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Sir Cloudesley Shovell

Sir Cloudesley Shovell was the Royal Navy's most active combat commander of the Marlborough era and his experiences included every type of naval and amphibious operation of the 17th and early 18th century. Cloudesley Shovell, the ardent adherent of the Prince of Orange, and afterwards, by sheer force of valuable service, the favoured of Queen Anne. He emerged from a village on the north coast of Norfolk, to spend a life amid the storms of the Atlantic and the bloodstained waters of the Mediterranean, confronting the wild pirates of Tripoli, the navies of France, the merchantmen of Spain, with the fearlessness and promptitude which earned him his reputation.

Smollett says that he was 'born of mean parentage in the county of Suffolk;' Cockley Cley, an obscure village in the west of Norfolk, which never heard the rush of the wave, nor produced a common seaman, much less three admirals, has been pointed out as his birthplace ; the men of Devonshire are inclined to claim him for their countryman ; but it is most probable that he was born in the village of Cockthorpe, near Blakeney, about two miles from the coast. The entry in the parish register of that village, which gives his name and the date of his baptism, November 25, 1650, is not indisputably reliable, as it was evidently inserted later than the entry which follows it, although the handwriting and ink are much the same in style and colour as those of the entries of the time.

So far from being in the lowest circumstances, and apprenticed throughout childhood to a shoemaker, as is usually asserted, the future admiral was the son of middle-class parents, who rented a farm of the Calthorpes, and occupied the Manor House, and no shoemaker even existed in the rural hamlet to give Sir Cloudesley Shovell so unnecessary an accomplishment. His original letters were so well worded as to show that he had received a fair education.

The exploits of Sir Cloudesley Shovell are of three distinct periods: he first distinguished himself in Charles II's reign ; he then with equal zeal and bravery defended the cause of William III., and, in the prime and meridian of life, although to him its last stage, led the squadrons of Queen Anne in the war of the Spanish succession. The restored King,the grave grand Dutchman, the Queen, whose personality seems always out of keeping with her romantic and richly peopled times, each in turn secured the loyalty of the weather-beaten seaman, who, from the time when he was a village urchin intent on ' the pellucid horn' at school, or playing truant barefoot on the beach, to the moment when his corpse was dashed against the beach at Scilly, had one idea - to fight for England ; and one home - the sea.

He went to sea at ten years old, with his friend Sir John Narborough, and although not a cabin-boy in the present acceptation of the term, he undertook his captain's errands, as is shown by his volunteering on one occasion, while still almost a child, to swim through the enemy's fire with some despatches for a distant ship, a service he accomplished by carrying the papers in his mouth. In 1676, when he was twenty-four years old, he successfully protected the English merchant vessels in the Mediterranean against the cruisers sent out from Tripoli; ensuring their safety by entering that harbour, and burning the whole of the enemy's craft. This incident first brought him into notice. Later, on the accession of William III, he embraced warmly the side of the revolution, and at an early period of William's reign, fought in the skirmish at Bantry Bay, when, beneath the rocky scenery of that beautiful coast, the French and English fleets employed the bright hours of May-day 1689 in cannonading one another.

A year after, Sir Cloudesley Shovell, commanding a squadron of men-of-war, took William III across St. George's Channel, and landed him in Ireland to fight, on July I, 1690, the battle of the Boyne, which sent the Dutch prince's father-in-law back to the shelter of Paris. When, in the long procession of the kings and queens of England, William of Orange was seen no more, and Queen Anne stepped to the front, Sir Cloudesley Shovell saw, as in a brilliant vista, the welcome career which opened to him by the declaration of the war with France and Spain. During the first five years and a half of that long struggle he was constantly employed. In the autumn of 1702 he was despatched to Vigo, five days after the capture of the town by Sir George Rooke, and was entrusted with the task of manning, repairing, and bringing home the French men-of-war and Spanish galleons which had been reached and taken when the flagship of Admiral Hopson, crowded with sail, crashed through the barrier lying across the mouth of the harbour and rode in among the enemy. The mission of Sir Cloudesley Shovell was expeditiously accomplished, and the squadron struggled home through a November storm, less formidable indeed than the terrific W.S.W. gale of the ensuing autumn, but sufficient to render the voyage, with the prize ships, an anxious one.

At the battle of Malaga, in 1704, which immediately succeeded the scaling of the Gibraltar Rock, Shovell shared with Sir George Rooke the credit of a victory which secured to the English the permanent possession of their newly made prize. It was on his return to England after this action that he was presented to Queen Anne, and received from her the snuff-box adorned with a portrait of her Majesty surrounded with diamonds, which, still redolent of the fragrant atoms, is among the treasures of his descendants.

In the following year, when the Earl of Peterborough went to Spain at the head of the army, Sir Cloudesley Shovell commanded the fleet, and after touching at Lisbon and Gibraltar, and taking on board the aspirant to the throne of Spain, the Archduke Charles of Austria, they arrived at Barcelona on August 16, when the bold and brilliant general, stimulated further by the perseverance, determination, and counsels of Shovell, succeeded, with the aid of a few hundred English soldiers, in storming the fort, and taking full possession of that fine port and city. This was one of the happy successes acknowledged with rejoicing in England, but which were soon to disappear from the scene in Spain. The last year of Sir Cloudesley Shovell's life, 1707, was that of the battle of Almanza, fatal to the cause of the Allies; and his own expedition against Toulon was an unfruitful one, although preceded by a successful enterprise at the mouth of the Var, when he dislodged the French troops from their position on the banks of the river. On this occasion, the French lines were near enough to the sea to receive a cannonade, and when the Esterel mountains had ceased to echo to the guns of five men-of-war, and to the shouts of six hundred British sailors, who landed in boats and took the entrenchment, the scene was left alone in its beauty, and the French had disappeared.

After the attempt upon Toulon, Sir Cloudesley Shovell turned towards England, with the larger portion of the fleet, ten ships of the line, five frigates, four fire-ships, a sloop and a yacht. 'The stately ships went on,' through the Mediterranean, past the Gibraltar Rock, along the Atlantic waves for the last time under Sir Cloudesley's flag. He had with him on board the ' Association' his two stepsons, Sir John Narborough, who had been created a baronet, and his brother; for Sir Cloudesley had not only taken up the profession, and more than continued the reputation of his friend, Admiral Sir John Narborough, but he had also succeeded to his wife. Lady Shovell and his own two daughters were awaiting him in London, when, on the morning of October 22, the fleet neared the shores of England.

Between the Scilly islands and the Land's End lie the dangerous ' Bishop' rocks, where a portion of this fleet-three ships of the line, the 'Association,' the ' Romney,' and the ' Eagle ' -were destined, at the very close of their homeward-bound voyage, to founder with all hands. Nine hundred souls were on board the 'Association,' when, in the darkness of the autumnal night, she struck on the rock near St. Mary's island; a huge wave, which floated the ' St. George,' close by and also in danger, and flung her into safety, banged the ' Association' on to her deadly fate. The grand vessel, her flag flying, and all sails set, teeming with life, and bravery, and jollity, paused, tottered, backed, and then, with a terrific plunge, sprang against the rock, and in less than three minutes every trace of her existence, and of the human beings who peopled her, had disappeared.

The body of Sir Cloudesley Shovell was found by Paxton, purser of the 'Arundel' man-of-war, on the beach of St. Mary's, one of the , Scilly islands. It was conveyed, after being embalmed, on board the 'Salisbury.'