who were on opposing sides in the political battle. Downshire, a leading Irish Tory, led the struggle against the United Irishmen, while Moira urged the government to make concessions to the dissenters. Downshire, the embodiment of the establishment, wrote that George Crozier’s family was ‘one of only four or five [Presbyterian] families in Banbridge’ opposed to the United Irishmen.

  George Crozier backed the winning side in the dispute. The United Irishmen were roundly defeated and in 1801 Ireland became an integral part of the United Kingdom under the Act of Union – the first time that all parts of the British Isles were subject to single rule.

  One indisputable fact about the early life of Francis Crozier is that he enjoyed only a very short childhood. In the summer of 1810, at the age of thirteen, Francis was plucked from the cosy security of the family home and sent off to join the Royal Navy. The decision to send the adolescent to sea remains mysterious, even though it was customary for young boys and budding officers to join the navy from around the age of ten. Many of the men who earned fame in the polar regions during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – among them Edward Parry, James Ross and Robert Scott – began their naval careers as children.

  But the enrolment of Francis in the navy was at odds with the pattern being established elsewhere in the Crozier family at that time. Although earlier generations of Croziers had served as professional soldiers, George Crozier appears to have broken the mould by steering his sons towards peaceful occupations in the Church or the world of commerce. Two sons – William and Thomas – followed their father into the legal profession, while Graham, the youngest, became a Church of Ireland vicar.

  Francis was the exception and it is unclear why George Crozier allowed his adolescent son to forego his affluent life in Banbridge for the brutal rigours of the Royal Navy, which at the time was embroiled in the bloody Napoleonic Wars with France. The Battle of Trafalgar, the most momentous naval engagement of the war, had been fought only five years before the fresh-faced teenager from Banbridge enlisted, while the Peninsular War, one of the key campaigns, was at that very moment in full swing.

  So eager was George Crozier to get his son into uniform that he turned to his influential coterie of friends for help. During the early months of 1810, he approached Lord Downshire to see whether he might pull a few strings at the Admiralty. Downshire contacted Lord Vincent, a well-connected family friend who only a few years earlier had held the supreme rank of First Lord of the Admiralty. The 75-year-old grandee, who had over half a century of military campaigns to his name, knew all the right people and shortly afterwards Francis was readily accepted into the navy.3

  Francis Crozier, still three months short of his fourteenth birthday, made the journey from boyhood to manhood when he travelled south from Banbridge to the port of Cork in the summer of 1810. He formally enlisted on 12 June and his first posting was aboard HMS Hamadryad, a 34-gun warship stationed at Cork. It was the beginning of a lifetime of duty and devotion to the Royal Navy.

  chapter two

  To the Arctic

  The Napoleonic Wars, a defining moment in British history, provided an epic backcloth to the early naval career of the youthful Francis Crozier. The Peninsular War, the long campaign in Spain and Portugal that destroyed the myth of French invincibility, was into its second year when Crozier sailed under Royal Navy colours for the first time. In 1812, less than two years after Crozier’s enlistment, Napoleon launched his catastrophic invasion of Russia. The Battle of Waterloo, the final and decisive act of the Napoleonic Wars, was fought only five years after Crozier joined up.

  The navy was a critical factor in the war and the subsequent defeat of Napoleon provided Britain with a century of virtually unchallenged supremacy on the high seas. When Crozier enlisted in 1810, the navy commanded an awesome fleet of over 1,000 ships and could muster around 143,000 men. It was the navy that inflicted heavy defeats on the French fleet and kept the seaways open for British convoys to sustain Wellington’s army in Portugal and Spain and to maintain the country’s commercial economy by outrunning the French blockades.

  Crozier’s maiden voyage on Hamadryad was typical of the era. After escorting merchant vessels across the Atlantic to the Newfoundland Banks, Hamadryad returned to Lisbon with fresh troops for the Peninsular campaign. From the outset, Crozier found himself among veterans of the sea. Sir Thomas Staines, Hamadryad’s captain, had lost an arm in battle and the ship itself had a colourful past. The ship was o
riginally a Spanish vessel that had been captured off Cadiz in 1804 and absorbed into the British fleet.

  Conditions at sea were in stark contrast to the sheltered, comfortable surroundings of Crozier’s home in Banbridge. Life afloat in the early nineteenth century was rough, hazardous and enforced by a strict code of discipline that was barbaric by today’s standards. Fortunately, Crozier joined as the navy was making a slow transition from the brutality and primitive conditions of an earlier age to a more humane regime with better pay, food and hygiene. But navy warships of the time were still invariably dirty and overcrowded and hundreds of men would struggle for space in the dimly lit and smoky recesses below decks. Hamadryad, a frigate, accommodated about 200 men.

  Punishment was mercilessly severe, although considerably more lenient than in earlier years when miscreants were subjected to keelhauling or had their right hand nailed to the mainmast. Flogging was still commonplace in Crozier’s time and offenders in the early nineteenth century could expect at least three dozen or more lashes, depending on the whim of the captain.

  Accidents and disease – scurvy, yellow fever and typhus – were a far bigger danger to men than enemy cannon or muskets. Only 6,000 of the 103,000 deaths on board navy ships between 1792 and 1815 were a result of enemy action. By contrast, 84,000 men were lost due to fatal sickness or mishap.

  Despite the hazards, it is evident that Crozier made the adjustment to his new life with great aplomb and that he learned fast. He soon picked up the tools of his trade – mathematics, navigation, tidal calculations and general seamanship – all of which offered the route to advancement and promotion for any would-be officer.

  At the end of 1812, the sixteen-year-old Crozier gained his first promotion when he was appointed midshipman. It appears he impressed his senior officers and Sir Thomas Staines took Crozier with him when he was appointed captain of Briton in 1812.

  A 44-gun frigate, Briton was plunged straight into action, policing the dangerous waters in the Bay of Biscay where French and American ships tried to outrun patrolling British ships and get their precious cargoes into ports such as St Malo and Bordeaux. In June 1812, the navy was forced to open up a new front when America declared war on Britain.

  One year later, Crozier made his first voyage of exploration. Briton was deployed to escort a convoy of 49 merchant ships around the Cape of Good Hope to the East Indies, but when one of the merchantmen became disabled during a violent storm, Briton ushered the damaged ship into Rio de Janeiro for repairs. At Rio, Captain Staines was ordered to change course to the Pacific and to assist Phoebe and Cherub in arresting Essex, an American frigate harassing British whalers.

  The orders meant taking Briton alone around Cape Horn. Rounding the Horn in a sailing vessel is invariably a precarious voyage and Crozier endured a ferocious baptism as Briton was assailed by violent storms that incapacitated over 100 crewmen – about half the ship’s complement. After a hair-raising trip, Briton docked at the Chilean port of Valparaíso in late May 1814, where it was discovered that the Essex had already been apprehended by British battleships.

  Briton was now ordered to sail thousands of miles across the Pacific towards the Galapagos Islands and the more remote Marquesas Islands, where Staines was to link up with the Tagus in pursuit of another marauding American frigate. It was a long, hot voyage across the open expanse of the Pacific and though Briton and Tagus failed to track down the Americans, the ships did find signs that the Essex had been active in the area before its apprehension.

  On Nuku Hiva – one of the largest islands in the Marquesa group – the party found remnants of a village and fort built by the Americans, who had named it Madison Island and claimed it for the United States. Staines had other ideas and promptly took formal procession for Britain.

  Crozier used his time in the Marquesas to collect specimens of weaponry from the friendly islanders. On his return to Ireland, he presented the collection to the Marquis of Downshire and the weapons were subsequently put on public display at Hillsborough Castle in 1881.

  The trip from the Marquesas back to South America in September 1814 was eventful, due to sloppy navigation by the Briton and Tagus. Navigators miscalculated longitude by a margin of three degrees and came across an unknown island that did not appear on Admiralty charts of the time. Staines decided to move closer to the heavily wooded coastline and was surprised when four canoes appeared and approached the ship. He was even more surprised when two of the men in the canoes spoke to him in perfect English.

  The island was Pitcairn and its English-speaking inhabitants were the direct descendants of the mutineers from Captain William Bligh’s Bounty. The mutineers first arrived on the uninhabited island in 1790 and Briton and Tagus were only the second outside vessels to reach Pitcairn, an isolated and rugged volcanic spot of barely 2 square miles (3 square kilometres).

  The little community-in-exile numbered around 40 men, women and children when Briton and Tagus anchored offshore in 1814 and among those greeting the visitors from the Old World was Thursday-October Christian, the son of the mutiny leader, Fletcher Christian.

  A more noteworthy figure on Pitcairn was John Adams, the last survivor of the original band of mutineers. A stocky and heavily tattooed figure in his early fifties, Adams cheerfully showed the British naval officers around his paradise ‘kingdom’. Pride of place was a library of books plundered from Bounty, each carefully inscribed with the distinctive signature of Captain Bligh.

  When Staines made a tantalising offer to take Adams back to England on board Briton or Tagus, the ageing mutineer was sorely tempted. After nearly 30 years in hiding, the promise of a return to his homeland was almost irresistible. But his Polynesian wife and family were distraught at the prospect, fearing that Adams would be hanged for his part in the mutiny. Adams reluctantly agreed to stay on Pitcairn and he lived the rest of his days in exile. He died in 1829, aged around 65.

  Briton and Tagus returned to Valparaíso in early 1815, having survived another alarming voyage round Cape Horn. Their arrival in England on 7 July 1815 came just three weeks after Napoleon’s historic defeat at Waterloo, which signalled an end to the Napoleonic Wars.

  The following year – 1816 – saw Crozier assigned to the 38-gun-frigate Meander on guard duty on the River Thames. In 1817, he passed the Admiralty exams for mate and joined Queen Charlotte, a first-rate warship of 104 guns patrolling the English Channel. In 1818, at the age of 22, Crozier was posted as mate to Dotterel – a 387-ton, eighteen-gun brig-sloop – where he served for three years.

  One of his first missions was to bring urgently required provisions to the remote South Atlantic island of St Helena, on which Napoleon had been exiled after his defeat at Waterloo. Supply ships from Britain had failed to reach the small community and the Dotterel formed part of a convoy to bring relief to the islanders.

  Crozier’s advancement coincided with a period of major upheaval in the navy, which was forced into huge changes following the Napoleonic Wars. By a twist of fate, this disruption was to lead Crozier into exploration.

  The Royal Navy was at that time the world’s most powerful fighting machine. But it was a navy of 1,000 ships geared to war and was grotesquely over-provisioned for peace. As the 1820s approached, the fleet was largely idle and the Admiralty was faced with the major headache of how to handle thousands of unwanted men.

  Managing the ordinary seamen was brutally simple. By 1817, more than 100,000 of them had been thrown back onto the streets from which most had been press-ganged. But officers were men of patronage or wealth and not so easily discarded. As Joseph Hume, the radical reformer, noted at the time: ‘Promotion in the army and navy was reserved for the aristocracy’. Despite the massive over-manning, the number of officers actually rose in the years following the end of the war, though nine in ten officers were unemployed.

  The logjam of superfluous officers was a huge barrier to further advancement, particularly as any new commissions were invariably granted to officers on the basis of
age. Admirals were often still in service at the ripe age of 80 and some officers spent decades without ever securing a posting. By the 1820s, the chances of junior officers such as Crozier advancing up the ranks were slim.

  Into the post-Napoleonic breach came the unlikely figure of John Barrow, an accomplished civil servant at the Admiralty who proposed a variation on the biblical exhortation to turn ‘swords into plowshares’. Barrow’s solution was exploration. Sensing the urgent need to redirect the navy’s efforts, he was to resolutely shape the nation’s policy on exploration for the next 30 years and ‘fathered’ a generation of explorers, including Edward Parry, James Clark Ross, John Franklin and Francis Crozier.

  John Barrow was an éminence grise who for over four decades quietly wielded enormous power from his office at the Admiralty. He was the last civil servant to see Nelson alive before Trafalgar in 1805 and it was Barrow’s suggestion in 1816 to send Napoleon into exile on St Helena.

  Untypical of the elite who ran the country or controlled the military machine, Barrow was propelled to the heart of government by sheer intellect and driving ambition. The son of a poor hill farmer from near the Cumbrian town of Ulverston, he left school at thirteen. He continued to study the classics, mathematics and astronomy and by his early twenties could speak and write Chinese.

  In 1804, at the age of 40, Barrow was appointed Second Secretary at the Admiralty, a position he held unbroken for 41 years. While political power and the elected political post of First Secretary regularly changed hands, Barrow was a permanent feature behind his desk at the Admiralty. When he finally retired in his early eighties, he took his Admiralty desk as a leaving gift.