George Cadogan: The Crocodile Command ( 2) William Badcock
The events of 1808 and 1809 which led up to George's arrest on charges of tyranny and cruelty to William Badcock.
William Richard Badcock
It was among the young gentlemen however, that nemesis awaited Captain Cadogan. One of the inherited crew of the Crocodile was a midshipman named William Richard Badcock, who was then aged 15 but who had been at sea since his 11th birthday .
An orphaned young man sent to sea very early indeed, nevertheless, he was not without interest or influence. His grandfather and guardian, Richard Cumberland was a celebrated journal editor and dramatist. Cumberland had a good number of friends in useful high places and was himself a very well known figure by that time of his life.
Cumberland’s daughter, Sophia had married Richard Badcock, a somewhat dissolute man who had died young, as a result of his lifestyle, at least according to his father in law who wrote:
This young man died, a victim to excess in the prime of life before he reached the age of thirty
Sophia Badcock, William's mother, painted by George Romney.
Richard Cumberland painted by Romney
Cumberland was left as the legal guardian of Badcock and his siblings, a duty he took very seriously. Cumberland’s plays were characterised by their sympathy for the marginalised and those on the edges of society and he was seen as an emotively outspoken and keenly litigious man, both of which traits are of significance to later events. His writing style is self consciously sentimental and striving, sometimes too obviously, for pathetic effect, something also relevant to the court martial clash that was to come.
This writing style is evident in his autobiographical work too, and nowhere more so than when he recounts the guardianship of the Badcock children,
“five children, awarded to my care by chancery, and looking up to me for the education, that is to decide upon their future destinies-My God! can I presume to hope that thou wilt give me life to execute this sacred trust, and train them in the way, poor innocents, wherein they ought to go?”
William Richard Badcock was one of nineteen grandchildren but his parental circumstances made him one whom Cumberland particularly wished to see established in life.
William also had an uncle at sea who was, at that time, captain of a 64, the Stately This was Captain William Cumberland, his mother’s younger brother. William Cumberland senior was a captain of some years standing having made post in 1798 and he was to be, as Captain of the Leyden, 64, part of Admiral Gambier’s fleet in the capture of the Danish navy later in 1807.
William was rated midshipman at the time George took over the Crocodile and, by George’s own account he had been hopeful of transferring to the Foudroyant. However George had refused his transfer on the grounds that he was short of midshipmen at that time.
The voyage to the Cape
On the voyage to the Cape the master’s log records a burst of punishments in the second month at sea, a pattern often seen in new commands, as identified by Bryn in his study. Pearman, in his book The Cadogans at war describes it very well as a “dismal voyage where there were often two floggings a week”. Nine men were punished by flogging in December with between one dozen and three dozen lashes and during that time the relationship between George and his midshipman deteriorated, though by William’s own account it had initially begun well.
Captain Cadogan sent for me to his cabin and there told me that he had observed the general slackness with which the midshipmen carried out their duty, that I was the only one he thought worthy of speaking to, and exhorted me to do my duty better. I told him if felt highly gratified by the distinction he gave me and should certainly do everything in my power to serve him and the officers of the Crocodile
From George’s perspective, he perhaps intended to persuade a young man, already marked out to him as problematic by Captain Bettesworth, by getting him onside as an ally. This is what George says in his original statement made at the time of a court of inquiry into Badcock’s allegations .
Mr Badcock’s neglect of duty ..and the complaints that were made to this effect caused me ...to remonstrate with him in the terms he has stated, upon finding there ...marks of my attention to him to little or no effect...I can only refer you to those officers who have known him longer than myself for his general character, which makes me repent, from the impression Captain Bettesworth’s opinion in the first place made on me (and which in the end I found so true) I ever allowed myself to be prejudiced so much in his favour.
This sentence is another of George Cadogan’s rare incoherent moments but his later address to the court martial makes it clear that he was repenting of his attempt to win Badcock over rather than simply going straight to the application of punishment. He writes:
I found Mr Badcock in the Crocodile upon my arriving in the month of October 1807. I received from Captain Bettesworth an unfavourable character of him, although no third person having been present at this conversation it is out of my power to substantiate it by my evidence
Though this wsa true of that particular conversation there was later to be compelling evidence of Bettesworth's despairing frustration with Badcock at the court martial.
That captain’s remonstrance came, according to William, apparently inexplicably; George accused him of being lax in his duty and subsequently left him to the mercy of Lieutenant Devon who had him flogged.
I was seized up to one of the guns, Captain Cadogan went out of the room and told the first lieutenant that if he spared me he was injuring the service Lieutenant Devon then ordered me two dozen lashes ...
This downturn in the relationship worsened on the return from the Cape and in a period marked by other clashes caused by George’s exacting style of captaincy. The master’s log for January records on the 7th :
Captain Cadogan ordered the boatswain confined for contempt of him.
Having to confine the boatswain is a serious problem in any ship, and in a small ship like the Crocodile, where, as James Henderson has pointed out in his study of smaller ships, the close proximity made discipline harder to enforce, it is an even more difficult problem. This incident also carries disturbing overtones of the breakdown of the relationship between George and Thomas Simpson, the mutinous boatswain of his previous command, the Ferret.
Things went from bad to worse and it does seem from both George’s and William’s account of events that the captain and the first lieutenant focussed on the miscreant midshipman to a considerable extent , though not without justification given his disruptive influence on the ship. From Badcock' s own statements and the remarks quoted by his grandfather later, William Badcock was at best a proud, arrogant and forthright young man, and from the officers accounts he was also a difficult, lazy and contemptuous one when corrected. George Cadogan had all the pride and almost inbuilt hauteur an Earl’s son imbibes from the cradle, together with his own dutiful record as a midshipman and a high view of what constituted the actions of a gentleman. A clash was inevitable, and was always likely to be one in which damage wsa inflicted on both sides.
Eventually, after several punishments and demotions, Badcock was discharged from the Crocodile, crucially without the issue of a certificate from his captain stating his behaviour to have been satisfactory. Again, in the Hornblower episode The Examination for Lieutenant you may remember Horatio being asked for his certificates when he presents himself for his lieutenant’s examination in Gibraltar. These certificates were formulaic documents and each one read the same. The first of the three possessed by William Badcock serves as an example, the others followed the formula precisely:
This is to certify the principal officers and commissioners of His Majesty’s Navy that Mr William Badcock served as (gentleman volunteer in the second and third class) of H M Ship Sulphur under my command from 25th June 1803 to the date hereof during which time he behaved with diligence and sobriety and was always obedient to command.
Given under my hand on board the said ship, in the Downs, this 7th day of April 1804
The certificates may be formulaic but without them one could not get taken on by another ship, nor - crucially - could one go forward for the examination and then apply for a lieutenant’s post. William Badcock had been at sea for almost six years and would have been in a position, before too long, to hope for promotion had he had a complete record of his midshipman’s service, but at this stage, with only the rank of a common seaman and no certificate, his chances were slim. His discharge came at the time of his 16th birthday in June 1808 and it might have been the end of his career hopes entirely.
Badcock was fortunate that he still had one card to play - his uncle William Cumberland was by this time captain of the Stately and he accepted William with him as midshipman. William immediately began a written complaint to the Admiralty accusing George Cadogan and his first lieutenant, Mr Devon, of ”tyranny and cruelty” and submitted this via the usual system to the Admiralty.
Badcock’s complaint against Captain Cadogan
There were, in any given month, a number of complaints against officers, in fact one of the headings regularly appearing in the ADM 12 Digests of Correspondence is headed “Complaints on Officers”. Indeed the irony is that while Captain Cumberland was submitting Badcock’s complaint on his behalf the Admiralty had been corresponding with him concerning a complaint made against him by one of his own lieutenants.
The Admiralty took such complaints seriously, and wished to be seen to do so, even when the complaint was likely an exaggerated or vexatious one. However to avoid the expense, and the demand on senior officers’ time of too many unnecessary courts martial the court of enquiry system was used. By the time that Badcock’s complaint reached the admiralty the Crocodile had sailed to the Baltic. The board therefore ordered Admiral Webb, the C in C in the Baltic station, to convene a court of enquiry with the participation of the three most senior captains on the station.
The enquiry found there was a case to answer and so the Admiralty then ordered a court martial for George based on the assertions in Badcock’s statement. There then began the inevitable logistical nightmare of getting Captain Cadogan, his accuser, the witnesses for both sides and the necessary examining officers all in the right place at the right time. Badcock himself was summoned to attend at the flagship at the Nore along with a marine who was a witness. They were told that they would be ordered to proceed to the Baltic for a court martial which was deemed proper to be held on George Cadogan.
The usual logistical factors turned much more tragic when Badcock began to fall ill whilst attempting to make the journey asked of him. He had managed to reach the ,Namur , the flagship at the Nore, but became so ill he was transferred to the hospital ship HMS Sussex where his health deteriorated rapidly. Soon it must have become obvious that an onward journey to the Baltic would have been out of the question, though naval bureaucracy initially made it difficult for his family to get him shore leave as it seemed that the severity of his illness was not recognised.
Richard Cumberland managed, by a great deal of expenditure and effort, to get his grandson home, by barge and ship as he was too ill for coach travel, and had him attended by some eminent London doctors, but nothing availed and Badcock died a month or so later. Perhaps the most affecting statement that Cumberland wrote is this simple description, which displays none of his florid prose:
He died at 8.30 pm on the 7th December in the 17th year of his age and the sixth of his service in the navy.
At the time of Badcock’s death Cumberland was in the middle of writing a novel: John de Lancaster and was in the process of writing the preface to the third volume. He included in book three what one reviewer called “ an affecting appeal ...to the feelings of the reader”. This section of the novel was written in the bleak days between William’s death and his burial and book one ends with the following personal element:
Whilst I write this, my grandson, a brave youth, of six years service in the royal navy, born , as I vainly hoped, to grace my name and recompense the cares that I bestowed upon his education lies ( as ‘twere before me, dead and as yet unburied. Whilst I not only mourn his death but feel his wrongs, of which the world must hear, if the appeal, that he had made to justice, is cut short by his untimely death.
In the novel itself there is a passage which, whilst it is integral to the story the novel is telling perhaps as it also echoes Cumberland’s own feelings at his grandson’s death:
“The evil spirit hath not so established his authority on earth, that men will risque to be the friend of him who dares to be the foe of virtue. Innocence will not be violated nor justice braved and insulted with impunity. Where is there one among all the favourites of fortune to whom more happy opportunities and brighter hopes of prosperity have been vouchsafed than to that young man who is now become the object of our aversion and contempt? What might he not have been? Alas what is he now?
I should be at a loss, said the elder Wilson to answer that question because I could not find words in the language to express his crimes, but murder in the blackest cast is one of them. Were I on his court martial I would hang him without mercy and I think I could almost find it in my heart to be present at his execution.”
Immediately after the funeral a distraught Cumberland pursued his grandson’s case. He wrote a Memorial to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty which runs to many pages but which is a considerable amplification of Badcock’s own original complaint. He asserted additionally , amongst other things, that Captain Cadogan and Lieutenant Devon were responsible for hastening, if not causing Badcock’s death. Though in fact his death occurred more than six months after he left the Crocodile and whilst he was a midshipman on his uncle’s ship, the Stately. The Admiralty saw fit to proceed with a court martial on charges relating to Cumberland’s memorial rather than Badcock’s simpler complaint.
And so the pre Court Martial skirmishing began, with the original complaint already three months old, between Christmas and New Year of 1808/1809.
in part 3 The delayed court martial: George's months under arrest
William Richard Badcock
It was among the young gentlemen however, that nemesis awaited Captain Cadogan. One of the inherited crew of the Crocodile was a midshipman named William Richard Badcock, who was then aged 15 but who had been at sea since his 11th birthday .
An orphaned young man sent to sea very early indeed, nevertheless, he was not without interest or influence. His grandfather and guardian, Richard Cumberland was a celebrated journal editor and dramatist. Cumberland had a good number of friends in useful high places and was himself a very well known figure by that time of his life.
Cumberland’s daughter, Sophia had married Richard Badcock, a somewhat dissolute man who had died young, as a result of his lifestyle, at least according to his father in law who wrote:
This young man died, a victim to excess in the prime of life before he reached the age of thirty
Sophia Badcock, William's mother, painted by George Romney.
Richard Cumberland painted by Romney
Cumberland was left as the legal guardian of Badcock and his siblings, a duty he took very seriously. Cumberland’s plays were characterised by their sympathy for the marginalised and those on the edges of society and he was seen as an emotively outspoken and keenly litigious man, both of which traits are of significance to later events. His writing style is self consciously sentimental and striving, sometimes too obviously, for pathetic effect, something also relevant to the court martial clash that was to come.
This writing style is evident in his autobiographical work too, and nowhere more so than when he recounts the guardianship of the Badcock children,
“five children, awarded to my care by chancery, and looking up to me for the education, that is to decide upon their future destinies-My God! can I presume to hope that thou wilt give me life to execute this sacred trust, and train them in the way, poor innocents, wherein they ought to go?”
William Richard Badcock was one of nineteen grandchildren but his parental circumstances made him one whom Cumberland particularly wished to see established in life.
William also had an uncle at sea who was, at that time, captain of a 64, the Stately This was Captain William Cumberland, his mother’s younger brother. William Cumberland senior was a captain of some years standing having made post in 1798 and he was to be, as Captain of the Leyden, 64, part of Admiral Gambier’s fleet in the capture of the Danish navy later in 1807.
William was rated midshipman at the time George took over the Crocodile and, by George’s own account he had been hopeful of transferring to the Foudroyant. However George had refused his transfer on the grounds that he was short of midshipmen at that time.
The voyage to the Cape
On the voyage to the Cape the master’s log records a burst of punishments in the second month at sea, a pattern often seen in new commands, as identified by Bryn in his study. Pearman, in his book The Cadogans at war describes it very well as a “dismal voyage where there were often two floggings a week”. Nine men were punished by flogging in December with between one dozen and three dozen lashes and during that time the relationship between George and his midshipman deteriorated, though by William’s own account it had initially begun well.
Captain Cadogan sent for me to his cabin and there told me that he had observed the general slackness with which the midshipmen carried out their duty, that I was the only one he thought worthy of speaking to, and exhorted me to do my duty better. I told him if felt highly gratified by the distinction he gave me and should certainly do everything in my power to serve him and the officers of the Crocodile
From George’s perspective, he perhaps intended to persuade a young man, already marked out to him as problematic by Captain Bettesworth, by getting him onside as an ally. This is what George says in his original statement made at the time of a court of inquiry into Badcock’s allegations .
Mr Badcock’s neglect of duty ..and the complaints that were made to this effect caused me ...to remonstrate with him in the terms he has stated, upon finding there ...marks of my attention to him to little or no effect...I can only refer you to those officers who have known him longer than myself for his general character, which makes me repent, from the impression Captain Bettesworth’s opinion in the first place made on me (and which in the end I found so true) I ever allowed myself to be prejudiced so much in his favour.
This sentence is another of George Cadogan’s rare incoherent moments but his later address to the court martial makes it clear that he was repenting of his attempt to win Badcock over rather than simply going straight to the application of punishment. He writes:
I found Mr Badcock in the Crocodile upon my arriving in the month of October 1807. I received from Captain Bettesworth an unfavourable character of him, although no third person having been present at this conversation it is out of my power to substantiate it by my evidence
Though this wsa true of that particular conversation there was later to be compelling evidence of Bettesworth's despairing frustration with Badcock at the court martial.
That captain’s remonstrance came, according to William, apparently inexplicably; George accused him of being lax in his duty and subsequently left him to the mercy of Lieutenant Devon who had him flogged.
I was seized up to one of the guns, Captain Cadogan went out of the room and told the first lieutenant that if he spared me he was injuring the service Lieutenant Devon then ordered me two dozen lashes ...
This downturn in the relationship worsened on the return from the Cape and in a period marked by other clashes caused by George’s exacting style of captaincy. The master’s log for January records on the 7th :
Captain Cadogan ordered the boatswain confined for contempt of him.
Having to confine the boatswain is a serious problem in any ship, and in a small ship like the Crocodile, where, as James Henderson has pointed out in his study of smaller ships, the close proximity made discipline harder to enforce, it is an even more difficult problem. This incident also carries disturbing overtones of the breakdown of the relationship between George and Thomas Simpson, the mutinous boatswain of his previous command, the Ferret.
Things went from bad to worse and it does seem from both George’s and William’s account of events that the captain and the first lieutenant focussed on the miscreant midshipman to a considerable extent , though not without justification given his disruptive influence on the ship. From Badcock' s own statements and the remarks quoted by his grandfather later, William Badcock was at best a proud, arrogant and forthright young man, and from the officers accounts he was also a difficult, lazy and contemptuous one when corrected. George Cadogan had all the pride and almost inbuilt hauteur an Earl’s son imbibes from the cradle, together with his own dutiful record as a midshipman and a high view of what constituted the actions of a gentleman. A clash was inevitable, and was always likely to be one in which damage wsa inflicted on both sides.
Eventually, after several punishments and demotions, Badcock was discharged from the Crocodile, crucially without the issue of a certificate from his captain stating his behaviour to have been satisfactory. Again, in the Hornblower episode The Examination for Lieutenant you may remember Horatio being asked for his certificates when he presents himself for his lieutenant’s examination in Gibraltar. These certificates were formulaic documents and each one read the same. The first of the three possessed by William Badcock serves as an example, the others followed the formula precisely:
This is to certify the principal officers and commissioners of His Majesty’s Navy that Mr William Badcock served as (gentleman volunteer in the second and third class) of H M Ship Sulphur under my command from 25th June 1803 to the date hereof during which time he behaved with diligence and sobriety and was always obedient to command.
Given under my hand on board the said ship, in the Downs, this 7th day of April 1804
The certificates may be formulaic but without them one could not get taken on by another ship, nor - crucially - could one go forward for the examination and then apply for a lieutenant’s post. William Badcock had been at sea for almost six years and would have been in a position, before too long, to hope for promotion had he had a complete record of his midshipman’s service, but at this stage, with only the rank of a common seaman and no certificate, his chances were slim. His discharge came at the time of his 16th birthday in June 1808 and it might have been the end of his career hopes entirely.
Badcock was fortunate that he still had one card to play - his uncle William Cumberland was by this time captain of the Stately and he accepted William with him as midshipman. William immediately began a written complaint to the Admiralty accusing George Cadogan and his first lieutenant, Mr Devon, of ”tyranny and cruelty” and submitted this via the usual system to the Admiralty.
Badcock’s complaint against Captain Cadogan
There were, in any given month, a number of complaints against officers, in fact one of the headings regularly appearing in the ADM 12 Digests of Correspondence is headed “Complaints on Officers”. Indeed the irony is that while Captain Cumberland was submitting Badcock’s complaint on his behalf the Admiralty had been corresponding with him concerning a complaint made against him by one of his own lieutenants.
The Admiralty took such complaints seriously, and wished to be seen to do so, even when the complaint was likely an exaggerated or vexatious one. However to avoid the expense, and the demand on senior officers’ time of too many unnecessary courts martial the court of enquiry system was used. By the time that Badcock’s complaint reached the admiralty the Crocodile had sailed to the Baltic. The board therefore ordered Admiral Webb, the C in C in the Baltic station, to convene a court of enquiry with the participation of the three most senior captains on the station.
The enquiry found there was a case to answer and so the Admiralty then ordered a court martial for George based on the assertions in Badcock’s statement. There then began the inevitable logistical nightmare of getting Captain Cadogan, his accuser, the witnesses for both sides and the necessary examining officers all in the right place at the right time. Badcock himself was summoned to attend at the flagship at the Nore along with a marine who was a witness. They were told that they would be ordered to proceed to the Baltic for a court martial which was deemed proper to be held on George Cadogan.
The usual logistical factors turned much more tragic when Badcock began to fall ill whilst attempting to make the journey asked of him. He had managed to reach the ,Namur , the flagship at the Nore, but became so ill he was transferred to the hospital ship HMS Sussex where his health deteriorated rapidly. Soon it must have become obvious that an onward journey to the Baltic would have been out of the question, though naval bureaucracy initially made it difficult for his family to get him shore leave as it seemed that the severity of his illness was not recognised.
Richard Cumberland managed, by a great deal of expenditure and effort, to get his grandson home, by barge and ship as he was too ill for coach travel, and had him attended by some eminent London doctors, but nothing availed and Badcock died a month or so later. Perhaps the most affecting statement that Cumberland wrote is this simple description, which displays none of his florid prose:
He died at 8.30 pm on the 7th December in the 17th year of his age and the sixth of his service in the navy.
At the time of Badcock’s death Cumberland was in the middle of writing a novel: John de Lancaster and was in the process of writing the preface to the third volume. He included in book three what one reviewer called “ an affecting appeal ...to the feelings of the reader”. This section of the novel was written in the bleak days between William’s death and his burial and book one ends with the following personal element:
Whilst I write this, my grandson, a brave youth, of six years service in the royal navy, born , as I vainly hoped, to grace my name and recompense the cares that I bestowed upon his education lies ( as ‘twere before me, dead and as yet unburied. Whilst I not only mourn his death but feel his wrongs, of which the world must hear, if the appeal, that he had made to justice, is cut short by his untimely death.
In the novel itself there is a passage which, whilst it is integral to the story the novel is telling perhaps as it also echoes Cumberland’s own feelings at his grandson’s death:
“The evil spirit hath not so established his authority on earth, that men will risque to be the friend of him who dares to be the foe of virtue. Innocence will not be violated nor justice braved and insulted with impunity. Where is there one among all the favourites of fortune to whom more happy opportunities and brighter hopes of prosperity have been vouchsafed than to that young man who is now become the object of our aversion and contempt? What might he not have been? Alas what is he now?
I should be at a loss, said the elder Wilson to answer that question because I could not find words in the language to express his crimes, but murder in the blackest cast is one of them. Were I on his court martial I would hang him without mercy and I think I could almost find it in my heart to be present at his execution.”
Immediately after the funeral a distraught Cumberland pursued his grandson’s case. He wrote a Memorial to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty which runs to many pages but which is a considerable amplification of Badcock’s own original complaint. He asserted additionally , amongst other things, that Captain Cadogan and Lieutenant Devon were responsible for hastening, if not causing Badcock’s death. Though in fact his death occurred more than six months after he left the Crocodile and whilst he was a midshipman on his uncle’s ship, the Stately. The Admiralty saw fit to proceed with a court martial on charges relating to Cumberland’s memorial rather than Badcock’s simpler complaint.
And so the pre Court Martial skirmishing began, with the original complaint already three months old, between Christmas and New Year of 1808/1809.
in part 3 The delayed court martial: George's months under arrest