George Cadogan cont: The Crocodile Command
This continues the series of posts which anteros-lmc made earlier this year on George Cadogan, Third Earl Cadogan, who began his naval career as a volunteer of the first class on the Indefatigable under SIr Edward Pellew. Anteros ' posts can be found
under her tag for George here
This series looks at the events in George's lfe parallel with the duel that he fought which Anteros wrote about.It will include his court martial on grounds of cruelty and tyranny to a midshipman Wiliam Richard Badcock. Today's post describes the run up to that very dramatic event.
Part 2 will recount the story of George's months under arrest and part 3 the court martial itself, as gripping a story as any age of sail novel or script.
Our last post on George Cadogan’s naval career left him at the end of his command of the Ferret, where his discharge from the muster recorded him as “invalided” . This designation was shared by an alarming number of officers on the Jamaica and Leeward Islands stations at that period. There is a brief conversation shown in the Hornblower series where seamen Styles, Matthews and Oldroyd discuss where they might be bound for this time. The youthful Oldroyd dreams of tropical islands but the veteran Matthews squashes the Oldroyd’s naive visions, merely commenting “tropical diseases”. That kind of wary conversation was likely often repeated amongst officers and seamen alike. As Lord Spencer’s letter to Lord Granville about George mentions, yellow fever was a common fate and especially for those worn down by the demands of office or by crisis, presumably because of the weakened immune systems that today would be recognised as symptomatic of stress.
Although the connection was not understood in those terms by Georgian doctors, captains certainly recognised that good spirits equated to better health. John Bryn, in his excellent detailed study of naval crime and punishment in the Caribbean in this period quotes examples of commanders putting emphasis on providing opportunities for leisure and amusement for their crews.
George’s career summary in Admiralty records dates his command of the .Ferret to June 7th 1807 giving him a period of just over 1 year and 2 months service in her. In fact Admiralty records reveal that the Navy Board took the decision to appoint George to Post rank on March 23rd 1807, at the same time recording the appointment of one Lieutenant Baker to command “the sloop now commanded in the West Indies by Captain Cadogan”. The apparent inability of either the Navy Board committee or the clerk recording the minutes, to remember the Ferret’s name is no doubt in sharply ironic contrast to the way in which her name would be graven on the memories of both George and the families of the executed mutineers.
The captain’s log for the Ferret for this period is missing and the masters log dates only to April of 1807 so it is only from the ship’s pay book and muster book that we have the information that George was discharged as an invalid on 10 June.The passage of time from March to June which lies between the decision to appoint George elsewhere and the actual date of his leaving his ship gives a good example of the typical delay between an Admiralty decision and the possibility of its being put into practice, when it concerned any far flung station. In this case the delay of three months or so is about average. While Lieutenant Baker was, no doubt, proudly going to buy his single epaulette of commander’s rank and arranging for his passage to the West Indies, George would have been simultaneously arranging to get home.
However, there is no entry in the Admiralty record of George’s request for a passage home so we cannot tell precisely how long his stay in the West Indies was. We know, however, that it was not long because on July 23rd he writes to the Admiralty from London, reminding them that he has left the Ferret on being made post rank and asking again to be employed.
Appointed to the Crocodile
And so George is given his first full captain’s commission and takes command of the Crocodile, a 22 gun post ship, after her previous commander, Captain Bettesworth, won the promotion longed for by many a newly minted post captain: command of a fine frigate. Bettesworth was a cousin of Lord Bryon and it is from one of Byron’s letters that we get a sense of the excitement of that promotion.
"Next January ... I am going to sea for four or five months with my cousin, Captain Bettesworth, who commands the Tartar, the finest frigate in the navy ... We are going probably to the Mediterranean or to the West Indies, or to the devil; and if there is a possibility of taking me to the latter, Bettesworth will do it, for he has received four-and-twenty wounds in different places, and at this moment possesses a letter from the late Lord Nelson stating that Bettesworth is the only officer in the navy who had more wounds than himself.
In fact this never took place because Bettesworth was killed in the battle of Alvoen. This was to have another knock on effect, which was that he was not around to offer evidence in the court martial that George was to face something over a year later.
That particular cloud was yet to break over George’s head at this point however and it was other problems, of an apparently personal kind, which were concerning him as he prepared to take command on 11 October 1807.
The ship was fitted for foreign service by order of the Navy Board of 19th October 1807 but at the same time George was having to request leave of absence barely a week after coming on board to read his commission. Two letters survive in the ADM Captains’ Letters series from George requesting leave of absence and then requesting extended leave until the 24th October. It is perhaps a mark of his personality, as tending to the very private and formal, that he states only:
Circumstances of the most urgent nature requiring my presence in town London I have to request you will be pleased to request move my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty to grant me forty eight hours leave of absence from my duty to transact it , and that they will be pleased to return a telegraphic message.
This letter and its style create a sense of secrecy and urgency about the “circumstances”. The letter was no doubt written in haste. Ordinarily a reply would have reached George on the Crocodile within a day and so a demand for a telegraphic reply constitutes quite an unusual request. And as for the style, George was by habit a coherent and orderly, if always somewhat sparing, writer and yet this example has two crossed out words in four lines. The second of which, admittedly, is because he has intensified the hope of the admiral’s help by amending “request” to the more urgent “move”. However the whole sentence is unbalanced: “ circumstances” would require the phrase “attend to” or “deal with” whereas George has said “transact”, a verb more suited to his having used “business” at the opening of his sentence. This was a man in a tearing hurry for a reason we cannot presently determine. Whatever the Admiralty Board’s response to this request, whether sympathy, frustration or merely a raised eyebrow or two, both the leave and extended leave were granted.
The preparations for taking the Crocodile to sea continued. George’s orders included sailing to the Cape of Good Hope and there handing over secret dispatches to his old mentor Sir Edward Pellew . Even after sailing things did not go to plan. The instructions below, laconic as ever, were given to Admiral Montague, commander at Portsmouth, for him to pass on to George. They are from an Admiralty Board minute of November 25th. At first sight the instructions came too late, the Crocodile had already sailed on the 19th. However they refer to the fact that the ship and her crew were again there in port two days later. Having lost sight of part of her convoy in rough weather George, who had returned with a damaged merchant ship, wrote a fairly full explanatory letter but only received an indirect and terse reply via this directive to Admiral Montague.
Direct Admiral Montague to order the Crocodile to sail and to follow her former orders
That the preparations for the voyage might not be the smoothest was eventually to seem a minor irritation but that was perhaps merely a little like a warning shot across the bows. But neither literally nor metaphorically did George have opportunity or will to heave to.
Difficulties in preparing for the first voyage
Whatever hopes George may have had of this command going better for him than his last were destined not to be fulfilled. He had openly written to his father of what he had endured in the Caribbean and probably felt it was more than time he had some good fortune. He was at least inheriting a crew who had more cohesion than the rabble who had been scraped together to crew the Ferret, which no doubt made for better day to day performance in terms of sailing skills. But they were also a crew adjusting to a new, young first-time post captain and one who tended to combine the desire for high standards with a rather stiff necked and fierce way of trying to achieve them. And he perhaps laboured under the effect of whatever “circumstances” had caused him to be sailing late after having taken that mysterious leave.
The captain had some friends aboard among the young gentlemen at least, a letter in the ADM 1/1673 series of captain’s letters from George states that two men who had been under his command in the Ferret, Edward Percival midshipman and F. Allen, rank not stated, wished to follow him to the Crocodile although they had in the meantime been assigned to another sloop, the Pilot. This permission was granted and it is testament to the fact that George was not universally disliked, especially since they had experienced him struggling with command on board the Ferret. Midshipman Edward Percival was to play a role in the future court martial drama too. He was a young man of 18, born in Ireland, according to the Crocodile’s muster book
There were other staffing problems besetting George in getting a full and functioning crew. A letter from George, undated but written from the Crocodile, to Admiral Montague stated that one Lieutenant Boss had removed from the ship to the Bulwark, and goes on to ask with some urgency:
I have to request you will be pleased to apply to my Lords commissioners of the Admiralty for a lieutenant to be appointed immediately, the ship being ready to sail.
The letter is enclosed with a forwarding one from Admiral Montague
Although George’s letter is undated, that of Admiral Montague forwarding it, is dated October 12th, . It is usual for such requests to be acted upon on the following day and so, given the closeness in date to George’s entry in to his command, it does seem as if it was just as he arrived to read his commission he found himself minus a capable lieutenant. There could be many reasons for a lieutenant removing into another ship, experience of working in a larger vessel, promotion to a more senior lieutenants post, following an admired captain etc. Captain Bettesworth had of course gone to the Tartar frigate, but Lieutenant Boss had a career to forge too and was also moving on to a larger vessel. It is possible that George and Lieutenant Boss were known to each other, or at least that they knew a good deal about one another, certainly they had one link which was very much part of George’s former service in the Indefatigable.
John George Boss was a young officer who had served with Captain Bettesworth when both were junior lieutenants on board the Centaur and he had followed him into the Crocodile . Their fellow lieutenant on the Centaur had been Robert Carthew Reynolds, son of Edward Pellew’s friend, Robert Carthew Reynolds senior, who had been captain of the Amazon at the fight with the Droits de l’homme. Robert junior knew George Cadogan well as he had been a fellow midshipman under Pellew’s command on both the Indefatigable and the Impetueux. Bettesworth, Boss and Reynolds had had some adventures in a daring boat action and clearly worked well together, with Reynolds the senior lieutenant of the three.
There was yet more chaos as a result of missteps in administration concerning the finding of a replacement for the departed Lieutenant Boss. A letter from George of the 1st November reveals that one Lieutenant Thomas Hamley had just arrived having taken passage on the Sloop Hazard from Plymouth as ordered by the Admiralty. However there was a problem, due to the Crocodile’s imminent sailing, the Admiralty had in the meantime sent down Lieutenant Bassan “in his room” as the term was! So now George had two lieutenants and only one position to fill! He wrote to the Admiralty and asked: what was he to do? It seems typical of the bad luck that so dogged George that even in getting a new lieutenant he should end up with a problem, this time of superfluity! The Admiralty decision was that Mr Hamley should join the Crocodile and Mr Bassan join the Royal William.
Bad luck with mistimed letters and orders seems to play a part in George’s history more than once. We have seen one important example of this already in Anteros’ post about the potential recall for George from the Caribbean, and here was another. Later in George's story there is yet anohter and that a very poignant one as we shall see.
This time it seems that there were indeed orders for an increase to the Crocodile’s compliment which were issued but which did not reach him as they should have done. George was supposed to have had this information in that November and could have then at least tried to obtain more men, but he had sailed already and the instruction was sent back to the Admiralty - it is not clear why this was or what happened to it next. But as long after the event as June 25th 1808 Admiral Montague, C- in- C at Portsmouth, writes to the Admiralty that Captain Cadogan has shown him an Admiralty letter addressed to him aboard Crocodile, dated November 1807 and which, Admiral Montague reports, arrived too late at Spithead the previous year.
The Crocodile had already sailed and so the orders were sent back to the Admiralty. The Admiralty clerk’s usual instruction for reply to the Admiral’s letter of explanation is in the corner of the reverse of the sheet, and even the terse summary gives away their Lordship’s frustration at this latest slip up :
27 June This order ought to have been sent to the Crocodile - if it has not already gone to that ship, pray send it! (a duplicate of the order was sent to Captain Cadogan on Friday last).
Given George’s staffing problems, the realisation that he might much earlier have had more people to help work his ship must have been a galling one.
under her tag for George here
This series looks at the events in George's lfe parallel with the duel that he fought which Anteros wrote about.It will include his court martial on grounds of cruelty and tyranny to a midshipman Wiliam Richard Badcock. Today's post describes the run up to that very dramatic event.
Part 2 will recount the story of George's months under arrest and part 3 the court martial itself, as gripping a story as any age of sail novel or script.
Our last post on George Cadogan’s naval career left him at the end of his command of the Ferret, where his discharge from the muster recorded him as “invalided” . This designation was shared by an alarming number of officers on the Jamaica and Leeward Islands stations at that period. There is a brief conversation shown in the Hornblower series where seamen Styles, Matthews and Oldroyd discuss where they might be bound for this time. The youthful Oldroyd dreams of tropical islands but the veteran Matthews squashes the Oldroyd’s naive visions, merely commenting “tropical diseases”. That kind of wary conversation was likely often repeated amongst officers and seamen alike. As Lord Spencer’s letter to Lord Granville about George mentions, yellow fever was a common fate and especially for those worn down by the demands of office or by crisis, presumably because of the weakened immune systems that today would be recognised as symptomatic of stress.
Although the connection was not understood in those terms by Georgian doctors, captains certainly recognised that good spirits equated to better health. John Bryn, in his excellent detailed study of naval crime and punishment in the Caribbean in this period quotes examples of commanders putting emphasis on providing opportunities for leisure and amusement for their crews.
George’s career summary in Admiralty records dates his command of the .Ferret to June 7th 1807 giving him a period of just over 1 year and 2 months service in her. In fact Admiralty records reveal that the Navy Board took the decision to appoint George to Post rank on March 23rd 1807, at the same time recording the appointment of one Lieutenant Baker to command “the sloop now commanded in the West Indies by Captain Cadogan”. The apparent inability of either the Navy Board committee or the clerk recording the minutes, to remember the Ferret’s name is no doubt in sharply ironic contrast to the way in which her name would be graven on the memories of both George and the families of the executed mutineers.
The captain’s log for the Ferret for this period is missing and the masters log dates only to April of 1807 so it is only from the ship’s pay book and muster book that we have the information that George was discharged as an invalid on 10 June.The passage of time from March to June which lies between the decision to appoint George elsewhere and the actual date of his leaving his ship gives a good example of the typical delay between an Admiralty decision and the possibility of its being put into practice, when it concerned any far flung station. In this case the delay of three months or so is about average. While Lieutenant Baker was, no doubt, proudly going to buy his single epaulette of commander’s rank and arranging for his passage to the West Indies, George would have been simultaneously arranging to get home.
However, there is no entry in the Admiralty record of George’s request for a passage home so we cannot tell precisely how long his stay in the West Indies was. We know, however, that it was not long because on July 23rd he writes to the Admiralty from London, reminding them that he has left the Ferret on being made post rank and asking again to be employed.
Appointed to the Crocodile
And so George is given his first full captain’s commission and takes command of the Crocodile, a 22 gun post ship, after her previous commander, Captain Bettesworth, won the promotion longed for by many a newly minted post captain: command of a fine frigate. Bettesworth was a cousin of Lord Bryon and it is from one of Byron’s letters that we get a sense of the excitement of that promotion.
"Next January ... I am going to sea for four or five months with my cousin, Captain Bettesworth, who commands the Tartar, the finest frigate in the navy ... We are going probably to the Mediterranean or to the West Indies, or to the devil; and if there is a possibility of taking me to the latter, Bettesworth will do it, for he has received four-and-twenty wounds in different places, and at this moment possesses a letter from the late Lord Nelson stating that Bettesworth is the only officer in the navy who had more wounds than himself.
In fact this never took place because Bettesworth was killed in the battle of Alvoen. This was to have another knock on effect, which was that he was not around to offer evidence in the court martial that George was to face something over a year later.
That particular cloud was yet to break over George’s head at this point however and it was other problems, of an apparently personal kind, which were concerning him as he prepared to take command on 11 October 1807.
The ship was fitted for foreign service by order of the Navy Board of 19th October 1807 but at the same time George was having to request leave of absence barely a week after coming on board to read his commission. Two letters survive in the ADM Captains’ Letters series from George requesting leave of absence and then requesting extended leave until the 24th October. It is perhaps a mark of his personality, as tending to the very private and formal, that he states only:
Circumstances of the most urgent nature requiring my presence in town London I have to request you will be pleased to request move my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty to grant me forty eight hours leave of absence from my duty to transact it , and that they will be pleased to return a telegraphic message.
This letter and its style create a sense of secrecy and urgency about the “circumstances”. The letter was no doubt written in haste. Ordinarily a reply would have reached George on the Crocodile within a day and so a demand for a telegraphic reply constitutes quite an unusual request. And as for the style, George was by habit a coherent and orderly, if always somewhat sparing, writer and yet this example has two crossed out words in four lines. The second of which, admittedly, is because he has intensified the hope of the admiral’s help by amending “request” to the more urgent “move”. However the whole sentence is unbalanced: “ circumstances” would require the phrase “attend to” or “deal with” whereas George has said “transact”, a verb more suited to his having used “business” at the opening of his sentence. This was a man in a tearing hurry for a reason we cannot presently determine. Whatever the Admiralty Board’s response to this request, whether sympathy, frustration or merely a raised eyebrow or two, both the leave and extended leave were granted.
The preparations for taking the Crocodile to sea continued. George’s orders included sailing to the Cape of Good Hope and there handing over secret dispatches to his old mentor Sir Edward Pellew . Even after sailing things did not go to plan. The instructions below, laconic as ever, were given to Admiral Montague, commander at Portsmouth, for him to pass on to George. They are from an Admiralty Board minute of November 25th. At first sight the instructions came too late, the Crocodile had already sailed on the 19th. However they refer to the fact that the ship and her crew were again there in port two days later. Having lost sight of part of her convoy in rough weather George, who had returned with a damaged merchant ship, wrote a fairly full explanatory letter but only received an indirect and terse reply via this directive to Admiral Montague.
Direct Admiral Montague to order the Crocodile to sail and to follow her former orders
That the preparations for the voyage might not be the smoothest was eventually to seem a minor irritation but that was perhaps merely a little like a warning shot across the bows. But neither literally nor metaphorically did George have opportunity or will to heave to.
Difficulties in preparing for the first voyage
Whatever hopes George may have had of this command going better for him than his last were destined not to be fulfilled. He had openly written to his father of what he had endured in the Caribbean and probably felt it was more than time he had some good fortune. He was at least inheriting a crew who had more cohesion than the rabble who had been scraped together to crew the Ferret, which no doubt made for better day to day performance in terms of sailing skills. But they were also a crew adjusting to a new, young first-time post captain and one who tended to combine the desire for high standards with a rather stiff necked and fierce way of trying to achieve them. And he perhaps laboured under the effect of whatever “circumstances” had caused him to be sailing late after having taken that mysterious leave.
The captain had some friends aboard among the young gentlemen at least, a letter in the ADM 1/1673 series of captain’s letters from George states that two men who had been under his command in the Ferret, Edward Percival midshipman and F. Allen, rank not stated, wished to follow him to the Crocodile although they had in the meantime been assigned to another sloop, the Pilot. This permission was granted and it is testament to the fact that George was not universally disliked, especially since they had experienced him struggling with command on board the Ferret. Midshipman Edward Percival was to play a role in the future court martial drama too. He was a young man of 18, born in Ireland, according to the Crocodile’s muster book
There were other staffing problems besetting George in getting a full and functioning crew. A letter from George, undated but written from the Crocodile, to Admiral Montague stated that one Lieutenant Boss had removed from the ship to the Bulwark, and goes on to ask with some urgency:
I have to request you will be pleased to apply to my Lords commissioners of the Admiralty for a lieutenant to be appointed immediately, the ship being ready to sail.
The letter is enclosed with a forwarding one from Admiral Montague
Although George’s letter is undated, that of Admiral Montague forwarding it, is dated October 12th, . It is usual for such requests to be acted upon on the following day and so, given the closeness in date to George’s entry in to his command, it does seem as if it was just as he arrived to read his commission he found himself minus a capable lieutenant. There could be many reasons for a lieutenant removing into another ship, experience of working in a larger vessel, promotion to a more senior lieutenants post, following an admired captain etc. Captain Bettesworth had of course gone to the Tartar frigate, but Lieutenant Boss had a career to forge too and was also moving on to a larger vessel. It is possible that George and Lieutenant Boss were known to each other, or at least that they knew a good deal about one another, certainly they had one link which was very much part of George’s former service in the Indefatigable.
John George Boss was a young officer who had served with Captain Bettesworth when both were junior lieutenants on board the Centaur and he had followed him into the Crocodile . Their fellow lieutenant on the Centaur had been Robert Carthew Reynolds, son of Edward Pellew’s friend, Robert Carthew Reynolds senior, who had been captain of the Amazon at the fight with the Droits de l’homme. Robert junior knew George Cadogan well as he had been a fellow midshipman under Pellew’s command on both the Indefatigable and the Impetueux. Bettesworth, Boss and Reynolds had had some adventures in a daring boat action and clearly worked well together, with Reynolds the senior lieutenant of the three.
There was yet more chaos as a result of missteps in administration concerning the finding of a replacement for the departed Lieutenant Boss. A letter from George of the 1st November reveals that one Lieutenant Thomas Hamley had just arrived having taken passage on the Sloop Hazard from Plymouth as ordered by the Admiralty. However there was a problem, due to the Crocodile’s imminent sailing, the Admiralty had in the meantime sent down Lieutenant Bassan “in his room” as the term was! So now George had two lieutenants and only one position to fill! He wrote to the Admiralty and asked: what was he to do? It seems typical of the bad luck that so dogged George that even in getting a new lieutenant he should end up with a problem, this time of superfluity! The Admiralty decision was that Mr Hamley should join the Crocodile and Mr Bassan join the Royal William.
Bad luck with mistimed letters and orders seems to play a part in George’s history more than once. We have seen one important example of this already in Anteros’ post about the potential recall for George from the Caribbean, and here was another. Later in George's story there is yet anohter and that a very poignant one as we shall see.
This time it seems that there were indeed orders for an increase to the Crocodile’s compliment which were issued but which did not reach him as they should have done. George was supposed to have had this information in that November and could have then at least tried to obtain more men, but he had sailed already and the instruction was sent back to the Admiralty - it is not clear why this was or what happened to it next. But as long after the event as June 25th 1808 Admiral Montague, C- in- C at Portsmouth, writes to the Admiralty that Captain Cadogan has shown him an Admiralty letter addressed to him aboard Crocodile, dated November 1807 and which, Admiral Montague reports, arrived too late at Spithead the previous year.
The Crocodile had already sailed and so the orders were sent back to the Admiralty. The Admiralty clerk’s usual instruction for reply to the Admiral’s letter of explanation is in the corner of the reverse of the sheet, and even the terse summary gives away their Lordship’s frustration at this latest slip up :
27 June This order ought to have been sent to the Crocodile - if it has not already gone to that ship, pray send it! (a duplicate of the order was sent to Captain Cadogan on Friday last).
Given George’s staffing problems, the realisation that he might much earlier have had more people to help work his ship must have been a galling one.