The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars: 1793–1815 9781350383173, 9781350384118, 9781350383180

Table of contents :
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Plates
Preface
Note on Naval and Official Terminology
The Admiralty Board
Flag Officers
Secretary of State
Abbreviations
Map
Introduction
The Newfoundland context
The naval context: Flag officers as governors
Historiographical contexts
Conclusion
Chapter 1: Appointing naval governors
The naval context of appointments
Sir James Wallace (1731–1803), governor 1794–7
The Honourable William Waldegrave (1753-1825), governor 1797–1800
Sir Charles Pole (1757–1830), governor 1800–2
Sir James Gambier (1756–1833), governor 1802–5
Sir Erasmus Gower (1742–1814), governor 1805–7
John Holloway (1743–1826), governor 1807–10
Sir John Duckworth (1748–1817), governor 1810–12
Sir Richard Keats (1757-1834), governor 1813–16
Conclusion
Chapter 2: The routine of naval command
Preparations for departure
Convoys
The seaward defence of Newfoundland
Reporting and financial accountability
Naval patronage
Transatlantic naval routine
Conclusion
Chapter 3: The routine of civil government
Patronage and civil appointments
The Island’s land defences
Accountability and reporting
The Government House saga
Season’s end
Conclusion
Chapter 4: Authority, discipline and public order
Discipline in the Newfoundland squadron
Naval governors and the army
The administration of justice
Civil authority and public order
Ceremonies and the Authority of Governors
Conclusion
Chapter 5: Public welfare and measures of civic improvement
Upholding the Anglican faith
Material welfare
Conclusion
Chapter 6: Naval government, the Indigenous people and the failure of ‘conciliation’
The context of conciliation
Conciliation in the agendas of naval governors
Conciliation and Tory paternalism: Waldegrave
Conciliation and evangelicalism: Gambier
Conciliation and the ‘rights of the king’s subjects’: Holloway
Conciliation and collective rapprochement: Duckworth
Conclusion
Chapter 7: Reforming the framework of naval government
Governing in Palliser’s shadow
The ‘contradictory tendencies’ of naval government: Waldegrave
Legislative structure and public benefit: Gambier
Legislative implications of a sedentary fishery: Gower
Moving out of Palliser’s Shadow: Leasehold revenue and active naval government under Duckworth
Conclusion
Chapter 8: Naval government and its critics 1811–15
Naval governors and local elites
Elite challenges to active naval government: The Prince Regent’s ‘humble petitioners’
William Carson’s attack on naval government
Conclusion
Conclusion
Bibliography
Archival Material
Printed Material
Index
BLO_00_NAWA_Cover.pdf
Half Title

Citation preview

THE NAVAL GOVERNMENT OF NEWFOUNDLAND IN THE FRENCH WARS

1793–1815

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THE NAVAL GOVERNMENT OF NEWFOUNDLAND IN THE FRENCH WARS 1793–1815

John Morrow

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2023 Copyright © John Morrow, 2023 John Morrow has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. Cover image © Outside View of St. John’s Harbour, Newfoundland by Nicolas Pocock, 1740–1841. James Bragg collection, The Rooms Provincial Archives, Newfoundland. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any thirdparty websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3503-8317-3 ePDF: 978-1-3503-8318-0 eBook: 978-1-3503-8319-7 Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www​.bloomsbury​.com and sign up for our newsletters.

In grateful memory of Colin (J.C.) Davis, 1940-1921

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CONTENTS List of Plates viii Preface ix Note on Naval and Official Terminology xii List of Abbreviations xiv Map xv INTRODUCTION 1 Chapter 1 APPOINTING NAVAL GOVERNORS

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Chapter 2 THE ROUTINE OF NAVAL COMMAND

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Chapter 3 THE ROUTINE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT

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Chapter 4 AUTHORITY, DISCIPLINE AND PUBLIC ORDER

103

Chapter 5 PUBLIC WELFARE AND MEASURES OF CIVIC IMPROVEMENT

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Chapter 6 NAVAL GOVERNMENT, THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE AND THE FAILURE OF ‘CONCILIATION’

163

Chapter 7 REFORMING THE FRAMEWORK OF NAVAL GOVERNMENT

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Chapter 8 NAVAL GOVERNMENT AND ITS CRITICS 1811–15

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CONCLUSION 215 Bibliography Index

223 233

PLATES Map: Eastern Shore of Newfoundland xv 0.1 The fisheries process 2 0.2 A ‘nursery of seamen’ 4 2.1 James Cook’s and Michael Lane’s ‘General Chart of the Island of Newfoundland’ 52 2.2 St John’s Harbour entrance 56 5.1 St John’s in winter 143 6.1 Beothuk Village 165 6.2 Exploits River 168

PREFACE When working on an earlier study of British admirals I became aware of flag officers’ governorship of Newfoundland but was not able to pursue it in that context. This book builds on the earlier study, but it focuses on the professional and political attitudes and ideas that naval governors of Newfoundland brought to the civil and military government of the settlement during the French (and American) Wars, 1793–1815. It considers naval government in a critical period in the early modern history of Newfoundland when the old established settlement was transitioning from being a largely migratory fishery, valued by the Admiralty and British governments as a ‘nursery of seamen’, to a settlement where the fishery was conducted by a resident population. By 1815 its demography and economy had come to resemble a nascent settler colony rather than a maritime work camp and a movement emerged on the Island promoting constitutional changes which were to bring an end to naval government. In writing this book I have benefitted from a range of demographic, economic, social and political studies of eighteenth- and early- nineteenth-century Newfoundland, including those which consider the settlement in relation to the British Atlantic world, and have also utilized work on the role of the late Georgian Navy in the French Wars and the contemporary British Empire. I have drawn heavily on primary sources held in the UK National Archives, the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, the Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador and Memorial University Library, St John’s. The holdings at the Caird Library at Greenwich include personal papers relating to some of the flag officers who are the subject of this study. On occasion I have supplemented these sources with material gathered while working on the earlier book. In late 2019 and early 2020 I was able to read a range of Admiralty and Colonial Office papers in the UK National Archives and the Caird Library. Although prolonged Covid-related travel restrictions and general uncertainty over longdistance international air travel have prevented me from visiting Newfoundland, Newfoundland repositories provide online access to extensive bodies of primary material. The main Colonial Office Series for the period (CO 194) is available online through the Centre for Newfoundland Studies at Memorial University, St John’s. It would take remarkable orthoptic fortitude to read all the wartime volumes in digitized form, but this source has proved invaluable for checking and follow-up purposes. The electronic collections at Memorial also include the typewritten transcriptions of official documents made by the Mss D’Alberti (the D’Alberti Papers) which are held in the Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador. These transcriptions, which have been widely used by historians, are from a source now referred to as the ‘Colonial Secretary’s Letterbook’. As Newfoundland was not

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Preface

a colony until 1824, the wartime papers in this series are those of the governors’ secretaries. There is significant overlap with CO 194, but the series also includes material that, as it did not relate to governors’ relationship with the secretary of state in London, was not included in their extensive correspondence with the colonial office. A comparative analysis of the D’Alberti Papers and a finding list for the Colonial Secretary’s Letterbook volumes through to 1800 and a sample check of the texts suggest that the transcripts are accurate and comprehensive. Those working on aspects of late Georgian Newfoundland history owe a great debt to the institutions and individuals who have facilitated the digitization of such extensive holdings of primary material. The circumstances under which this study has been conducted make my debt a particularly heavy one, and I am very pleased to have this opportunity to express my gratitude to them. The institutions include the Provincial Archives of Newfoundland Labrador in St John’s and Memorial University’s St John’s and Grenfell campuses. A key personal role has been played over the years by Professor Olaf Janzen of the History Department at the Grenfell Campus. He has taken the lead in projects which have resulted in student researchers producing invaluable finding lists of the Colonial Secretary’s Letterbook to 1800 and the CO 194 series through to 1858. Professor Janzen has also written a series of admirably succinct and comprehensive ‘readers guides’ to Newfoundland history which are available online through Memorial University. I am very grateful to Professor Janzen for his advice and for directing me to the online sources available at St John’s. Mrs Melanie Tucker of the Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador responded with efficiency, forbearance and courtesy to a long train of enquiries and facilitated copies of material from the Duckworth Papers held there. Ms Colleen Field, Head of the Centre for Newfoundland Studies, Memorial University, responded very promptly to resolve a problem with my online access to the Centre’s DAI Colonial Collections. Dr Bethany Hamblen, Archivist and Records Manager, Balliol College, Oxford, kindly granted me access to its archives. I also thank staff members at the British Library, the Caird Library, the UK National Archives and the West Sussex Record Office in Chichester for their assistance when I was reading at these institutions. Mr Ian Bates helped me obtain a copy of his valuable biography of Sir Erasmus Gower and provided advice on an illustration. Mr Jerry Cranford, the Publisher at Flanker Press, St John’s, and the author very kindly allowed me to use a map of the east coast of Newfoundland which first appeared in Keith Mercer’s Rough Justice (2021). I am most grateful to my niece Rosie Morrow for her advice and assistance in enhancing the quality of 3 images used in the book. As in the past, work in British libraries and archives has been leavened by interludes of relaxation with friends and family living in England. In this case, I’m particularly pleased to acknowledge the warm and generous hospitality of my old friends Pete and Issy Mahoney in Southsea in February 2020 and my brother Peter and his wife Rachel at their home in Suffolk in November 2019 and February 2020. I began work on this project when I was still a staff member at the University of Auckland and would like to record my deep gratitude to the then vice chancellor, the late Emeritus Professor Stuart McCutcheon. Stuart authorized the university’s

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financial support for archival work in London and warmly encouraged my ongoing research work when I reported to him as a member of the vice chancellor’s office. I very much regret that Stuart’s death in early 2023 means that I will be unable to present him with a copy as a token of my gratitude and respect. Susan McDowellWatts and Pip Anderson, my executive assistants in the vice chancellor’s office, provided invaluable support for research-related travel and helped organize and copy documents. As with earlier projects, I would like to record my appreciation for the excellent service provided through the University of Auckland Library and for the continuing willingness of staff members to respond to my requests for guidance and book purchases. Earlier versions of this book have been reviewed by two sets of publishers’ readers. I am happy to acknowledge the benefits I have gained from their reports in completing the project. I am grateful to my previous editor Emily Drewe of Bloomsbury Academic for drawing this project to the attention of her colleague Maddie Holder, the World History Editor at the Press. It has been a pleasure to work with Maddie and her assistant Megan Harris in bringing the book through to publication. My great friend and colleague Jonathan Scott of the University of Auckland has shown encouraging interest in this project from its inception and has been warmly supportive through its vicissitudes. He has also read various versions of the manuscript and commented on them with great insight and sympathy. I owe him a great deal. The same is true of my wife Di. She has read the whole book and commented on it and has, as ever, provided great support and encouragement. I am especially grateful to Jonathan and Di for sparing time from their own research and writing projects to assist me with mine. The final personal debt that I wish to record here is to Colin Davis, an outstanding historian, a warm friend, a sure guide and a generous supporter. I knew Colin for more than forty years, and during all that time he served as a source of scholarly inspiration and great practical help and wisdom in all aspects of my academic life. Although his health was failing at the time, he asked to see a preliminary paper that I had written on one of the naval governors and provided an insightful response to it. This act of kindness, which epitomized Colin’s generosity of spirit, encouraged me to think that the wider topic was worth pursuing. It is a privilege, though one tinged with sadness, to dedicate what developed from that paper to Colin’s memory. John Morrow Devonport New Zealand 1 December 2022

NOTE ON NAVAL AND OFFICIAL TERMINOLOGY The Admiralty Board The Royal Navy was under the direction of seven lords commissioners of the Admiralty, known collectively as the ‘Board of Admiralty’ and usually referred to as the ‘Admiralty Board’ or simply ‘the Board’. It was headed by the first lord who sat in the Cabinet, the body that determined the strategy which the Board implemented. The Board was made up of ‘civil’ commissioners and either three or four ‘naval’ or ‘professional’ members. The former were political figures but sometimes included a commissioner who had been a very senior civil servant. The latter were serving members of the Royal Navy, sometimes senior captains but usually of ‘flag’ rank. Most of the first lords in the war years were politicians, but on two occasions the Board was headed by senior naval officers: Admiral, Lord St Vincent (1801–4) and Admiral, Lord Barham (1804–6). The civilian first lords were: the Earl of Chatham (1788–94), Earl Spencer (1794–1801), Lord Melville (1804–5), Viscount Howick (1806), Thomas Grenville (1806–7), Lord Mulgrave (1807–10), Philip Yorke (1810–12) and 2nd Lord Melville (1812–27).

Flag Officers When they were commanding fleets, squadrons or land-based stations, the ships of the most senior officers of the Royal Navy flew a flag denoting their rank and the squadron to which they belonged. ‘Commodores’ were senior captains who were given temporary flag rank if the scale of their responsibilities warranted it. The permanent flag officers were divided on the basis of ascending seniority into rear admirals, vice admirals and admirals, with each rank being divided by ascending seniority into blue, white and red squadrons. Squadron designations had once referred to divisions of a single fleet, but by the French Wars, when there were numerous fleets, they denoted seniority within a flag rank: thus rear admirals of the Blue, White or Red squadrons. Newly promoted flag officers were usually made rear admirals of the Blue Squadron with their place in the squadron being determined by their seniority on the ‘post captains’ list. On each subsequent promotion round (or ‘promotion’) flag officers moved through the squadrons and ranks, rising to the crowning dignity of Admiral of the Red if they lived to benefit from a sufficient number of promotions. When there were large promotions, a few admirals began their flag careers as rear admirals of the White, and those in more senior positions went directly from the White Squadron to the next flag rank or from the Blue to Red squadrons in their current rank.

Note on Naval and Official Terminology

xiii

During the war years, flag officers moved relatively quickly through the ranks and squadrons because there were frequent and often sizeable promotions. There were two promotions in 1794 and one in each year of the wars except 1796, 1798, 1800, 1803, 1806 and 1815. Flag promotion was largely determined by seniority on the list of ‘post captains’, but a few officers were passed over because they had very serious stains on their records or, more commonly, failed to satisfy eligibility criteria specified in terms of the currency of active service in an appropriate command over a given period of time. For example, in the French Wars, the test was whether a post captain had commanded at sea in the ‘last’ (that is the American Revolutionary War) and was ‘free of stigma’. In the Napoleonic Wars the period of eligibility was dated to the recommencement of war in 1803 after the Peace of Amiens. The Board had the (pretty much discretionary) option of consigning (usually very old and/or unwell) post captains to the ranks of ‘superannuated rear admirals’; these officers enjoyed the title and half pay of a rear admiral but were removed from the active list and were not eligible for further promotion. The term ‘post captain’ applied to officers promoted to the substantive rank of captain as distinguished from those holding the rank of ‘commander’ (‘master and commander’ before 1794) who were referred to as ‘captain’ as a courtesy.

Secretary of State Until 1801 governors of Newfoundland reported to the Secretary of State for the Home Department and thereafter to the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies. These roles were senior cabinet positions in the British government. The secretary of state responsible for Newfoundland was advised by the Privy Council ‘Committee of Council on Trade and Foreign Plantations’, sometimes referred to simply as ‘the Committee on Trade’. Wartime secretaries of state with responsibilities for Newfoundland were: Henry Dundas, later first Lord Melville (1791–4), Duke of Portland (1794–1801), Lord Hobart (1801–4), Earl Camden (1804–5), Viscount Castlereagh (1805–6), William Windham (1806–7), Viscount Castlereagh (1807–9), Earl of Liverpool (1809–12) and Earl Bathurst (1812–27).

ABBREVIATIONS BL DAI DCB NMM NA ODNB PAN

British Library (London, UK) Digital Archives Initiative, Centre for Newfoundland Studies, (St John’s, Newfoundland) Dictionary of Canadian Biography Carid Library, National Maritime Museum (Greenwich, UK) National Archives (Kew, UK) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador (St John’s, Newfoundland)

MAP

This map shows the location of settlements on the east coast of Newfoundland. In the French Wars the most significant areas of settlement were (from the north): Twillingate and Fogo (Notre Dame Bay), Greenspond (Bonavista Bay), Trinity (Trinity Bay), Carbonear and Harbour Grace (Conception Bay), St John’s, Ferryland, Trepassey, St Mary’s, Placentia, Fortune. Source: Keith Mercer, Rough Justice: Policing, Crime, and the Origins of the Newfoundland Constabulary, 1729-1871 (St John’s: Flanker Press, 2021).

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INTRODUCTION

From 1729 Newfoundland (and the ‘adjoining parts’ of Labrador and Anticosti between 1763 and 1774 and after 1809) was governed by a series of senior commissioned officers of the Royal Navy. From the sixteenth century the settlement had been the focus of an increasingly extensive trade based on the rich and apparently limitless stocks of cod fish off its coast and was defined in terms of that trade. Its governors, who also commanded the squadron based at St John’s, were charged with responsibility for an entity that was characterized as a ‘fishery’. In the early days, governors were post captains holding the temporary rank of commodore, but from the appointment of Rear Admiral Montague in 1776, a string of officers with the substantive flag ranks of rear, vice or full admiral filled the role.1 The combination of civil and military responsibilities was unusual, but so too was the entity these admirals governed. Vice Admiral the Honourable William Waldegrave, governor between 1797 and 1800, described the ‘Island of Newfoundland’ as ‘a sort of amphibious Government, totally unlike any other.’2 This government was a discrete and unique responsibility of senior flag officers, as distinctive in its way as their commands of fleets at sea, or at shore-based stations in Great Britain and Ireland.3 This book explores a series of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century admirals’ responses to the challenges arising from their dual roles as governors and commanders-in-chief at a time when Great Britain was involved in a protracted global struggle with revolutionary and Napoleonic France. Unlike an earlier study by Jerry Bannister which is concerned largely with naval governance as a system of rule and senior naval officers’ role in the Island’s evolving judiciary over the very long eighteenth century, the focus here is on flag officers’ responses to challenges arising in this uniquely ‘amphibious’ command at a critical period in its history.4 There are a number of reasons for focusing on the role of wartime naval governors. Although Newfoundland was not a major theatre of action on land or sea, the global scale of the French Wars meant that governors’ military responsibilities increased significantly, particularly from 1812 to 1814 when Britain was also at war with the United States of America.5 Despite the scale and duration of these responsibilities, the Island’s governors were far more active in addressing the civil needs of the population than those holding these roles in the Seven Years’ and American Revolutionary Wars.6 Their high level of engagement with the needs of civil society – education, the judiciary, measures of popular welfare and social control, and religious provision – reflected the naval governors’ appreciation that

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The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars

the resident population of the Island was becoming increasingly numerous and demographically diverse as the settlement was transformed from a largely (but not exclusively) ‘migratory’ maritime work camp to what contemporaries termed a ‘sedentary’ fishery. It is significant, moreover, that their energetic and insightful responses to these challenges were influenced by a set of distinctive professional attitudes which were the hallmark of those who had successful careers in the senior ranks of the Royal Navy from the early 1790s. Finally, if the naval governors were not distracted by the war, their political masters in London certainly were. The financial and strategic demands of a prolonged series of staggeringly expensive global operations meant that, until the very end of the wars, governors of Newfoundland had to contend with the practical and political effects of senior ministers’ failure to recognize the significance of the changes that had taken place on the Island since the 1780s.7 The remainder of this introductory chapter will consider the local and imperial context of the naval government of Newfoundland and the distinctive features of the professional background from which the wartime governors came. It will conclude with a survey of late Georgian Newfoundland historiography relevant to this study.​

Plate 0.1  This early (c. 1700) engraving shows the main stages in the industrial approach to fish processing developed to maximize the productivity of the cod fishery. (Courtesy Library of Congress LC-USZ62-32072.)

Introduction

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The Newfoundland context Although British merchants were exporting timber, seal, salmon and whale oils and furs from Newfoundland in the late eighteenth century, cod remained the staple of the fishery. From the late spring until the early autumn huge quantities of cod caught in onshore waters or out on the Grand Banks were preserved through salting and drying and shipped to markets in the Mediterranean. Inferior fish were sent to West Indian colonies to feed slaves working on plantations. Unlike other staple economies in Britain’s Atlantic territories, Newfoundland was not primarily a source of commodities that were shipped to Britain to be consumed or processed there. Rather, the Island’s economic impact on the British economy tended to be indirect. The merchants who shipped fish to Europe were paid in bullion which was either repatriated to Great Britain or used to purchase luxury goods for sale in home markets or elsewhere. Until the latter part of the eighteenth century, the fishery was largely reliant on a workforce that migrated annually to Newfoundland; it was thus a significant consumer of British and Irish labour. The Island was entirely dependent on the importation of provisions, consumer goods and supplies necessary to work the fishery and, after Britain’s loss of thirteen colonies on the North American mainland in 1783, most of these imports came from England and Ireland.8 Despite the role of cod fish as the staple of the Newfoundland economy, the Island was not merely the site of extractive activity. In the seventeenth century it had become the centre of a trading system which reached deep into the economies of the region and extended beyond the Atlantic seaboard to the Mediterranean.9 Even in a narrower Newfoundland context, the merchants’ purchase and exportation of the produce of the various fisheries was a moment in a more extensive trading cycle. By the late eighteenth century there had been a marked decline in merchants’ direct involvement in fishing, but they continued to provide provisions and supplies to those who ran fishing operations and purchased from them processed fish products for export.10 Fisheries products were the means through which the fishers repaid merchants for supplies that were advanced to them and were then utilized in their trade in European and other markets.11 While ministers in London were aware of the economic benefits of the fisheries, governments’ commitment to the Newfoundland fishery was invariably framed in terms of its role as a ‘nursery of seamen’ and thus as a key British strategic priority.12 In common with other significant early modern maritime powers, the British state faced ongoing challenges in training and maintaining a body of skilled seamen necessary to man the large fleets needed in wartime. Work on the fisheries, small boat handling in challenging conditions and service on vessels going from Britain to Newfoundland and from thence to the Mediterranean bred skilled, resilient seamen who were employed on British merchant vessels in peacetime and who would volunteer for, or be pressed into, wartime service in the Royal Navy.13 The perception of the value of the fishery as a nursery of seamen went back to late Tudor times and underwrote eighteenth-century attempts to ensure it remained ‘migratory’. To this end, experienced fishermen and novices, or ‘green

4

The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars

men’, who shipped as ‘passengers’ to Newfoundland in the spring, were required to return to Britain when the season ended in the autumn. Commitment to the idea of Newfoundland’s critical role in naval manning meant that the extractive and trading activities of the fishery were seen by the British government as instruments for funding and incentivized the development and retention of a well-trained maritime workforce. These assumptions underwrote British policy and were warmly endorsed by naval commanders who had first-hand experience of the challenge of finding prime seamen to man their ships. When war broke out, these men would be recruited in Britain and Ireland and taken from ships returning to home ports. Newfoundland itself also served as a fertile location for forced and voluntary recruitment into ships on the station and at one stage attracted the attention of the hard-pressed commander-in-chief of the North American squadron based at Halifax, Nova Scotia.14​ The Royal Navy’s perspective on the value of the fishery was epitomized in the career of Sir Hugh Palliser, a distinguished Royal Navy captain (and later an admiral and MP) who was governor from 1762 to 1766. His highly active approach to the role was underwritten by a strong commitment to a traditional view of the fishery as a nursery of seamen and a belief that the unprincipled exploitation of

Plate 0.2  The experience gained on passages to and from Newfoundland and boat handling in the challenging waters surrounding the Island were central to the fishery’s primary official rationale as a ‘nursery of seamen’. (Detail from Joseph Jeakes, after John Thomas Serres, The Situation of His Majesty’s Packet The Lady Hobart (1804), courtesy Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection B1977.14.13041.)

Introduction

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the migratory labour force undermined the pursuit of this objective. Palliser had been shocked by the condition of fishermen forced by debt to winter over and was alarmed at the threat they posed to public order on the Island. His responses to these challenges to the ‘good of the fishery’ were reflected in the act passed in 1775 (15 Geo. III. Cap. 31) which is colloquially named after him. Its preamble highlighted the contribution that a properly managed fishery would make to the perennial problem of naval manning: experience ‘in Europe’ had shown that fisheries were ‘the best nurseries for able and experienced seamen, always ready to man the royal navy when occasions require’.15 Key clauses of the act were designed to advance this goal by regulating aspects of the employment relationship between ‘passengers’ brought out from Britain and Ireland as seasonal workers in the fisheries and those who transported and employed them. Thus the masters of British vessels were forbidden from landing passengers on continental America and those who employed them were required to withhold up to £2 from wages to pay their passage home at the end of the season. A limit was imposed on the proportion of wages that could be advanced in goods or cash to prevent fishermen from concluding their employment in a tangle of debt which prevented them returning home. A requirement that outstanding wages were the first charge on monies raised by the sale of fish and fish oil prevented the fishermen’s claims being subordinated to those of merchants and other commercial creditors. Finally, penalties for absence were specified in the act rather than being at the discretion of employers, and disputes arising from its provisions were to be determined in the Court of Sessions of Newfoundland.16 The act was thus framed in terms of the ‘nursery of seamen’ rationale of British control of Newfoundland and was premised on the assumption that it relied on a largely migratory workforce and fishery. At the height of the migratory fishery in the late 1780s, fleets numbering close to 300 vessels sailed in convoys in the company of large numbers of supply ships. Earlier in the century, merchants from north Devon had played a major role in the trade but their dominance gave way to those based in ports on the southern coast of Devon and Dorset. It was common for merchants from these areas to form part of the spring migration, returning to their opulent English homes and extensive business premises in the autumn when the season ended. From about 1800, Irish and Scottish merchants based in St John’s became increasingly prominent in the fisheries trade and related commercial activities serving the needs of a growing residential workforce.17 West Country merchants continued, however, to play a significant direct role in another major settlement in Trinity Bay, a little further to the north.18 Trinity was one of a number of ‘outports’ that dotted the numerous bays that made up the coastline of the Island. The population of these areas varied greatly, ranging at the end of the period from over 9,000 permanent residents in Conception Bay to the north of St John’s and less than 1,200 in Fortune Bay on the southern coast of the Island.19 Regardless of the population of the outports, however, the lack of viable roads beyond St John’s meant that they were all reliant on the sea for their communications with other parts of the Island.

6

The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars

The structure and practice of eighteenth-century parliamentary politics meant that the most prominent of the English Newfoundland merchants acquired electoral influence in parliamentary boroughs which helped them safeguard their business interests. Several West Country boroughs had very restricted franchises, and here, as elsewhere in Britain, election outcomes were subject to elite influence, commercial pressure and outright bribery. Political ‘interest’ allowed prominent merchants to secure patronage appointments for their followers from the central government. Their wealth provided the means of accommodating members of the local elite by lavish civic hospitality and encouraging non-voters to give raucous support to favoured candidates and intimidate their rivals.20 The Poole Corporation was dominated by merchants with Newfoundland connections who were able to ensure that the body of electors (the ‘freemen’) was well stocked with members of their closely interlocking family and business interests. In every parliament between 1790 and 1834 at least one of the MPs for Poole was connected to the Newfoundland trade. Benjamin Lester, who ran a major operation at Trinity, was mayor of Poole, an MP for the borough and deputy lord lieutenant of the county. When operating in that interesting territory occupied by expert advisors and lobbyists, he was on a familiar footing with powerful political figures including the prime minister and the first lord of the admiralty.21 Robert Newman, whose family was prominent in the Dartmouthbased trade between Newfoundland and Portugal, was MP for Bletchingley from 1812 and 1818 and Exeter from 1818 to 1826.22 In Dartmouth itself, the Newmans and their friends were long-time allies of the Holdsworths, another local family with extensive interests in the Newfoundland trade. This connection dominated the political life of the borough, with one or other of its members holding the Dartmouth mayoralty seventy-six times between 1715 and 1830 and thus having a critical role in choosing the forty freemen who elected its two MPs.23 From 1802 to 1820 one of these seats was held by a Holdsworth, the other by a member of the Bastard family with whom the Holdsworths were closely associated.24 Political ‘interest’ mobilized on behalf of Newfoundland merchants gave a distinctive imperative edge to its ‘requests’ to naval governors to provide convoy protection for their ships and to ministers to attend to matters of concern to the trade.25 On occasion, ‘interest’ might be mobilized more directly to ward off unwelcome initiatives. Thus in May 1798 when it was rumoured that the Ministry was giving favourable consideration to Waldegrave’s suggestion of a tax on rum to fund education and church building in Newfoundland, associates of Benjamin Lester, father-in-law of one of the sitting members, hurried up to London to rally their parliamentary ‘friends’.26 Five years earlier a leading merchant from Dartmouth had attacked a mooted rum tax before a House of Commons Committee, declaring that ‘no Tax being necessary of this sort, unless it be for the purpose of supporting Luxury and Idleness’.27 When the British ministers were framing a government for the convict settlement at Botany Bay, a senior official suggested that Newfoundland might serve as a model.28 Although there were formal similarities between the governments of the two settlements, these did not extend to its practice. The early governors of New

Introduction

7

South Wales were senior naval officers, and, like their colleagues in Newfoundland, governed through royal prerogative and were not constrained by a local assembly. Newfoundland interests were, however, part of a broader British political constituency which affected the way its governors’ powers were exercised. The naval governors of Newfoundland were acutely conscious of the parliamentary interest of some of their subjects and were close enough to London to feel the effect of it. By contrast, communications between London and New South Wales took up to two years, and those condemned to live there had no political interest at all. Newfoundland was not a colony, and in the late Georgian period senior officials in London were determined to resist for as long as possible developments that would propel it towards that status. The issue had long been a matter of contention and from time to time proposals had been made to constitute the Island as a colony. This option had last been given serious official consideration during Lord Grenville’s administration in the mid-1760s.29 From 1775, however, the combined efforts of Charles Jenkinson (later Baron Hawkesbury and first Earl of Liverpool) at the Board of Trade and Sir Hugh Palliser resulted in the legislative enshrinement of provisions which assumed that the permanent settlement of Newfoundland and measures which treated it as an embryonic colony would compromise the flow of seamen back to Great Britain. As Lord Liverpool put it in early 1804, ‘it has been an established Maxim, that Newfoundland should never be considered merely as a Colony.’ While acknowledging that the increase in settled population meant that it had become ‘a sort of colony’, he nevertheless insisted that it was ‘proper . . . to constrain this Tendency as long as possible, at the same time Concessions must occasionally be made so as to prevent Tumult or Disorder among the People of this Island’.30 Patrick O’Flaherty observed that British policy makers were inclined to regard Newfoundland as an extension of that country’s ‘commercial and military strength’ rather than as a distinct social and political entity. This attitude mirrored that of non-resident West Country merchants who, as Jerry Bannister puts it, saw Newfoundland as ‘English backcountry’.31 Despite measures such as Palliser’s Act and the attitude expressed in Liverpool’s declaration, a range of economic and strategic developments were eroding the viability of the model of a migratory fishery promoted by them. The prolonged wars with revolutionary and Napoleonic France provided fresh momentum to shifts in the demographics of the Island and the economics of the fisheries which predated them by several decades. A resident population of less than 12,000 at the beginning of the French Revolutionary War had grown to nearly 28,000 in the second decade of the nineteenth century.32 Some of this growth was a result of extensive emigration from Ireland in the final years of the war, but it was underpinned by natural increases produced by a more balanced demographic than that found in a maritime work camp. Gordon Hancock notes that while Newfoundland continued to resemble the Klondike until well into the nineteenth century, the significant increase in resident females from the turn of the century provided the basis for a residential fishery and for later changes in the social atmosphere and character of the settlement.33 As the resident population of the Island increased, wartime conditions reduced the inflow of migratory fishery workers from the UK. The demand for seamen

8

The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars

for the Royal Navy decimated the labour force available to ship to Newfoundland every spring, and wartime conditions added to the natural hazards of the Atlantic crossing and fishing off the Grand Banks. Increasingly, the convoys that made the western journey in the spring were dominated by supply ships protected by menof-war of the squadron destined for St John’s. Before the wars, Catholic countries in southern Europe were the main markets for Newfoundland fish, but as they entered into alliances with French governments or fell under their control, they were closed to British merchandise. As a result, the demand for fish, and the prices paid for it relative to the cost of supplies, contracted sharply. Shipments to slave colonies in the West Indies provided some relief, but even if large numbers of British seamen had been available for employment in the Newfoundland fishery, they would have been surplus to requirements because for most of the war years the growing resident labour force was sufficient to meet the reduced demand.34 By 1805, 90 per cent of salt cod was produced by residents, and the relatively small number of ‘passengers’ working in the fishery were employed by them rather than, as had been the case in the past, by non-resident employers.35 When the demand for fish strengthened temporarily in the closing years of the Napoleonic War, the labour force was augmented by an influx of poor migrants from rural Ireland. The growth of the sedentary fishery expanded the scale of the government of Newfoundland and helped shift the locus of economic power on the Island. The increasing scale of government was reflected in estimates approved by the British Parliament for the civil establishment. In 1789 when Vice Admiral Mark Milbanke was governor the estimates were just over £1,000. By 1813 they had increased to £4,000 and were over £5,000 in 1815.36 The increasing reliance on a sedentary labour force in the fisheries was matched by changes to the merchant elite of the Island. Although Newfoundland retained its role as a British trading asset and people connected to its trade continued to sit in the House of Commons, the rise of a residential merchant elite had important implications for the government of the Island as governors faced organized attempts by the local Society of Merchants to oversee their activities.37 Members of the Society, and the less clearly defined groups who styled themselves ‘the principal inhabitants of St John’s’, resisted attempts to raise taxes on the Island and were resentful when governors developed revenue streams from rents and leases and sought permission from the secretary of state to apply funds from these sources to support their initiatives. As we shall see, these matters provoked criticism of naval government by pro-colonial interests in St John’s towards the end of the wars.38 Throughout the period, however, naval governors who managed their relationships with the local elite skilfully were able to advance mutually valued civic causes.

The naval context: Flag officers as governors The formal establishment of civil government in the hands of the senior naval officer at St John’s dated from 1729 but was foreshadowed in an Order in Council of 1708 which responded to a representation from the Board of Trade and Plantations. The

Introduction

9

Board in turn was reacting to complaints from the Island that naval and military officers were abusing their power for personal gain and were (contrary to law) engaging in the fisheries and levying ‘exactions’ on other, legal, participants. The Board did not think naval officers were engaging in these activities but believed the charges were well founded in the case of the commander of the garrison at St John’s.39 Even without these difficulties, however, there were concerns about the operation of the Island’s rudimentary justice system and the role played in it by the ‘fishing admirals’. These men were not commissioned naval officers, and their mode of appointment was as idiosyncratic as their title. No consideration was given to character or judgement, let alone legal knowledge or judicial experience. The role was assigned to the captain of the first ship to arrive off a part of the coast in a given season.40 The Order in Council of 1708 specified that the senior commissioned naval officer at St John’s should in future ‘have the command at land’ as well as at sea. They were to uphold the statutes applying to Newfoundland and provide a check on what Chief Justice Reeves later termed ‘the ignorance and partiality of the fishing admirals’.41 It was also expected that the commodores would oversee the management of government stores on the Island and the consolidation and submission of returns on the fishery. These measures were not effective, and in the years that followed there were ongoing difficulties in administering basic justice among those on the Island, persistent dissatisfaction with the conduct of the fishing admirals and clashes between the commodores and senior army officers in the garrison at Placentia, a settlement on the south-west coast of the Avalon Peninsula.42 When Placentia was ceded to the British under the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1715, control of its garrison was assigned to the military commander of Nova Scotia. This arrangement emboldened local army officers to continue to flout the law and challenge the authority of the naval commander. Jerry Bannister has characterized the period before 1729 as being ‘close to anarchy’.43 The Orders-in-Council of 1729 sought to address these difficulties. They confirmed the supremacy of the naval commanders-in-chief by specifying that they were to exercise the full powers and responsibilities of civil governors of the Island and be issued with an appropriate royal commission on appointment. Naval commanders’ formal responsibility for upholding the laws regulating the fishery (stat. 10 & 11 William 3) was to be incorporated in their Instructions. Their government included Placentia which thus ceased to be part of Nova Scotia. In addition to their responsibilities as commander-in-chief, naval governors were to oversee the civil government of the Island (such as it was), preside over the system of justice and arrange for those accused of serious crimes to be shipped to England for trial. These measures had the effect of reining in the military – curbing its ‘worst excesses and abuses’ – and thus ensuring that it did not become the disruptive and corrupt presence which marred the early history of New South Wales. They also laid the basis for a century-long series of developments in the administration of justice on the Island.44 While the naval government of Newfoundland thus arose out of a series of crises, it built on aspects of past practice and might be seen as a tidy solution to problems facing the settlement. The recent conduct of senior military officers in

10

The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars

Newfoundland would not have encouraged the Board to place its faith in them, and there was in any case a very limited military presence on the Island. The appointment of a partially resident civilian to the post would have been expensive for the government in London and probably not an attractive prospect for potential candidates. Given the severe limitations of land communications on the Island, the navy was essential to its defence and important in relation to the larger strategic context. It was necessary for a senior naval officer to spend the summer at St John’s, and they had already begun to give some support to the administration of justice in the outports. As indicated, they had for a number of years been exercising some aspects of civil government, even though their right to do so was not clearly defined and was of limited effectiveness. For all these reasons, the establishment of naval government at Newfoundland must have seemed to the officials of the Board of Trade and Plantations as the best response to the challenges facing the settlement. As we shall see, the successors of the first naval governor came to see their government of Newfoundland as a fundamental right of the Royal Navy.45 In the decades after 1729 these officers took leading roles in supporting changes to the Island’s system of justice and in presiding over its application. By the end of the century however, the growth of an extensive and diverse residential population posed challenges that were not foreseen when naval government was established. Significantly, official views of the purpose and nature of the settlement that were discussed earlier, and the ethos of British colonial administration in the aftermath of the American Revolution and during most of the French Wars, meant that wartime governors of Newfoundland received virtually no official guidance from London on how they should respond to these challenges. That depended very much on ideas of leadership derived from the professional culture in which they had been embedded since their early teens and on the ways in which these ideas were mediated by their personalities.46 Early-nineteenth-century political critics of naval government identified it with an authority-ridden ‘quarter-deck’ ethos and treated naval governors as stereotypical products of a culture inured with ideas of peremptory command and blind obedience. Some flag officers undoubtedly tended to be martinets and were known as such by their colleagues. Even they, however, were not only martinets, and the very use of the characterization obscures our understanding of the ways in which flag officers deployed their authority and the ends to which it was directed. These officers were senior members of a service that has been described as possessing a strong ‘bureaucratic culture’ by the late eighteenth century and was part of a state which was being energized into a ‘forcing house for organisational change’ through the necessity of responding to the unprecedented demands of global warfare.47 The bureaucratic culture of the navy imposed a series of increasingly rigorous checks on the exercise of personal power by even its most high-ranking members. At the same time, however, the accountability requirements to which flag officers were subject in their professional lives prepared them for significant aspects of their roles as naval governors. Moreover, the energizing impact of war created a service culture that predisposed them to use their authority to respond to perceived needs and pursue change.

Introduction

11

Earl St Vincent, who commanded both the Mediterranean and Channel Fleets in the French Revolutionary Wars and presided over the Admiralty Board in the early stages of the conflict with Napoleonic France, proclaimed ‘obedience’ as the ‘maxim’ of his professional life and ‘the Pole Star of the Service’. He was also committed, however, to a wide-ranging programme of reform which extended to innovations in the treatment of the sick, in preventative medicine and ship-board hygiene, ships’ maintenance and victualling on active service, the organization of a future peacetime navy and, far less happily, the management of royal dockyards.48 The ethos to which St Vincent subscribed was shared by other flag officers who had also distinguished themselves in the more widely recognized military aspects of their duties. Admiral Lord Duncan (who commanded at the Battle of Camperdown in 1797) tried to persuade the Admiralty to rethink its arrangements for supplying ships on the British coast, while Lord Nelson, a hero at the Battles of St Vincent and Copenhagen (1801) and the victorious commander at the Battles of the Nile in 1798 and Trafalgar in 1805, has been credited with establishing a new approach to victualling in distant waters. He also turned his attention to the design of seamen’s clothing and deficiencies in arrangements for forwarding mail to them, matters that were important for their health and morale.49 Vice Admiral Lord Collingwood (Nelson’s second-in-command at Trafalgar) won St Vincent’s hard-to-secure praise for the energetic efficiency of his fleet-management, but he was an innovative disciplinarian who sought to substitute peer-pressure for some of the physical severities prescribed by the Articles of War and rigorously deployed by St Vincent. Collingwood’s interest in exploring alternative ways of upholding discipline was shared by Vice Admiral Sir Charles Pole, one of the wartime governors of Newfoundland.50 He was succeeded in that role by Vice Admiral Sir James Gambier, the leading exponent of the attempt to bring the light of evangelical Christianity to bear on the relationship between officers and men in the late Georgian navy. In terms of his naval reputation, Vice Admiral Sir Richard Keats was probably the most distinguished of the flag officers who governed Newfoundland during the war years, but a contemporary characterization of his approach to his duties would apply equally well to his predecessors. A junior officer who served on the station in 1813 observed that Keats ‘suffered no person under his command to suppose that he held a sinecure situation. The utmost activity pervaded every branch of the public departments’.51 As we shall see, an appreciation of the concerns with efficiency, effective government and the pursuit of improvement which marked flag officers’ perceptions of their responsibilities when they commanded at sea are important in understanding their approach to the government of Newfoundland.

Historiographical contexts A number of areas of historical scholarship have a direct bearing on the treatment of naval government offered in this book. A few works consider the history of late Georgian Newfoundland in the context of the wider British Atlantic imperial

12

The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars

world, and there is an extensive body of historical writing on the economic, demographic, social and political changes which occurred over the long eighteenth century. There are also a limited range of studies examining aspects of the history of the Royal Navy in Newfoundland in this period, including those that address the character and role of naval government. Recent comparative work on Britain’s Atlantic territories has considered the implications of their role in British trade for their ties with centres of economic and political power in Great Britain. This approach rests on high-level analysis that identifies common patterns even where institutional forms vary. Thus in his study of early modern British America, Stephen Hornsby places Newfoundland among a number of eastern seaboard ‘staple settlements’ whose economic value derived primarily from a single form of economic activity. Cod was the staple in Newfoundland and New England, while the other major settlements were based on sugar (the British West Indies), tobacco (the Chesapeake) and rice (in Carolina). Hornsby suggests that these settlements can usefully be distinguished into two groups depending on whether they were largely controlled by British interests or by those based in, and focusing their attention on, a particular settlement. From this perspective, Newfoundland (in common with the major sources of colonial trade in the West Indies and the comparatively minor one at Hudson’s Bay) was subject to ‘metropolitan’ control, while the Chesapeake and Carolina settlements were part of a ‘colonial’ pattern.52 As we shall see, this characterization of Newfoundland’s place within what Hornsby terms the ‘span of power’ has implications for a number of features of the practice of its naval governors in the war years. However, that practice was also influenced by their professional backgrounds, the structure of their government and the distinctive features of the settlement at various moments in time. Newfoundland has been seen by Elizabeth Mancke as exemplifying a tendency for British settlements in eighteenth-century Canada to be subject to tight political control by ministers and officials in London that paralleled metropolitan elites’ domination of colonial trade, both through their economic power and as a result of the influence brought to bear through the British political system.53 While the experiences of the naval governors of Newfoundland reflect the main features of Mancke’s model, they also invoke a paradox of imperial government in the decades after the American Revolution. That is, although secretaries of state subjected colonial governors to close scrutiny, their span of attention was very restricted. In an essay on the history of the early years of the penal settlement at Botany Bay, David Mackay described it as ‘a neglected imperial outpost’. While the early history of New South Wales amply justifies this characterization, neglect, or at least a significant lack of engagement, was the hallmark of colonial administration in the post–Revolutionary War period.54 This tendency was exacerbated by the absorption of British governments from 1793 in an ongoing series of global conflicts and by a structural change in 1801 that gave ministerial oversight of colonies and war to a single senior political figure, the ‘Secretary of State for War and the Colonies’. An arrangement that allowed the British government to concentrate its attention on overseas possessions that were strategically important

Introduction

13

did nothing to relieve a more general and persistent neglect of other aspects of colonial administration. For most of the first stage of the French Wars, the naval governors of Newfoundland reported on their civil responsibilities to the Duke of Portland. He placed a very high value on his personal honour, forcing the prime minister to give him a vacant place in the Order of the Garter which both Pitt and the King thought should go to Lord Howe, the commander of the British fleet at the first major naval victory of the war, the Battle of the First of June. The energy displayed in pursuing this ill-deserved mark of personal distinction did not carry over into Portland’s colonial administration. One of his cabinet colleagues thought him a ‘weak and puny statesman’ and a historian of colonial administration described him as being ‘really remarkable for the mediocrity of his intellect, . . . his administration . . . guiltless of even the most innocent measures of “innovation”’.55 When Portland left the secretaryship in 1801 his successors focused primarily on their military responsibilities, and it was not until the last few years of the wars during the secretaryships of the second Earl of Liverpool and Lord Bathurst that the Colonial Office became more responsive to the needs of the colonies and settlements under its control. In the meantime, most colonial governors contended with an uncomfortable combination of more or less impatient neglect and administrative systems which demanded extensive reporting and rigid accountability. This combination was likely to be felt most sharply in settlements subject to ‘metropolitan’ control, and, as Elizabeth Mancke suggests, early modern Newfoundland provided a particularly clear example of this relationship between Britain and its overseas dependencies. The fact that settlement on the Island was undergoing significant change during the war years exacerbated the impact of this style of colonial governance and had important implications for the ways in which the naval governors approached their role. The ethos of late Georgian colonial administration is particularly significant given the transformation of Newfoundland in this period from a largely migratory to a predominantly sedentary fishery. The developments in this process have been a major focus of recent Newfoundland historical scholarship. While recent work has revised earlier views on the timing and incidence of sustained settlement on the Island, it is generally agreed that its scale and stability changed markedly from the late eighteenth century.56 As Gordon Handcock has demonstrated, the sharp and sustained increase in the number and diversity of those settled more or less permanently on the Island both reflected and had a profound effect upon its demographic and social structure.57 Towards the end of the war years, these changes prompted questions in some quarters about the viability of naval government and whether senior naval officers were capable of governing an increasingly settled civilian population effectively. Gordon Handcock, Keith Matthews and Shannon Ryan see the war years as a critical period in the establishment of Newfoundland as a sedentary fishery.58 While cod fishing supplemented by salmon fishing was the Island’s economic mainstay, diversification into other economic activities supported a growing yearround workforce and addressed the needs of an extensive settled population. Seal

14

The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars

hunting provided winter work opportunities when cod and salmon fishing was not possible, and the exploitation of Newfoundland’s timber assets facilitated shipbuilding on a significant scale. The demands of the shipbuilding industry and the growth in the settled population provided opportunities for an expanding class of tradesmen (‘artificers’ in contemporary parlance). The enterprise of resident merchants and agents, and the relative security provided by headquartering the naval squadron and the army garrison in St John’s, saw the town emerge as a significant centre of regional commerce. Although Newfoundland did not become a colony until 1824, by the wars’ end its economy and social structure made it a colony in all but name. Sean Cadigan notes the transformation of patterns of settlement during the war years and emphasizes the importance of the emergence in St John’s of a resident commercial and professional elite or ‘bourgeoisie’.59 He associates some members of this elite with a developmental strategy that was to have a profound impact on Newfoundland’s modern history. Rather than focusing on the maritime resources that had provided its economic and strategic raison d’être throughout the early modern period, they propagated what Cadigan terms an agrarian ‘myth’ promoting the exploitation of land-based resources and the opening up of the Island’s interior to unleash its putative agricultural potential.60 He argues that this potential was overstated significantly and that the strategy flew in the face of the reality of Newfoundland’s climate and natural habitat. It proved lastingly harmful to the sustainability of the Island’s environment and the well-being of its population. Scholarly accounts of fundamental long-term demographic, social and economic change in late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Newfoundland have been complemented by detailed studies of concomitant developments. These range over aspects of the legal history of the Island, the emergence of policing agencies, the histories of the Indigenous people, Irish migration and official attitudes towards it, religious practice, popular protest and public disorder, education, labour relations, credit and the exploitation of labour, and the experience of migrant women in a nascent settler society. With the important exception of Jerry Bannister’s work, however, wartime governors’ perception of their roles and the political attitudes, aspirations and culture that underpinned their government have not been the subject of sustained attention by historians. Bannister’s Rule of the Admirals deals primarily with the development over the course of the long eighteenth century of a legal system that went a fair way to meeting the needs of those who lived and worked on the Island, either as visitors engaged in the fishery or, as the century drew to a close, as more permanent residents. In the course of this analysis, Bannister refers to senior naval officers’ attitudes to their legal responsibilities and defends the naval governors against claims that they brought ideas of ‘quarter deck justice’ to the role: the rule of admirals was ‘a single administrative regime preserved by the material and culture of the Royal Navy’ but set within a framework of common law.61 While there is thus a well-developed historiography of the demographic, economic and legal changes that took place during the century before

Introduction

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Newfoundland became a colony, historical scholarship on the Royal Navy in Newfoundland during this period, and on broader issues about the character of naval government and the attitudes and political practice of those who exercised it, is thin and uneven. Newfoundland is not alone in that: as John McAleer and Christer Petley point out, historians have paid relatively little attention to the role of the Royal Navy in the Atlantic World or in other imperial settings.62 They identify four areas of particular significance: protecting colonization and commerce; internal regulation and policing, including the suppression of smuggling and assisting civil authorities in maintaining order; social interactions with local colonial elites; and representing a ‘totem of Britishness’ in overseas territories.63 There has been no work on the Royal Navy’s social engagements with the local elite in Newfoundland and only very brief references to its involvement in ceremonial rituals affirming the settlement’s place in the British empire.64 However, closer attention has been paid to the Royal Navy’s role in the external security of the settlement and in upholding law and order with it. The first of these themes raises questions about the Royal Navy’s strategic role in the fishery. Commanders-in-chief were charged with preventing enemy attacks on settlements and fishing grounds and ensuring that the lawful activities of British subjects were not interfered with by fishermen from American ports. They were also required to provide effective protection for vessels carrying supplies to the Island from the UK and for return convoys shipping fishery products to distant markets. These responsibilities, and the perceived value of the fishery as a ‘nursery of seamen’, involved the naval forces stationed in Newfoundland in the manpower challenges that were a persistent preoccupation of those commanding ships, squadrons and bases. The long-standing acceptance of D. W. Prowse’s very positive evaluation of the Royal Navy’s protective role was questioned in an important essay published by Olaf Janzen in 1984. Janzen noted the relative weakness of the squadrons deployed to St John’s in the early stages of the American Revolutionary War and the attention paid to landward defences of the settlement to counteract this. As the war progressed, the effectiveness of these measures freed up the squadron to cruise beyond the fisheries and to offer protection to convoys bound for Halifax and Quebec, as well as those making for Newfoundland. Janzen sees these changes as having implications that extend beyond issues of military strategy. He argues that an increased reliance on land-based defences, including the establishment of a permanent garrison at St John’s, was significant for the move towards colonial status; rather than relying on exogenous forces for its defence, Newfoundland was developing capacities for self-defence.65 As we shall see, the question of the balance between landward and seaward defence continued to be a concern for those who governed the Island during the French Wars and for their political masters in London. Newfoundland’s role in addressing the Royal Navy’s insatiable wartime manning demands has been the subject of Keith Mercer and Denver Brunsman’s work.66 Mercer shows that public disturbances following the arrest of the murderers of

16

The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars

a naval officer ashore at St John’s in 1795 resulted in a decision to end forced recruitment of sailors and fishermen on the Island and restrict impressment to those serving on merchant ships arriving on the coast. The limited scope for impressment ashore in wartime Newfoundland has been set in a comparative Atlantic world context in Denver Brunsman’s The Evil Necessity.67 Nevertheless, Mercer’s data show that the Island and its maritime approaches were a significant source of wartime naval manpower. He estimates that between 3,000 and 4,000 seamen were recruited on the Newfoundland station through impressment or more or less voluntary offers to serve.68 The lack of adequate policing across the settlement, the difficulties this produced for part-time lay magistrates in the outports, the landward inaccessibility of these scattered and distant settlements, and the naval basis of the Island’s government resulted in the Royal Navy playing significant regulatory and protective roles. Bannister has shown how eighteenth-century naval governors sought to support local magistrates by sending naval vessels to the outports and appointing their commanding officers as governor’s ‘surrogates’. In this capacity, they supplemented the limited magisterial capacities available in remote settlements. At the same time, their ships provided resources that could be used to discourage disorder, smuggling and the illegal passage of fishermen and military deserters to the North American mainland. Bannister’s work on the judicial and regulatory role of naval personnel has recently been supplemented by Keith Mercer’s study of the development of constabulary forces in St John’s and the outports. Naval governors’ control of public funds and their responsibilities for upholding the law meant they were closely involved in these initiatives.69 The studies discussed thus far address institutional aspects of the history of the Royal Navy in eighteenth-century Newfoundland; that is to say, they focus on the Newfoundland Squadron as a whole, not on particular members of it. There are also a few works exploring aspects of the social history of the Newfoundland squadron. Publications derived from the journals of seafarers visiting the Island, studies of disciplinary breakdowns on ships in the squadron and of the life histories of patients in the naval hospital at St John’s provide insights into the experiences of ordinary members of the Royal Navy who served on the station in the late eighteenth century.70 These works exemplify a wider disciplinary shift in a field which had been dominated by studies of those at the top of a very hierarchical service.71 Much of this work focused on the lives of admirals and other senior officers and their roles in sometimes triumphant and sometimes disastrous naval actions or voyages of exploration. Although the wartime naval governors had strong records of active service, their pre-Newfoundland careers did not compare with those of contemporaries such as Lords Nelson, Collingwood or St Vincent, and the Newfoundland command did not provide opportunities for the heroics which continue to make naval officers attractive subjects for full-scale biographies. As a result, treatments of the lives of the naval governors tend to be brief and fragmentary. Vice Admiral Sir James Wallace and Sir Charles Pole have not found places in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, but entries on the other six wartime

Introduction

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commanders-in-chief go some way towards supplementing the perfunctory references to their governorships found in early-nineteenth-century biographical sources and the modern Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Only Sir Erasmus Gower’s and Sir John Duckworth’s Newfoundland careers have been treated more extensively. Ian Bates’s recent biography of Gower includes a detailed consideration of his governorship (1804–7), and William H. Whiteley’s pamphlet, Duckworth’s Newfoundland, provides a short, although relatively comprehensive, account of this phase of his career. Both authors set their subjects’ governorships in the context of changes taking place on the Island, but neither, understandably given the focus of their work, develops general interpretative statements about late Georgian naval government.72 Nor do they consider the aspirations and concerns of their subjects in terms of the distinctive ethos of the service from which they sprang and the expectations that determined the career trajectories of its most senior officers. Whiteley’s study includes a discussion of Duckworth’s reaction to the early stages of a political movement in St John’s that was to have important implications for the future government of Newfoundland. These developments have been considered in important essays by Patrick O’Flaherty and Keith Matthews. O’Flaherty argued that the years 1800–18 were the ‘seed-time’ of the later ‘reform’ movement that propelled the settlement towards colonial status in 1824 and representative government in 1832. He traced the impetus for these reforms to social and economic pressures within the burgeoning residential population of Newfoundland rather than (as Keith Matthews had seemed to suggest) to abstract ideas imported from Britain, Ireland and Western Europe. The unstated inference here is that if the reform movement was the product of ‘legitimate grievances and economic hardship’, it could be seen as an indigenous, organic growth of an embryonic autonomous social form.73 These grievances were harnessed by politically ambitious members of the merchant and professional elite in St John’s who from about 1812 became openly critical of naval government and of the attitudes and capabilities of those who exercised it. In a later study, Sean Cadigan dated the politicization of this elite to the late 1770s when resentment at the legislation promoted by Sir Hugh Palliser and related restrictions that frustrated elite access to freehold land fuelled an ongoing sense of disgruntlement with naval government that eventually underwrote support for the establishment of representative government in 1832.74 The link between reform aspirations and the alleged shortcomings of naval government was stated most emphatically, and, as far as current incumbents were concerned, most offensively, in pamphlets published in 1812 and 1813 by William Carson. The author was a distinctly partisan critic of the naval governors’ handling of land grants and leases, a proponent of the development of agriculture in Newfoundland and of civil government with a representative assembly. Carson’s caricatures have enjoyed a surprising longevity in historical evaluations of naval government, with a historiographical pedigree running back to D. W. Prowse in 1895.75 Prowse praised Waldegrave as a ‘benevolent .  .  . just .  .  . courageous’ administrator and noted Vice Admiral Sir James Gambier’s views on the need for local government in St John’s, but his overall assessment of naval government

18

The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars

relied heavily on direct quotations from Carson’s pamphlets.76 These polemics have continued to play a role in historical writings. A. H. McLintock treated them as statements of fact, and Shannon Ryan’s survey of early modern Newfoundland reproduces passages from Carson’s pamphlets without qualification.77 Even those who are more sympathetic to the naval governors, labour under Carson’s shadow. Whiteley, for example, thought Duckworth brought to his governorship fixed ideas ‘of discipline and order that had been bred into him’ but also commends his willingness to be ‘flexible’.78 Patrick O’Flaherty made a similar observation about Vice Admiral Waldegrave. He was a ‘martinet by nature’ but also showed ‘surprising sensitivity to local concerns’.79 Although O’Flaherty cautioned that the naval governors ‘should not be quickly dismissed as obtuse reactionaries’ and offered a brief appreciative sketch of some of their initiatives, he ignored these developments when reporting on a reformers’ petition to the Prince Regent that portrayed St John’s as a town entirely devoid of civil amenities.80 More generally, the naval governors’ cool responses to the kinds of changes to the constitutional position of Newfoundland that occurred a decade after the war have meant that their approach to their governing responsibilities has not, with the exception of Bannister’s work on their legal innovations, received historians’ systematic attention. In this respect it is significant that the extensive body of more recent scholarship on the demographic and economic transformation of Newfoundland in the late Georgian period has not been complemented by work on their political impact and implications. Given the structure of Newfoundland government in this period, these matters largely concerned the naval governors’ understanding of their responsibilities, the attitudes and experience they brought to bear on fulfilling them, and their relationships with their political masters in London and members of the local elite.

Conclusion This study has a far more limited temporal scope than Bannister’s, but it focuses on a period that is widely recognized as being critical for the development of the settlement and addresses a range of concerns that were common to the wartime naval governors of the Island. In the war years their activities extended beyond the judicial aspects of governance to embrace what they saw as the needs of an increasingly settled and diverse population.81 This book seeks to shed light on these matters by considering the naval governors’ responses to the wide range of challenges facing the settlement during the war years and the professional attitudes, experience and capabilities they brought to bear on them. It focuses on the practice of naval government rather than on naval governance as a system of rule, responding to Olaf Janzen’s insightful passing reference to the governors’ role in persuading the British government that Newfoundland was no longer merely a fish factory, by providing a comprehensive account of the practice of naval government during the war years.82 In considering flag officers’ approach to the challenges of that situation, this book raises questions about their perceptions and actions that were tangential

Notes to pp. 1–19

19

to Bannister’s work and which have not been addressed subsequently.83 Where did the governorship sit in relation to career trajectories of senior naval officers in the period? How far did the experience of senior naval officers prepare them for the challenges of the governorship, and how did the attitudes arising from naval service qualify or disqualify them from fulfilling its responsibilities? How do the wartime governors’ conception of their responsibilities and approach to them correspond with the practice of government in other British territories in its late Georgian empire? Finally, how accurate are contemporary and later claims about the nature and effectiveness of the naval government of late Georgian Newfoundland? The chapters that follow explore a number of dimensions of the naval government of Newfoundland during the French Wars. The book opens with an account of appointments to the Newfoundland command in the context of the promotion practices applying to commissioned officers of the late-eighteenth-century Royal Navy and the sharp competition for employment and recognition between flag officers. These features of the professional environment of naval governors helped ensure levels of capability that were rare among senior colonial officials. This chapter also introduces the admirals who served as commanders-in-chief and governors during the war years and whose success in both roles would influence future prospects of service-related rewards: active and sinecure appointments, honours and pensions. The second and third chapters consider how naval governors responded to the range of routine business generated by their naval and civil responsibilities. Chapter 4 addresses these officers’ reactions to what they saw as significant challenges to their authority as naval commanders and governors. Wartime governors’ growing awareness of the distinctive needs of the residents of the Island prompted reforming and palliative agendas that are discussed in Chapters 5 and 6. Chapter 5 examines their attempts to provide some of the advantages of civil society to a community which had, as a later writer noted, been treated as a ‘common manufactory’.84 In addition to a general responsibility for the welfare of British settlers, governors were also specifically responsible for the well-being of the Indigenous people of Newfoundland. Their fruitless attempts to mitigate the fatal harm inflicted on the ‘Beothuk’ by European settlement and the violence of some settlers are the subject of Chapter 6. Chapter 7 looks at the wider repercussions of the development of a sedentary fishery and the naval governors’ responses to them. It traces their growing awareness that the legislative basis of their government was inadequate to meet the evolving needs of the population of the Island and thus prepares the ground for the consideration of pro-colonial attacks on naval government in the concluding chapter.

Notes 1 John Elliot (Governor 1786–9) was a post captain when appointed but became a rear admiral in 1787. 2 NA CO 194/39, f282, 16/12/1797. CO 194 contains original correspondence of the secretary of state relating to Newfoundland. As some correspondence includes

20

3 4 5 6

7

8

9 10 11

12 13

14 15 16 17

Notes to pp. 1–19 earlier letters or reports on the matter in hand and the files are foliated in an ongoing sequence, chronology and foliation do not always correspond. See John Morrow, British Flag Officers in the French Wars, 1793-1815. Admirals’ Lives (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), passim. Jerry Bannister, The Rule of the Admirals: Laws, Custom, and Naval Government in Newfoundland 1699-1832 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), passim. On the naval dimensions of the conflict with the United States see Andrew Lambert, The Challenge: Britain Against America in the Naval War of 1812 (London: Faber and Faber, 2012), passim. Bannister, Rule of the Admirals, 143–4; cf. A. H. McLintock, The Establishment of Constitutional Government in Newfoundland, 1783-1832 (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1941), 82, 94. Frederic Thompson attributes Vice Admiral Gambier’s attention to civil affairs to the fact that the early part of his governorship corresponded with the Peace of Amiens (1802–3) but, as will be shown herein, he was not unusual in this respect; ‘James Gambier’, DCB. See Roger Knight, Britain Against Napoleon: The Organisation of Victory (London: Penguin Press, 2014), 386–92, on government finance. Merete Borch notes that administrators in London tended to neglect colonies during war, except when they became strategically significant; Merete Falck Borch, Conciliation—Compulsion— Conversion. British Attitudes Towards Indigenous Peoples, 1763-1814 (Amsterdam and New York: Ropoldi, 2004), 22. See David Starkey, ‘The West Country Newfoundland Fishery and the Manning of the Royal Navy’, in Security and Defense in South West England before 1800, ed. Robert Higham (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1987), 95, for a succinct summary of the perceived benefits of the fishery for British policymakers. Peter E. Pope, Fish into Wine. The Newfoundland Plantation in the Seventeenth Century (Durham: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), passim. Gordon W. Handcock, Soe Longe as There Come Noe Women. Origins of English Settlement in Newfoundland (St John’s: Breakwater Books, 1989), 137–8. See Keith Matthews, Lectures on the History of Newfoundland (St. John’s: Breakwater Books, 1988), 179–80 and Gordon Handcock, ‘The Poole Merchant Community’, Newfoundland Quarterly, 80, no. 3 (1985): 21–5. Benjamin Lester supplied 5,000 residents in Trinity Bay in the 1780s, and he and the other merchants in the area employed close to a third of the population. See Daniel A. Baugh, ‘Maritime Strength and Atlantic Commerce’, in An Imperial State at War. Britain from 1689 to 1815, ed. Lawrence Stone (London: Routledge, 1994), 201. Shannon Ryan, A History of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic to 1818 (St. John’s: Flanker Press, Ltd, 2012), 56–7, 143, provides a well-informed and robust rejoinder to N. A. M. Rodger’s suggestion that this rationale was fanciful. He also points out that the French implicitly endorsed it when they paid a bounty on fishermen shipped to their fisheries from 1769. See herein, p. 16, and Julian Gwyn, Frigates and Foremast: The North American Squadron in Nova Scotian Waters, 1745-1815 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2003), 100 on recruitment for ships in the Halifax command. John Reeves, History of the Government of Newfoundland (London: J. Sewell, J. Debrett and J. Downes, 1793), Appendix, xvi. Ibid., xxx–xxxiv. Sean Cadigan, Newfoundland & Labrador. A History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 77–8.

Notes to pp. 1–19

21

18 Handcock, ‘The Poole Merchant Community’, 25–6. 19 Handcock, Soe Longe, 106. 20 Derek Beamish, John Hillier and H. F. V. Johnstone, Mansions and Merchants of Poole and Dorset (Poole: Poole Historical Trust, 1976), I: 99. 21 Ibid., 95. 22 R. G. Thorne, The House of Commons, 5 vols (London: Secker and Warburg, 1986), IV: 661. 23 Ray Freeman, The Holdsworth and Newman Families in Dartmouth (Dartmouth: Dartmouth Historical Research Group, nd), 3–4. 24 See herein, p. 81 for an example of Edmund Bastard’s attempt to replace a governor’s appointee with one supported by his ‘friends’ in Dartmouth. 25 See herein, p. 54–5. See also Roger Knight, Convoys. The British Struggle Against Napoleonic Europe and America (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2022), passim and Lambert, The Challenge, 211ff, for the importance of convoys in North American waters towards the end of the period. 26 Benjamin Lester, Diaries, 13/5/1798; within four days news had reached Poole that the idea had been dropped. The reference is to the copy and typescript transcription, Memorial University of Newfoundland Library Archives; the original is in the Dorset County Records Office, Dorchester. See herein, p. 146 for Waldegrave’s rum tax proposal. 27 House of Commons, ‘Second Report’, Reports from the Committees of the House of Commons: Miscellaneous Subjects 1785-1801, X, 412. 28 David Mackay, ‘Far-Flung Empire: A Neglected Imperial Outpost at Botany Bay, 1788-1801’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 9, no. 2 (1981): 133. 29 Matthews, Lectures, 71–7, 123. 30 NA CO 194/44, ff233, 233v, undated, early 1804. 31 Patrick O’Flaherty, ‘The Seeds of Reform: Newfoundland, 1800-18’, Journal of Canadian Studies, 23, no. 3 (1988): 40; Bannister, Rule of the Admirals, 158–9. 32 Handcock, Soe Longe, 106. 33 Ibid., 91–3. 34 Howard Innis, The Cod Fisheries. The History of an International Economy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940), 299–6, 302–5; Censuses of Canada 1665-1871 (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, nd), 98–187–x; W. H. Lear, ‘History of Fisheries in the Northwest Atlantic: The 500 Year Perspective’, Journal of Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Science, 23, no. 1 (1998): 53–4. 35 Handcock, Soe Longe, 75–6, 84. 36 NA CO 195/17, f17, f34, 195/15, 3/6/1789. 37 O’Flaherty, ‘Seeds of Reform’, 43. However, Keith Matthews shows that even in 1832 merchants resident at St John’s still had strong ties with England, Ireland and Scotland and some were engaged actively in British parliamentary reform politics; see Keith Matthews, ‘The Class of ’32: St John’s Reformers on the Eve of Representative Government’, Acadiensis, 6, no. 2 (1977): 88–9. 38 See herein, pp. 205–14. 39 Reeves, History, 49–50. 40 See Bannister, Rule of the Admirals, 26–65, for a full account of what the author terms the ‘fishing admirals’ system. 41 Ibid., 50. 42 Reeves, History, 67–71. 43 Bannister, Rule of the Admirals, 57.

22

Notes to pp. 1–19

44 Olaf Janzen, ‘Military Garrisons’, in Joseph Smallwood et al. Encyclopaedia of Newfoundland, 5 vols (St John’s: Newfoundland Book Publishers (1967) Ltd, 1981– 1994), III: 546; see Mackay, ‘Far-Flung Empire’, 129, 135–7, for the army in early New South Wales. In 1803 Vice Admiral Gambier moved swiftly when told that troops of the Royal Artillery at Placentia were attempting to enforce an ‘exclusive right’ to catch salmon in part of the harbour. Gambier quashed these stand-over attempts and reminded troops that they were prohibited legally from engaging in the fishery; PAN D’Alberti Papers, 13: 60, 22/8/1803. 45 See herein, p. 108. 46 See Morrow, British Flag Officers, 33–52, 155–63. 47 Roger Morriss, The Foundations of British Maritime Ascendency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 1, 9–10, 16–17. 48 BL Add Ms 31164, f129, 29/11/1806; Morrow, British Flag Officers, 37–45. 49 Morrow, British Flag Officers, 13–5, 38, 43; Colin White, ‘A Man of Business: Nelson as Commander-in Chief Mediterranean, May 1803-June 180’, Mariner’s Mirror, 91, no. 2 (2005): 88–9. 50 See Morrow, British Flag Officers, 46–7 for Collingwood and 125 for Pole, and Robert Blake, Evangelicals in the Royal Navy 1775-1815: Blue Lights and Psalm Singers (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008), 84–5 for Gambier. 51 Edward Chappell, Voyage … to Newfoundland (London: J. Maw, 1818), 208. 52 Stephen J. Hornsby, British Atlantic, American Frontier. Spans of Power in Early Modern British America (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2005), 26–7. 53 Elizabeth Mancke, ‘A Canadian Model for the Early Modern British Empire’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 25, no. 1 (1997): 9–10. 54 Mackay, ‘Far-Flung Empire’, 125–45. 55 Quoted in Richard Middleton, Cornwallis. Soldier and Statesman in a Revolutionary World (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022), 308; Helen Manning, British Colonial Government After the American Revolution 1782-1820 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1933), 90. 56 In addition to the works discussed herein see Grant C. Head, Eighteenth Century Newfoundland. A Geographer’s Perspective (Toronto: McClelland and Steward Ltd, 1796), 217–29; Matthews, Lectures, 129–34. 57 Handcock, Soe Longe, 74–138. 58 Ibid., 74–5; Matthews, Lectures, 142–8; Ryan, A History, 169–232 and Shannon Ryan, ‘Fishery to Colony: A Newfoundland Watershed, 1793-1815’, Acadiensis, 12, no. 2 (1983): 34–52; see also W. S. Macnutt, The Atlantic Provinces. The Emergence of Colonial Society 1712-1857 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Ltd, 1965), 111–12. 59 Sean Cadigan, Hope and Deception in Conception Bay (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 62–4, 123–4. 60 Ibid., 123–40; Sean Cadigan, ‘The Staple Model Reconsidered: The Case of Agricultural Policy in Northeast Newfoundland, 1785-1855’, Acadiensis, 21, no. 2 (1992): 54–5. 61 Bannister, Rule of the Admirals, 133. 62 John McAleer and Christer Petley, ‘Introduction’, in The Royal Navy and the British Atlantic World c. 1750-1820, ed. John McAleer and Christer Petley (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 5. 63 Ibid., 6–7. 64 See herein, pp. 94–6, 123–4 for discussions of naval social engagement and Newfoundland ceremonials.

Notes to pp. 1–19

23

65 Olaf Janzen, ‘The Royal Navy and the Defence of Newfoundland in the American Revolutionary War’, Acadiensis, 14, no. 1 (1984): 41–2, 45–8. 66 Keith Mercer, ‘The Murder of Lieutenant Lawry: A Case of British Naval Impressment in Newfoundland, 1794’, Newfoundland and Labrador Studies, 21, no. 2 (2006): 255–89; ‘Northern Exposure: Resistance to Naval Impressment in British North America, 1775-1815’, Canadian Historical Review, 91, no. 2 (2010): 199–232. 67 Denver Brunsman, The Evil Necessity: British Naval Impressment in the EighteenthCentury Atlantic World (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013), passim. 68 Mercer, ‘The Murder of Lieutenant Lawry’ and ‘Northern Exposure’. 69 Keith Mercer, Rough Justice: Policing, Crime, and the Origins of the Newfoundland Constabulary 1729-1871 (St John’s: Flanker Press, 2021), chapter 5. 70 Jean M. Murray, ed., The Newfoundland Journal of Aaron Thomas 1794 (London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1968); Henry Baynham, From the Lower Deck: The Old Navy, 1780-1840 (London: Hutchinson, 1969); Martin Hubley and Thomas Malcolmson, ‘“The People Being Tyrannically Treated, Would Rejoice in Being Captured by the Americans”’, in The Apathetic and the Defiant: Case Studies of Canadian Mutiny and Disobedience, 1812, ed. Craig Mantle (Toronto: Dundurn, 2007), 36–51; Tricia Munittrick, ‘A Nursery for Seamen: Life Histories From the St John’s Naval Hospital Cemetery’ (MA thesis, St. John’s: Memorial University, St. John’s, 2015). 71 For accounts of the focus of the social history of the Royal Navy see James Davey and Quintin Colville, ‘Introduction’, in A New Naval History, ed. James Davey and Quinton Colville (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018), 5–8. 72 Ian Bates, Champion of the Quarterdeck. Admiral Sir Erasmus Gower (1742-1814) (Pomana: Old Sage Books, 2017), 254–307; William H. Whiteley, Duckworth’s Newfoundland (St John’s: Harry Cuff Publications, 1985), passim. Duckworth is the only war time governor whose papers are published in the Navy Records Society series. One volume (covering 1793–1802) has appeared, but it seems that very little of the material relating to his Newfoundland command will appear in the second volume covering the late war period; John D. Grainger, ed., Papers and Correspondence of Admiral Sir John Thomas Duckworth (London: Routledge/NRS, 2022), I, xv. 73 O’Flaherty, ‘Seeds of Reform’, 39, 53–6. Although O’Flaherty offered a critique of Matthews’ position in ‘The Class of ‘32’, the latter’s account of the political language used by the reformers is not incompatible with O’Flaherty’s treatment of the role that popular hardship played in creating the conditions where ‘reform’ became a viable option. 74 Cadigan, Hope and Deception, 30, and Newfoundland & Labrador, 74–5, 81–2, 84–6. 75 On Carson see herein, pp. 209–11. Jerry Bannister offers an intriguing account of Prowe’s diverse and enduring legacies in ‘Whigs and Nationalists. The Legacy of Judge Prowe’s History of Newfoundland’, Acadiensis, 32, no. 1 (2002): 84–109. 76 D. W. Prowse, A History of Newfoundland from English, Colonial and Foreign Records (London: Macmillan, 1895), 372–3, 396–7. 77 McLintock, The Establishment of Constitutional Government, 12–13; Ryan, A History, 192–4. 78 Whiteley, Duckworth’s Newfoundland, 8, 42. 79 O’Flaherty, ‘Seeds of Reform’, 41. 80 Ibid., 43–4, 46. The Petition is discussed herein, pp. 207–9.

24

Notes to pp. 1–19

81 It is significant that Bannister’s account of the mid-century ‘revolution in government’ led by Commodore Rodney focuses on innovations in the legal structure of Newfoundland; see Rule of the Admirals, 132–3. 82 Olaf Janzen, ‘Newfoundland and the International Fishery’, in Canadian History: A Reader’s Guide, ed. Brook Taylor (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 313. 83 In their contribution to Phillip Buckner’s Canada and the British Empire John Reid and Elizabeth Mancke endorse Bannister’s views on the emergence of an effective system of naval government in Newfoundland up to 1783, but the subsequent chapter by J. M. Bumster is silent on any developments thereafter. 84 Cadigan, Hope and Deception, 125.

Chapter 1 APPOINTING NAVAL GOVERNORS

Newfoundland governors’ appointments were unusual in that they were made on the initiative of the Admiralty Board, not the secretary of state, and do not seem to have involved formal written consultation between them. Having determined on the appointment of an officer to be Commander-in-Chief of ‘His Majesty’s Ships and Vessels employed or to be employed at and about Newfoundland, the Islands of Medelaine and Anticoste, and upon the coast of Labrador, from the River Saint John to the entrance of Hudson’s Strait’ the Board wrote to the Secretary of State requesting that a commission as governor be issued to him. Succession to the governorship in the event of death in office was also in the hands of the Board. Thus Sir James Wallace’s commission issued in 1794 specified that on his death the governor’s powers should be assigned to the ‘person on whom the command of our Ships under your command shall devolve’.1 The timing seemed to be at the Board’s discretion as well. Thus, although the first lord of the Admiralty decided on Sir Charles Pole’s appointment as commander-in-chief in February 1800, his patent as governor was not issued until four months later. When the Board made a temporary call on this officer’s services in 1801 which prevented him from acting as governor for several months, the arrangement appears to have been determined by the Board’s requirements, with the secretary of state merely being called upon to issue a commission to a lieutenant governor to act in his stead.2 The Admiralty also appeared to be responsible for seeking the king’s approval. In May 1804 Lord Melville, the first lord of the Admiralty, advised the king that ‘he has every reason to believe that the appointment of Sir Erasmus Gower to that station would be much approved of ’.3 Three years later when Sir Charles Cotton withdrew from the command within a few days of accepting it, the naval commissioners responded in terms which made the Board’s role in identifying governors perfectly clear. The first lord of the admiralty was asked to ‘obtain His Majesty’s Commission for [Vice Admiral Holloway] .  .  . to be Governor of Newfoundland &c in the same manner as hath been granted for former Commanders-in-Chief upon that Station’.4 The distinctive nature of the Newfoundland appointment as embracing both civil and naval roles was reflected in how naval governors were remunerated. They received full flag pay and allowances including ‘table money’, and a salary for their civil duties. These arrangements contrasted with those in place elsewhere

26

The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars

for flag officers appointed to civil governorships. Thus when Sir Alexander Ball governed Malta early in the Napoleonic War and Sir Alexander Cochrane held the government of Guadeloupe towards its close, they stepped aside from their naval commitments and were unable to even claim the half pay provided for flag officers who were not on active service.5 It seems likely that the confirmed practice of giving the governorship to the commander-in-chief helped ensure that flag officers were appointed to the station even when operational requirements did not warrant it. Thus when there was a brief cessation of Anglo-French hostilities between October 1801 and May 1803, the first lord of the admiralty, Earl St Vincent, told an admiral that he was no longer eligible for consideration for the command at Halifax, Nova Scotia, because the end of hostilities, and the consequent reduction in the size of the squadron based there, meant that it was now a captain’s appointment. St Vincent took the same view of the East Indian station. He had no intention, however, of downgrading the Newfoundland command. He insisted that it was a vice admiral’s role and appointed an officer of that rank to it in 1802. Significantly, St Vincent’s typically draconian proposals for a future peacetime navy retained Newfoundland as a flag command when many other larger stations would lose that status.6 Although the governorship was held at the king’s pleasure, the standard practice during the war years was for naval governors to serve the three-year term which usually applied to flag appointments. Vice Admiral Edwards had been governor in the late 1750s and the late 1780s, but his terms were both three years. There seems to have been no question of terms of wartime governors being extended or renewed, and valedictory comments by resident merchants and magistrates indicated they were aware of this convention.7 Moreover, the governorship of Newfoundland was a unique episode in a flag officer’s naval career, quite different from the position of senior civil administrators in other British territories. The latter often came from military backgrounds but were career governors in the sense that they could reasonably expect to govern several colonies in the course of their professional lives.8 This did not mean, however, that naval governors treated their appointments lightly. On the contrary, the competitive ethos of the upper ranks of the late Georgian navy kindled a spirit of emulation among flag officers that invigorated their approach to whatever duties were assigned to them. It is particularly significant that all those who held the governorship during the war years were well-performed officers and most were markedly ambitious men who took up the role with unfulfilled career and professional expectations that they hoped to advance when their terms finished. Some officers were at a stage where they might hope for ongoing appointments to more significant commands, and all of them were aware that prospects of honours, pensions or service-related sinecures would be affected by their future standing with the Board and the secretary of state. The appointment was not, therefore, a well-remunerated sinecure for mediocre officers or for those whose days of active service had clearly come to an end.

1. Appointing Naval Governors

27

The naval context of appointments As with other flag appointments, competition for the Newfoundland command was mediated through a naval patronage network that focused on decision-makers who sat on the Admiralty Board. Aspirants for naval employment, promotion or service-related honours and financial benefits used their ‘interest’ or that of others connected to them to encourage the Board to respond favourably to their appeals. ‘Interest’, the currency of patronage, derived from family connections, political and electoral influence, social and professional standing and office-holding, and any combination of these attributes. The naval patronage network was part of a statewide system that affected appointments at virtually all levels in the public service and the Church of England and largely determined the allocation of state pensions and royal honours. In the absence of strong party groupings in the House of Commons, patronage played a key role in providing the king’s leading (prime) minister with the means of forming and maintaining the majorities necessary to raise revenue and govern the country. Although appointments to the Newfoundland command, and hence to the governorship, were susceptible to the pull of interest, the fact that this was a service role and that selection was channelled through the naval reaches of the national patronage system had important implications for the selection process and for the quality of those chosen through it. The conditions of service at sea meant that questions of capability played a far more significant role in naval appointments and promotions than they did elsewhere. The navy would have been unable to function effectively or even safely unless most of its officers had the requisite skills in seamanship and navigation. Moreover, as flag officers’ prize money and professional reputation rested on the performance of their subordinates, they had an interest in ensuring that merit was considered in promotions and appointments.9 While the other tokens of patronage still played a role in the Royal Navy, they were applied in harness with estimations of professional and related personal skills. The notion of ‘service interest’ is indicative of the integration of professional considerations with those that applied more widely in the Georgian patronage system. ‘Service interest’ arose from family connections within the service, but it also referred to senior officers’ support for subordinates whose claims to favourable notice by those who controlled the levers of promotion and appointment rested on their professional and personal capabilities. Even where family ties existed, applicants often pointed to the merits of those they supported. These considerations played a significant role in hastening officers to a place on the list of post captains and thus positioning them for promotion to rear admiral when they had risen to the upper reaches of it. Since flag promotion was largely based on seniority as a captain, the sooner an officer gained that rank the better his chance of living long enough to make the next step. Interest continued to play a role in determining which rear, vice and full admirals were appointed to command fleets or ports, or serve as subordinate flag officers in these commands, but seniority, temperament

28

The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars

and capability were also taken into account. When Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane was seeking the first lord’s support of a bid for the prized Mediterranean command, Lord Melville (whose family were political patrons of the Cochranes) told him that such appointments depended ‘on the judgement of the Admiralty at the time, & due consideration also of what may be required for other services, & of the claims & pretensions of other Officers’.10 The moderation of the usual tokens of patronage by service interest and considerations of capability operated at all levels in the eighteenth-century navy and meant that the cadre of flag officers at the head of the service included many men who had demonstrated superior ability in sailing and fighting warships and also in the complex and demanding range of administrative duties undertaken as a matter of course by commissioned officers in the service. The Admiralty Board had the option of consigning lacklustre, elderly or infirm senior captains to a place on the list of superannuated rear admirals, but their colleagues who avoided this fate were by no means guaranteed appointments because there were always far more admirals than commands for them. Just over half of those holding admirals’ commissions during the wars were consigned permanently to the ranks of ‘admirals unemployed’ and at any given time only 20–30 per cent of flag officers held appointments in fleets or ports. The imbalance between the number of admirals seeking employment (and full rather than half pay) and available flag appointments became increasingly marked as the wars progressed, and competition between an increasing number of contenders sharpened. Just before the outbreak of the French Revolutionary War in 1793, there were forty-nine flag officers, twenty-two of whom were employed. By 1813 more than 200 admirals on the active list vied for a mere 37 flag appointments.11 Flag commands, including that to which the governorship of Newfoundland was annexed, were thus subject to significant competition from among those with demonstrated professional and personal capabilities and were part of a professional culture in which merit was valued. These considerations did not usually apply in Britain’s overseas territories. Other governorships were far more lucrative than the Newfoundland role and were, formally at least, open to all contenders.12 As a result, there were many potential applicants, and competition between them was intense. Unlike flag commands, however, the allocation of colonial governorships was determined almost entirely by interest arising from family, political and electoral considerations. Competition thus rewarded the well-connected without consideration of merit and underwrote patterns of ingrained mediocrity in late Georgian colonial administration.13 As we shall see, wartime Newfoundland proved to be an exception to this tendency. The squadron at St John’s was never large and ships from it were often detached for service elsewhere over the course of the summer. Waldegrave commanded only three sloops and a supply ship in June 1799, but there were five ships on the station in 1800 when Pole held the command – a ship of the line, a small frigate, a sloop, a fireship and a six-gun brig commanded by a lieutenant – and twelve when Duckworth took up his command in 1810.14 Keats’s squadron in 1813 included a ship of the line, six frigates, four sloops, a cutter and a prison ship, but this was during the War of

1. Appointing Naval Governors

29

1812 when threats from the United States loomed.15 Although the Newfoundland squadron paled into insignificance when compared with the seventy-six-ship force (with a complement of close to 40,000 men) commanded by Earl St Vincent in the Channel in 1800, commanding officers were usually responsible for 1,500 officers and men, double the size of the garrison, and during the War of 1812 this number swelled to more than 2,500.16 As was the case for commanders-in-chief elsewhere, those commanding at Newfoundland were involved in a multitude of complex administrative and logistical challenges necessary to maintain the ships and feed their crews, and to meet the accountability requirements of the Admiralty Board.17 The practice of appointing admirals to command the squadron almost certainly reflected an official view that the gubernatorial responsibilities that went with the naval command called for a range and level of experience acquired by those who had been employed as flag officers. Despite its relatively small size, the Newfoundland command conferred some unique advantages which made it worth contending for. Some officers regarded the terms of service as attractive. Very senior flag officers in the Channel and North Sea Fleets were sometimes able to spend time ashore in England in the winter without forfeiting their commands if they were particularly highly valued by the Board and the condition of their health warranted it.18 These arrangements were, however, temporary exceptions to the rule that flag officers who commanded fleets or squadrons were expected to do so from the deck of their flagship. By contrast, the commanders-in-chief at Newfoundland were able to spend the months of November through to May in England, exchanging the severities of North American winters and the limitations of the social life of St John’s for time ashore with their families. They attended to their personal affairs and professional connections in London and their home neighbourhoods while continuing to govern Newfoundland from their flagships at Spithead, town houses or lodgings in London and more or less extensive country properties. During the War of 1812, Sir Richard Keats was ordered to remain at St John’s until early December, but even an extended period of residence did not impose the deprivations experienced on other stations. This consideration was no doubt at the forefront of the Honourable William Waldegrave’s mind when he celebrated his appointment in 1797. He welcomed the prospect, describing it as ‘the best of all good things’ and anticipated that he would ‘sing gaudeamus every autumn that brings me home’.19 When Sir Edward Pellew (who had served on the station in the 1780s) wrote to his old friend Vice Admiral Sir George Murray encouraging him to ask for the command, he was urged to ‘take dear Mrs Murray to play Governor among the fish folk. You would be quiet at Chichester half of the year’.20 Limited prize money notwithstanding, there were financial advantages for flag officers in holding the Newfoundland command and governorship. For most of the war years, the governorship added £500pa to the pay, table money and the other allowances of commanders-in-chief.21 The financial value of the Newfoundland governorship paled into insignificance alongside the £10,000pa and £2,000pa in allowances paid to Lord Macartney as governor of the Cape Colony in 1797, but when compared with other flag appointments it added significantly to the value

30

The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars

of the combined posts.22 A comment by Earl St Vincent reflected the future first lord’s view of the financial benefits of the post and the calibre of the officers who should be appointed to it: ‘it seems a proper provision for a needy and meritorious officer.’23 Waldegrave’s total income as a vice admiral and governor amounted to a handsome £1,864pa. Provisions were expensive in Newfoundland, but governors’ capacity to carry out supplies for their personal use during their limited periods of residence mitigated the effect of this to some degree. Nevertheless, by Vice Admiral Holloway’s governorship, the 10 per cent income tax imposed in 1806 and the rising cost of provisions reduced the value of the post. Holloway also complained about the £200 that he paid for his commission as governor. These representations may have prompted the government to increase the governor’s salary to £800 from 1809.24 Flag officers at Newfoundland do not appear to have experienced heavy official and semi-official calls on their income. Their squadrons were small and dispersed, so there were few naval officers to whom they might have felt obliged to offer hospitality. The fact that they travelled without their wives or children (contrary to Pellew’s jaunty enticement to Murray), the limitations of St John’s society and the fact that its social season began when governors were preparing to return to England probably meant that they did little entertaining.25 Although provisions in Newfoundland were notoriously expensive, none of the wartime admiral-governors made official complaints about the cost of entertaining senior service personnel and local dignitaries. This had been a sore point with Sir John Duckworth when he commanded at Jamaica earlier in the war and followed the usual practice of maintaining a house ashore to entertain members of the local elite and senior army colleagues.26 Thus while the Newfoundland command was far from being a plum appointment, the conditions of employment and the financial benefits of it being annexed to the governorship made it more attractive than it might have been.27 In any case, the general competition for employment among flag officers meant that any command was likely to appeal to ambitious ‘admirals unemployed’ as a way of providing opportunities to impress their superiors.28 Consequently, while the appointment was not as hotly contested as others, it frequently attracted rival contenders. Some aspirants have left traces of their bids in the surviving documentary record, but others will have been made in person by the officers concerned or their powerful friends. There was a special flag officers’ waiting room in the Admiralty building where unemployed admirals could shelter out of the weather and the sight of subordinates while they waited for an opportunity to offer their services to the first lord. When Earl St Vincent held that office, he referred to a convention that made Newfoundland a command for vice admirals, but he was inclined to invoke such ‘rules’ when he really had other grounds for decisions.29 Be that as it may, all but the first of the wartime appointees were vice admirals, and all had very respectable service records. Sir James Wallace was a rear admiral on appointment but was promoted to vice admiral before his term ended; Duckworth was promoted admiral within a year of taking up his position. The other wartime governors

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remained vice admirals throughout their terms but since promotion through flag ranks was almost entirely a matter of seniority, this was not a sign of how their performance at St John’s was viewed.

Sir James Wallace (1731–1803), governor 1794–7 Wallace came from an obscure background (nothing is known of his parents), and the fact that he had to wait more than two years for an appointment after passing the examination for lieutenants suggests that he entered the service with negligible interest. His movement from lieutenant to master and commander and post captain (sixteen years) was relatively slow, but thereafter his career flourished through superior performance and the benefit of ‘service interest’. Wallace was continually employed as a post captain in the American Revolutionary War and saw much action in that conflict on both sides of the Atlantic. When it ended he went on half pay but was given a lucrative post captain’s sinecure as a ‘colonel of Marines’. He was immediately employed at the start of the French Wars in 1793 and promoted to rear admiral in early April 1794.30 For many senior officers, promotion to flag rank marked the end of active service. They gave up the commands they held as post captains and went ashore to swell the ranks of ‘admirals unemployed’.31 Wallace avoided that fate. He was almost immediately appointed to command a squadron in the English Channel,32 and two months later he was selected to replace Sir Richard King, who resigned the governorship to take a seat in the House of Commons vacated on the death of a sitting member.33 As a result, Wallace’s appointment was somewhat hurried, and he left late for Newfoundland, arriving at St John’s in mid-August 1794. When his term ended in the spring of 1797 he does not appear to have actively sought further employment, seemingly content to live ashore on one of his estates with half pay as a supplement to a handsome fortune acquired through marriage and significant prize earnings.

The Honourable William Waldegrave (1753-1825), governor 1797–1800 William Waldegrave was among the group of well-connected captains who gained sinecure commissions as ‘colonels of marines’ relinquished by Wallace and a handful of other officers who became rear admirals in the April 1794 flag promotion. Three years later Waldegrave succeeded Wallace as governor and commander-in-chief at Newfoundland. He was now a vice admiral but was of a new generation of flag officers and clearly saw the Newfoundland command as an opportunity to stake his claim for more significant flag appointments and royal honours. Waldegrave’s early career benefitted from family interest – he was the younger son of an earl and his father, a senior army officer, was a courtier with an appointment in the queen’s household – but his rise in rank from lieutenant to post captain in four years also reflected favourable judgements on his performance as a junior officer. He served with distinction as a post captain from 1776 in the

32

The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars

West Indies and North America, and when Britain and revolutionary France went to war in 1793, he was high enough on the post captains’ list to make the next step to rear admiral in the second flag promotion of 1794. Early promotion meant that he benefitted from the rapid expansion of flag ranks during the war; he became vice admiral in 1795 and admiral in 1802. Waldegrave’s earlier service record, family interest and royal connections – his wife was a niece of the king and the couple were regular visitors to Windsor34 – eased the way to employment as a flag officer. He commanded a squadron in the Channel, was commander-inchief at Portsmouth, served under Sir John Jervis in the Mediterranean and was his third-in-command at the Battle of Cape St Vincent in February 1797. Shared battle honours did not, however, result in a cordial relationship between the two men. Waldegrave, who was inclined to stand on his dignity as the son of an earl, incurred the newly created Earl St Vincent’s wry contempt by prevaricating over whether family honour would allow him to accept a baronetcy in recognition of his contribution to their victory. Waldegrave’s correspondence made it clear that he thought he deserved a peerage.35 His decline of the honour offered irritated Lord Spencer, the first lord of the admiralty, and probably also the king.36 Even before the battle, however, Waldegrave’s notoriously demanding commander-in-chief complained to Lord Spencer of his neediness, feuded with him over his ‘spying correspondence’ with senior officials in London and demanded his recall.37 Spencer ignored this demand, but it was clear that Waldegrave was openly unhappy under St Vincent’s rough tutelage. Early in 1797 he raised with his friend Captain Lord Hugh Seymour the prospect of gaining the Newfoundland command. Seymour, who was at that time a ‘professional’ member of the Admiralty Board, had strong family interest derived from his father and elder brothers, Earls of Hertford.38 There is no record of any other contenders for the position, and in any case, Waldegrave’s status as the son of an earl, his other family connections and friendship with Seymour would have been enough to secure the appointment. In addition, however, Earl Spencer, the first lord, was no doubt pleased to find a way of sparing an overbearing commander-in-chief and a socially and professionally prickly member of the aristocracy each other’s increasingly irksome company. When his Newfoundland command ended in 1800, Waldegrave worked his interest for all it was worth, but turned down the chance of the Cape of Good Hope command on the grounds that it held little prospect of ‘honour or profit’.39 By this time, he had finally gained a position in the second-ranking Irish peerage as Baron Radstock. When this honour was announced in late 1800, Lord Radstock insisted it was made in recognition of his role in the Battle of Cape St Vincent, not as compensation for failing to gain a significant flag appointment.40 In mid-1801 he seemed to be on the verge of finally achieving that illusive prize by replacing the long-serving Vice Admiral Peter Rainier in the spectacularly lucrative East Indian command. When Lord Radstock hoisted his flag on HMS Theseus in October 1801, however, St Vincent, now First Lord of the Admiralty, noted slyly that this appointment had been a long time in ‘contemplation’ and almost certainly knew it would be stillborn. A preliminary peace agreement had been negotiated with the French Republic a few weeks before and planning was underway to reduce the

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East Indies to a peacetime command held by a captain. Radstock struck his flag a few weeks later but not before he had further alienated St Vincent by angling for a public statement on why his command was ending before it had begun; he may also have sought to extract promises of future employment.41 These transactions probably reminded the First Lord of the frustrations he would have had to endure in dealing with Waldegrave in an active service capacity. In late 1803 the First Lord moved quickly to squelch Radstock’s bid for the £500pa sinecure of Treasurer of Greenwich Hospital.42 In the event, Radstock spent the rest of his life on half pay without the benefit of other income from public sources. His services at Newfoundland had not been mentioned in connection with his bids for a peerage, but he referred to them when seeking flag employment in the early 1800s and again at the end of the wars when he unsuccessfully petitioned the second Lord Melville for a pension.43 Radstock complained bitterly that his interest had evaporated, but his reputation was still sufficiently high to gain appointment as a ‘Grand Cross of the Bath’ (GCB), the highest rank in the reconstituted Order of the Bath.

Sir Charles Pole (1757–1830), governor 1800–2 Pole’s interest at the Board played a direct role in his appointment as Waldegrave’s successor. As in Waldegrave’s case, an officer’s personal preference was supported by a record of appropriate experience, well-placed patronage and intra-service accommodations. Pole had been promoted to post captain after seven years of service and only two years after being commissioned as a lieutenant. He was regularly employed in that rank, and his service interest and superior administrative abilities were reflected in his appointment as ‘first captain’ (essentially chief-ofstaff) to Lord Bridport in the Channel Fleet from 1797. In 1798 he aspired to join the Admiralty Board, but Lord Spencer preferred to keep him at sea.44 Pole became a rear admiral in 1799. At this stage in his career he enjoyed the friendship and support of Rear Admiral William Young, who was a naval member of the Admiralty Board. He also benefitted from the interest of Henry Addington, a prominent politician and future prime minister, who secured a baronetcy for him in 1801, and the Duke of Clarence, the king’s naval son in whose household he held the sinecure office of groom of the bedchamber.45 In mid-1799, presumably at Pole’s instigation, Young recommended him to Spencer as Waldegrave’s successor at Newfoundland. Spencer seemed well disposed to favour Pole but would give no promise at this stage. Young warned his friend that ‘such an appointment has not remained so long unasked for, there are many candidates’.46 One aspirant was Vice Admiral Sir William Parker, another of St Vincent’s difficult subordinate flag officers in the Mediterranean fleet. The relationship between the two men became so openly antagonistic that Lord Spencer agreed to St Vincent’s demand that Parker be removed from his command. Rather than recalling Parker, however, Spencer appointed him to the North American station and ordered him to proceed to Halifax without delay. Running true to form, Parker protested this direction, declaring that he needed three months’ leave in

34

The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars

England to recover from the rigours of his Mediterranean service, see his family, attend to his personal affairs and recruit his ‘followers’, loyal subordinates who would wish to serve with him.47 Parker, who had spent thirteen years on the Newfoundland station at various stages in his career, had earlier put in a bid to replace Waldegrave when his term finished. He now repeated his expression of interest, presumably seeing it as a way of securing leave and then having the opportunity to return to England every year.48 These representations came to nothing, and in February 1800 when Waldegrave’s term was coming to an end, Pole had a ‘satisfactory’ interview with Spencer in London, following which he was confident of being given the command. There was a short period of uncertainty when the Board’s concerns over Lord Bridport’s health led it to issue an order for Pole to replace him in the Channel command in the event of his death. This precaution upset Bridport and did not please Pole. The command would only ever be temporary, was on a difficult station and might interfere with his aspirations for the Newfoundland appointment.49 In addition to benefitting from Young’s support, Pole’s Newfoundland prospects may have been strengthened by Spencer’s wish to accommodate St Vincent’s forceful request that his protégé, Captain Sir Thomas Troubridge, should become first captain when he succeeded Bridport in the Channel command. Pole’s elevation to the Newfoundland command facilitated this arrangement.50 Pole’s residence at St John’s was very limited. He arrived in early August 1800, was back at Spithead by late October and did not return there in the following summer. After a very short period commanding in the Baltic in the summer of 1801, he was given responsibility until early December for a large squadron stationed between Cadiz and Gibraltar. St Vincent stressed that this was a ‘temporary service’, necessary only because Lord Keith’s Mediterranean Fleet operating off Egypt was too remote from communications warning of threats from Cadiz. When Keith moved further up the Mediterranean, Pole’s command would end. A warrant as lieutenant governor of Newfoundland was drawn up for Captain Robert Barton in early September 1800. It was not sent to him, but he seems to have performed some of the governor’s duties.51 St Vincent’s correspondence makes it clear that he expected Pole to return to the Island in the following season. When Pole took up the Baltic command the first lord determined that he should be compensated financially for his temporary absence from Newfoundland, presumably because of his loss of part of the governor’s salary of £500pa.52 Pole had been interested in entering the House of Commons since 1793, so when he was offered the support of the Duke of Newcastle’s interest at Newark in April 1802 he resigned his commission as governor and was returned as one of the members for that constituency following the election of July 1802.53 Thereafter Pole made a series of unsuccessful applications for employment. St Vincent was suspicious of his enlightened views on naval discipline, and he may have suffered from the lasting impact of Lord Spencer’s convention that flag officers who gave up commands on grounds other than ill-health would not be favoured in future.54 Moreover, Pole may have fallen foul of the general tendency for promotion through the flag ranks to reduce opportunities for employment: some commands were seen as appropriate

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for rear or vice admirals but not for those above them.55 St Vincent presumably viewed Pole’s administrative and political skills more highly than his capabilities in fleet leadership because he appointed him to a statutory commission on abuses in naval administration which sat from 1802 to 1805. Pole served on the Admiralty Board in 1806 and then spent the rest of his life on half pay. He was awarded a GCB in 1815 and, having outlived a sufficient number of those initially senior to him on the admirals’ list, became Admiral of the Fleet in the last year of his life. He spoke regularly and effectively on naval business in the House of Commons when MP for Newark (1802–6) and Plymouth (1806–18).

Sir James Gambier (1756–1833), governor 1802–5 Pole’s appointment to the Cadiz squadron led some of his colleagues to suppose the governorship was vacant. One of the aspirants for it was Rear Admiral Sir Erasmus Gower, an officer with a distinguished record as a fighting captain and explorer. Gower had held subordinate flag appointments in the Channel Fleet and the Irish squadron, and, following the short-lived cessation of hostilities in 1802, was under consideration for the peacetime Mediterranean command. He had been a close friend of Lord Hugh Seymour, a professional member of the Board, and was well-connected with leading members of the service.56 When Gower enquired after the appointment, however, he was informed of the temporary nature of Pole’s command at sea and his option of returning to the Newfoundland command. St Vincent then firmly closed the door on Gower’s aspirations by telling him a vice admiral in the Channel Fleet had been nominated to succeed Pole. This officer was Sir James Gambier. Admiral Charles Wolseley and Vice Admiral Thomas Pringle put in unsuccessful bids for the Newfoundland command shortly after Gower’s enquiry.57 Wolseley was too senior for the position in terms of rank, lacked experience in flag command or any service distinction, and had an unsavoury reputation as an unsuccessful place and fortune hunter. In the last year of his life he tricked a woman out of £2,000 by a false promise of marriage, following which St Vincent and some of his colleagues forced the admiral to pay her interest on that sum and insure his life to cover it.58 Pringle’s claim would have been much stronger than his disreputable senior colleague. He was known as a reliable flag officer and served without blemish as second-in-command to two major figures: Admiral Lord Duncan in the North Sea fleet and Vice Admiral Lord Keith in the Cape Command. As he died during Gambier’s term, however, Pringle’s case was never put to the test.59 While Gower served fourteen years as a lieutenant before being made a post captain, Gambier’s interest helped him to make this step in a year. He played a bold role as a post captain at the Battle of Cape St Vincent and was also a leading figure among the ‘blue light’ officers in the Royal Navy. These men brought evangelical sensibilities to their professional roles and felt an obligation to spiritually reform those under their control as well as subject them to naval discipline.60 At this time, Gambier’s service in high command at sea was relatively limited but his political

36

The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars

and service connections (including Prime Minister William Pitt’s family and Admiral Sir Charles Middleton, head of the Navy Board and then a member of the Admiralty and Navy Boards) and perceived administrative abilities resulted in his appointment to the Admiralty Board in 1798; he was the senior professional member from 1800 until early 1801. Gambier’s time on the Board coincided with the high point of St Vincent’s career as a fleet commander, and their relationship in that context had important implications for the Newfoundland appointment. St Vincent became increasingly frustrated with what he saw as the Board’s unwarranted interference with his command of first the Mediterranean and then Channel fleets. He was openly dismissive of the abilities of Gambier and other naval commissioners, deriding them as ‘neptunes’ of the Board and comparing their naval knowledge unfavourably with that of the civil members and senior officials. St Vincent became so outspoken that Lord Spencer found it necessary to reprimand him for his truculent reaction to the displacement of his preferred candidate for promotion by an officer favoured by Gambier.61 When St Vincent succeeded Earl Spencer as first lord in February 1801, Gambier’s position at the Board was taken by his protégé Sir Thomas Troubridge (now a rear admiral). He went initially to a subordinate flag command in the Channel Fleet under Admiral William Cornwallis, but whatever St Vincent thought privately, Gambier was not a man who could be brushed aside. The new first lord may have seen an offer of the Newfoundland command as an easy way of paying Gambier due attention while removing him at least temporarily from scenes of influence. Gambier had apparently been offered the command for 1801 with reversionary rights when Pole’s term ended but had declined it.62 He remained St Vincent’s preferred candidate to succeed Pole, however, and did so in April 1802. The appointment appears to be rather rushed. Pole ‘struck his flag’ which was flying in La Concorde at Spithead from his London town house, and on the same day Gambier was given permission to come ashore to get his private affairs in order.63 At the conclusion of his term, Middleton (now Lord Barham) headed the Admiralty Board, and in mid-1805 Gambier joined his kinsman as a professional member of it. He subsequently commanded the British fleet at the second Battle of Copenhagen in the summer of 1807 and later that year was appointed to the prestigious Channel Command and raised to the United Kingdom peerage. In 1814 he served as Britain’s commissioner at the peace negotiations with the United States. Although Gambier was initially (and inexplicably given his record and other honours) overlooked for a GCB, the timely death of a member of the upper division of the Order of the Bath made a vacancy into which he was promptly inducted. In common with all but a handful of junior flag officers, Gambier spent the post-war years on half pay.

Sir Erasmus Gower (1742–1814), governor 1805–7 Having applied unsuccessfully for the Newfoundland command in 1801, Sir Erasmus Gower was on hand to take the appointment in 1804 when Gambier’s

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term was coming to an end. Gower had been a junior officer on Commodore Byron’s circumnavigation and served with distinction in the East and West Indies. His progression to post captain was relatively slow, dogged by unhelpful timing and bad luck, rather than professional shortcomings. Eventually, however, the service interest of Lord Rodney saw him promoted from lieutenant to post captain without having to serve in the intermediary rank of master and commander.64 Gower commanded the ship taking Lord Macartney on his embassy to China and in the early stages of the French Wars played an important role in Vice Admiral Cornwallis’s Channel squadron’s masterly and much-lauded retreat in the face of a greatly superior French force. It was a sign of Gower’s strong professional reputation that he was appointed commodore of a squadron gathered to prevent the Nore mutineers from taking their ships to sea in the spring of 1797. Gower twice visited Newfoundland during earlier stages of his career, spending several months at a number of coastal settlements as a midshipman in 1763 and returning in 1786–8 as flag captain to Commodore (and then Rear Admiral) John Elliot, one of his predecessors in the government of the Island. This experience helped to make him the best informed of the wartime governors and laid the basis for a highly engaged term in the role.65 Although the king welcomed the First Lord’s nomination of ‘so able an officer’, there appears to have been some confusion in the secretary of state’s office over Gower’s succession.66 The Instructions were originally directed to Gower, but his name was then crossed out and replaced by that of Vice Admiral Sir Charles Cotton, a flag officer with an elusive relationship to the naval government of Newfoundland.67 This misdirection was corrected, and Gower prepared to set out for what was to be one of the most significant terms of a wartime admiral-governor. Gower, who was at this stage in his early sixties, suffered from occasional ill-health at St John’s and was troubled greatly by gout in England over the winters of 1804–5 and 1805–6. The Newfoundland appointment marked the end of Gower’s service as a flag officer. He spent the rest of his life on half pay in rural Hampshire, relishing snug nights at home by the fire in the company of his dogs.68

John Holloway (1743–1826), governor 1807–10 Vice Admiral John Holloway, at this time commanding in the Downs, succeeded Gower. Holloway, who came from an old and respectable Somerset family, was a highly competent and reliable officer who fought with distinction in the American Revolutionary War and in the early stages of the French Wars. Although personally well thought of by distinguished friends in the service and being supported in earlier stages of his career by Samuel (later Viscount) Hood and William (later Lord) Hotham, he seems to have lacked the professional flair and interest to secure rapid advancement or a long-term command at flag rank. He served twenty years (nine as a lieutenant) before becoming a post captain. After being promoted to rear admiral in 1799, his major employment as a flag officer was a string of twelve short-term appointments in the Downs between May 1804 and April 1807.69 It

38

The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars

is, however, a sign of Holloway’s solid reputation that he was said to be under consideration for a seat at the Admiralty Board during this time. When he was briefly unemployed in 1803, Lord Nelson wrote encouragingly but in terms which suggested that he was valued as a workhorse. Nelson assured his friend that he would not long remain without employment: ‘your nerves are good, and your head I never heard disputed.’70 St Vincent’s decision to appoint Holloway as Admiral Montague’s second in command at Portsmouth supported Nelson’s assessment. St Vincent was dubious about Montague’s efficiency and impartiality at a time when the navy was struggling to move onto a war footing following the Peace of Amiens. He emphasized the need for the major ports to be served by hard-working and efficient flag officers who would not be swayed by the self-interested pleas of wellconnected captains and fleet commanders.71 Like Gower, Holloway had served on the Newfoundland Station as a midshipman,72 and his interest in the command went back a number of years. When the end of Gower’s term was in sight Holloway told his recently promoted friend Rear Admiral John Markham that he had had the support of Earl St Vincent’s Board to be in reserve if Sir Erasmus Gower declined the post in the spring of 1804. Markham had been on the Board from 1801 to 1804 and had recently been reappointed to it. Holloway reminded him of his continuing interest in the governorship and enquired anxiously about any rivals for the position: ‘I have not the honour of being at all known to the first lord. Has anyone asked for it?’73 It is not clear if there were any contenders at that stage, but before Gower’s term ended a strong candidate from Ireland also appealed for Markham’s support. In late November 1806 Vice Admiral Whitshead wrote from Dublin saying he hoped Markham would not think him ‘improperly importunate’ in stating how ‘extremely anxious’ he was to obtain the appointment. Markham was a friend of Whitshead, and the admiral did not hesitate to explain his eagerness for the appointment by reference to his wife’s mental health: ‘under the afflicting state of poor Mrs Whitshead’s mind’ his appointment ‘would be so likely to give her comfort’. Whitshead, the son of an Irish Protestant bishop, had a successful career as a young post captain in the American War and served under Sir John Jervis at the Battle of St. Vincent in the French Revolutionary War. He had the distinction (very rare among sea officers) of having studied at Oxford University, enrolling in his late twenties as a mature student during a period on half pay. Following promotion to rear admiral in 1799, Whitshead was employed as a subordinate flag officer in the Mediterranean and Channel fleets and was appointed naval advisor to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland on the outbreak of the Napoleonic War in the spring of 1803.74 Whitshead appealed for Markham to use his ‘best endeavours’ on his behalf, but it is not known how active Markham was in advancing either Holloway’s or Whitshead’s bids.75 As Whitshead was appointed to the Irish command at Cork a few months later, it is quite likely that he was already part of one of the Board’s succession plans. It was not all plain sailing for Holloway. Thomas Grenville, who had succeeded St Vincent as first lord, was said to have regarded the pending vacancy at Newfoundland as an opportunity to remove Sir Charles Cotton (to whom he had

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taken an unaccountable dislike) from the scene and stymie attempts to place him in a major command.76 If this was Grenville’s strategy, it failed. Cotton wrote from his home at Maddingly in Cambridgeshire on 16 March to accept the appointment but five days later, having removed to London, declined it on grounds of ill-health. Perhaps Sir Charles had taken medical advice in town that changed his mind, or he may have been alerted by his friends there to Grenville’s motivation in offering him the post and caught wind of the ‘general report’ that the first lord was about to resign his office.77 In any case, Cotton’s unwillingness or indisposition provided an opportunity for Vice Admiral Holloway’s slender reversionary interest to finally carry the day. He duly succeeded Gower in the late spring of 1807 and, despite bouts of ill-health, served the regulation three years before going permanently on half pay in the spring of 1810. Holloway was alone among the surviving wartime governors in failing to be given a place in the remodelled Order of the Bath in early 1815. He protested to the Admiralty Board at what he saw as this injustice but had to find what consolation he could in its report that the Prince Regent was ‘full sensible of his services’ and that his absence from the ranks of the Knight Commanders of the Order of the Bath involved ‘no imputation’ on them.78 He raised this matter six years later when, unlike Gambier, he did not even gain the satisfaction of being appointed to a vacancy in the Order. Holloway seems to have had reasonable grounds for disappointment, especially as he only aspired to join the second rank of the new Order, albeit one which carried the dignity of a knighthood. By this time, however, the service patrons who had supported him earlier in his career were all dead and the most powerful of his earlier associates may not have been much help to him. The author of a contemporary biographical memoir of Holloway noted that Prince William Henry, the Duke of Clarence, was attracted by the ‘plainness and rigid honesty of his character’ and illustrated this point by recounting a story of his response to a query from the notoriously foul-mouthed and loose-living sailorprince about his habitual reading of the Bible. Whatever Clarence thought of this exchange at the time, in retrospect it may not have endeared Holloway to a vain and opinionated royal prince who was now admiral of the Fleet: ‘I find in [the Bible] all the principles of my duty; among other things, To put my trust in God, and not in any child of man.’79

Sir John Duckworth (1748–1817), governor 1810–12 Holloway was succeeded in the governorship by two admirals with very significant records as flag officers. Duckworth’s initial progression in the service had the same trajectory as Holloway’s, with a relatively slow rise to post captain (a promotion he gained nine years after being commissioned a lieutenant) being followed by distinguished service at that rank in the American Revolutionary and French Wars. One aspect of his reputation as a post captain provides a striking example of the longevity of ‘service interest.’ Duckworth was noted for his careful attention to the training and welfare of his midshipmen, one instance of which was

40

The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars

reciprocated half a century later. In 1840 Sir William Parker, who had benefitted from Duckworth’s mentoring, used a nomination granted to him on leaving the Admiralty Board to promote his early benefactor’s grandson to post captain and thus position him for eventual elevation to flag rank.80 Unlike Holloway, Duckworth was almost continually employed in significant commands at sea after being promoted to rear admiral in 1799. When his ambitions were thwarted Duckworth reacted with a mixture of barely concealed truculence and pained expressions of personal hurt, but his career indicates that a succession of first lords recognized his energy and thoroughness. By the time he was appointed to the Newfoundland command, Duckworth had acquired a substantial fortune in prize money, including a subordinate flag officer’s share of a convoy captured in the Mediterranean in 1800 that was said to be worth £75,000 (c. £6m in today’s terms). In common with a number of his gubernatorial colleagues, Duckworth had visited Newfoundland early in his career when he served on Commodore Hugh Palliser’s flagship as a midshipman in the late 1760s.81 He commanded the Leeward Islands Squadron from 1801 to 1805, held senior subordinate flag officers’ appointments in the Mediterranean and Channel fleets, and fought a successful fleet action against the French off San Domingo in early 1806. Duckworth always held that he had not received adequate recognition for this triumph and indulged in expressions of ‘poignant feelings’ on this theme to his friends (which was understandable) and also (counterproductively) to a succession of first lords and senior politicians.82 These foibles notwithstanding, Duckworth’s seniority, demonstrated capability and interest (he counted the Duke of Northumberland among his ‘friends’ which gave a connection to the heir to the throne and future Prince Regent) would have made him a strong candidate for the governorship.83 As Duckworth had protested stridently at being overlooked for the Baltic command in 1807 and the naval leadership of the Scheldt expedition in 1809, the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty were probably pleased to get him off their hands for three years. In midFebruary 1810 he wrote to the Admiralty Board in the strained language that often marked his pursuit of appointments and honours, declaring that ‘I continually hold myself in momentary readiness to execute any command’. The Board took Duckworth at his word, and by the end of the following month he had taken over the command from Holloway.84 He continued to lobby the Board for more glamorous and lucrative appointments, however, and in September 1810 it was rumoured that he would resign his post if promoted to admiral. At this point, Sir George Murray’s friend Vice Admiral Sir Edward Pellew assumed the governorship was his for the asking, but Murray had suffered such acute anxiety in his earlier flag commands that he was determined to sit quiet at home in Chichester for the rest of his life. A week after Pellew had written to him, Vice Admiral George Campbell, a familiar of the Prince of Wales and MP, told Murray that he was interested in the post if Duckworth gave it up.85 Duckworth did not resign on promotion, probably because he knew that such a step would be seen as a power play against the Board and would seriously compromise his chances of future employment.86 He remained ambitiously

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restless, however, and in 1811 engaged in a maladroit attempt to hector Charles Yorke, then first lord, into giving him the plum Mediterranean command. When Duckworth remonstrated with Yorke, he received the tart reply that it ‘cannot be expected that these Arrangements should ever meet with general concurrence’. In the following year he wrote to Yorke’s successor, the second Lord Melville, in more measured terms, asking to be considered for ‘any of the important commands’.87 Despite his patron’s friendship with the Prince Regent this approach did not yield fruit, and Duckworth more or less saw out his term at Newfoundland. He relinquished his commission in December 1812 so he could become MP for New Romney but did not strike his flag until mid-February 1813 and continued to deal with official business until his successor was appointed in early April 1813.88 Despite Duckworth’s ambitions to quit the Newfoundland command, the zeal and commitment that he exhibited throughout his term provide a striking example of the professionalism and spirit of emulation that motivated flag officers of his generation. On his return to England, Duckworth accepted a baronetcy, an honour which he had declined scornfully a dozen years before. He also renewed his earlier pleas to be made a peer. Although the Prince Regent had complimented Duckworth on the quality of his reports from Newfoundland, this appeal fell on deaf royal ears. Despite his many achievements and his undoubted energy and capacity for business, Duckworth enjoyed a mixed reputation among his contemporaries.89 The second half of his career was clouded by an acquittal at a court martial for using a king’s ship for private trade and the unauthorized displacement of its captain. His detractors thought the verdict was entirely inconsistent with the facts of the case and went so far as to suggest that some of the witnesses in his defence had perjured themselves. There were also public and parliamentary criticisms of his role in an aborted attempt on Constantinople in 1809. Be that as it may, he was told that ‘His Royal Highness . . . feels it . . . quite impossible under all the Circumstances to comply with your Request’.90 If Duckworth still harboured ambitions of a major command at sea or consolatory royal honours after this bitter rebuff, he had to settle instead for the award of a GCB and appointment as the port admiral at Plymouth. By this time the country was at peace, so a major shore command in the county where his estate was located may well have been an attractive proposition. With characteristic focus on the task at hand, Duckworth applied his energy and superior administrative skills to this role. He died from a stroke in the course of dispatching the business of his office in 1817.91

Sir Richard Keats (1757-1834), governor 1813–16 Duckworth’s resignation from the governorship sparked another tussle for the job. Sir Erasmus Gower, who continued to keep up with service gossip from rural Hampshire, had a particular interest in manoeuvrings for his old command. In February 1813 he told a correspondent that the Prince Regent had demanded that the Board appoint his close friend Vice Admiral Sir Edmund Nagle but that it

42

The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars

had ‘disavowed’ that instruction and appointed Sir Richard Keats (1757–1834) in his stead.92 If this is so, the Prince Regent may have given way to his brother, Prince William Henry, the Duke of Clarence, and to the Board’s insistence that experience and capability were among the attributes expected of those appointed to flag commands. Clarence had served under Keats’s protection when he was a midshipman and had since become that officer’s most important patron. In addition, however, Keats had a highly distinguished service record. Keats had recently been invalided home from the Mediterranean Fleet suffering from exhaustion and the effect of old injuries. Even though Britain was now at war with the United States, the Newfoundland station was seen as a partly recuperative command and Keats’s widely recognized merits made him an entirely unexceptional choice for it. He was junior to Nagle on the vice admirals’ list but had a far more distinguished record in the service and infinitely more sustained experience of flag command. The flag promotion round of 1807 was framed by the first lord of admiralty to secure Keats’s elevation to rear admiral (a mark of singular distinction), and he was employed continually at sea until invalided home in 1812.93 Just prior to his Newfoundland appointment, Keats may have unwittingly and momentarily opened the way for other bids by expressing doubts to the first lord about the state of his health. In light of those concerns, it is a testament to Keats’s widely recognized abilities that he was under consideration to take up the enlarged and highly demanding North American command that was the centre of strategic tension and political angst during the War of 1812.94 He accepted the Newfoundland command, however, and left for St John’s rather later than was usual, arriving there in the early summer of 1813.95 When his term as governor finished, Keats’s merits and interest paved the way for a GCB and the valuable sinecures of major-general of Marines (to the active disappointment of Lord Radstock) and governor of Greenwich Hospital.96

Conclusion The practice of bestowing the government of Newfoundland on the naval commander-in-chief on the station suggests an element of continuity with a sixteenth-century writer’s characterization of the Island as an English ship ‘moored upon the outer banks’. But, although naval considerations largely determined appointments to this amphibious seat of government during the war years, it did not follow that the civil needs of the settlement would suffer by this practice. The competition for employment among flag officers meant that the Board had options available to it. Viable candidates for commands of any sort were expected to possess strong administrative and managerial records and were thus equipped with skills that were relevant to many aspects of both the naval and civil requirements of the governorship. The variations in the early career trajectories of the naval governors reflected the impact of differing circumstances (wars were always good for advancement), political and service interest, and good fortune, but even Gower’s unlucky fourteen-

Notes to pp. 25–43

43

year period as a lieutenant was markedly less than the twenty-year average for officers of his vintage.97 The fact that those appointed to the Newfoundland command had sufficiently strong professional backgrounds to secure prior flag appointments in a fiercely competitive senior naval employment market made it unlikely that the mediocrity which prevailed elsewhere in colonial administration would dog the government of the Island. It is significant that while some of the late-war critics of naval governors accused them of being high-handed, partial and self-willed, they were not charged with being lazy, incompetent or corrupt. Moreover, in an environment where the preferences of the Board gave increasing weight to active leadership, and competition among flag officers for employment and honours reinforced this ethos in their management of fleets, squadrons and major ports, wartime governors brought a spirit of innovation and improvement to the naval government of the settlement. Even Sir John Duckworth, whose ambitions were not even temporarily satisfied by the role, applied himself with skill and commitment to its responsibilities and built upon his predecessors’ initiatives to better meet the needs of the settlement.

Notes 1 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 5: 45, 14/6/1794. 2 Ibid., 11: 31-6, 3/6/1800 and see herein, p. 34. 3 Arthur Aspinall, ed., The Later Correspondence of George III, 5 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938), 4, #2861, 178, 21/5/1804. 4 NA CO 194/46, f146-v, 25/3/1807. 5 The Admiralty Board’s rejection of Cochrane’s request for half pay cited the treatment of Ball as a precedent; NA ADM 1/584, f14, 16/8/1814. 6 D. Bonner-Smith, ed., The Letters of Earl St Vincent 1801-1804, 2 vols (London: Navy Records Society, 1922), I: 328, 14/5/1801; J. S. Corbett, ed., Private Papers of George, 2nd Earl Spencer, 1794-1801, 4 vols (London: Navy Records Society, 1913, 1914, 1924), II: 212, 30/6/1797. 7 See herein, pp. 206–7. In this period the terms of Canadian governorships and lieutenant governorships varied from a year or so up to the twenty-eight years served by William Macarmick at Cape Breton Island; he left the province in 1795 after eight years in office but retained the governorship until his death in 1815. Terms of five or six years were common. 8 See Mark Francis, Governors and Settlers (London: Macmillan 1994), 15–16. 9 See Charles Consolvo, ‘The Prospects of Promotion of British Naval Officers, 17931815’, Mariner’s Mirror, 91, no. 2 (2005): 135–59; Michael Lewis, A Social History of the Navy, 1793-1815, 2nd edn (London: Chatham Publishing, 2004), 181–201; John Morrow, British Flag Officers in the French Wars, 1793-1815. Admirals’ Lives (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), 127–48; N. A. M. Rodger, ‘Patronage and Competence’, in Les Marines de Guerres Europeénes XVIIe-XVIIIe Siécles, ed. Martine Acna, José Menns and Jean Meyer (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1985), 237–48. 10 NLS MS 2265, f201, 1/4/1812. 11 Morrow, British Flag Officers, 170.

44

Notes to pp. 25–43

12 By 1816 when the governor of Newfoundland was paid £800pa, those in New South Wales, Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone were receiving £2,000; Great Britain, House of Commons, Further Estimates and Miscellaneous Service, 7/5/1816 (London, 1816), 289. 13 Bernard Bailyn, Atlantic History: Concept and Contours (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 50–1; Helen Taft Manning, British Colonial Government After the American Revolution 1782-1820 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1933), 100–3. 14 See Nicholas Tracy, ed., The Naval Chronicle. The Contemporary Record of the Royal Navy, 5 vols (London: Chatham Press, 1999), II: 128–9; William H. Whiteley, Duckworth’s Newfoundland (St John’s: Harry Cuff Publications, 1985), 11. 15 Roger Morriss, The Foundations of British Maritime Ascendency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 74. Shannon Ryan’s claim that there were three ships of the line, twenty-one frigates and thirty-seven sloops in the squadron in 1812 is entirely inconsistent with Duckworth’s pleas for more ships and is not remotely plausible; the commanders-in-chief of major squadrons would have given their eye teeth for twenty-one frigates, a class of vessels for which the demand always exceeded the supply; see Shannon Ryan, A History of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic to 1818 (St John’s: Flanker Press Ltd, 2012), 188. 16 Morriss, Foundations, 74. 17 See Roger Knight and Martin Wilcox, Sustaining the Fleet 1793-1818. War, the British Navy and the Contractor State (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2010), 47. 18 Lords Howe, Bridport and St Vincent spent the worst winter months ashore when they commanded the Channel Fleet, and Lord Keith lived ashore at Deal when he commanded an extended North Sea station in the early years of the Napoleonic Wars; see Morrow, British Flag Officers, 99–103, 213. 19 NMM, TRN/54, 17/2/1797, not foliated. 20 West Sussex Records Office, Chichester, AM 760/1/122, 19/8/1810. 21 NMM, DUC/16, MS 83/089, 11/12/1809, not foliated. The increase in the governor’s salary was authorized by Parliament in June 1809; NMM DUC/16, MS 83/089. 22 Manning, British Colonial Government, 398, 402. 23 Spencer Letters, II: 212, 30/6/1797. 24 NA CO 194/47, f19–19v, 19/2/1808. Officers were routinely charged fees when issued with commissions, including those which formalized their appointment as flag officers and their elevation through the ranks of rear, vice and full admiral. The fee for a governors’ commission was unusually large; those for flag appointments were no more than a few pounds. 25 Edward Chappel, Voyage … to Newfoundland (London: J. Maw, 1818), 208 and see below, pp. 30, 96. 26 Morrow, British Flag Officers, 214–15; Siân Williams, ‘The Royal Navy and Caribbean Colonial Society during the Eighteenth Century’, in The Royal Navy and the British Atlantic World c. 1750-1820, ed. John McAleer and Christer Petley (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 35–6. 27 Bannister notes that in the mid-eighteenth century the post was an attractive peacetime proposition for post captains; Rule of the Admirals, 106. 28 Their very interesting wartime correspondence with the Admiralty Board is in the UK National Archives, ADM1/579-85. 29 Morrow, British Flag Officers, 135–6.

Notes to pp. 25–43

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30 James Ralfe, The Naval Biography of Great Britain: Consisting of Historical Memoirs of those Officers of the Royal Navy Who Distinguished Themselves during the Reign of His Majesty George III, 4 vols (London: Whitmore and Fenn, 1828), I: 413–19. 31 Morrow, British Flag Officers, 170–6. 32 London Gazette, 8/4/1794. 33 R. G. Thorne, The House of Commons, 5 vols (London: Secker and Warburg, 1986), II: 221, IV: 337. The ODNB wrongly dates Wallace’s appointment as governor to the date of his promotion and does not mention the Channel service. 34 NMM WDG/11/2/15, 9/7/1801, 27/7/1801, 27/7/1801, 30/7/1801. 35 Morrow, British Flag Officers, 193–4. 36 NMM WDG/3/9, 17/5/1797. 37 Corbett, Private Papers, II: 43–5, 31/7/1796. 38 NMM TRN/54, 17/2/1797. 39 NMM WDG/11/1/4, 26/12/1800. 40 NMM WDG, 11/1/13, 26/12/1800; Morrow, British Flag Officers, 193–4. 41 Bonner-Smith, Letters of Lord St Vincent, I: 321, 327–8, 26/10/1801, 13/11/1801, 13/12/1801. 42 Ibid., II: 110, 16/11/1803. 43 NMM WDG/5/6, 1/5/1800 and BL Add MS 38257, ff286–9, 17/5/1814. 44 NMM WYN/104, 21/8/1798. 45 Thorne, House of Commons, IV: 842–4. 46 NMM WYN/104, 20/6/1799. 47 See Morrow, British Flag Officers, 77–8. 48 Corbett, Spencer Papers, III: 31, 18/12/1798, 37, 11/5/1799. 49 NMM WYN 104, 20/6/1799, 12/3/1800. 50 Bonner-Smith, Letters of Lord St Vincent, 1: 316. 51 NA CO 194/43, f12, 3/9/1801. 52 Bonner-Smith, Letters of Lord St Vincent, I: 100, 31/5/1801. 53 Thorne, House of Commons, IV: 842. 54 Bonner-Smith, Letters of Lord St Vincent, I: 201–2; Corbett, Spencer Papers, I: 242, 26/3/1796; Morrow, British Flag Officers, 60, 170–1. As with other ‘rules’ applied by first lords to promotions and appointments, the vague terms of this one left them with plenty of room for manoeuvre. 55 Morrow, British Flag Officers, 175–6. 56 Ian M. Bates, Champion of the Quarterdeck. Admiral Sir Erasmus Gower (1742-1814) (Pomona: Sage Old Books, 2017), 247–53. Bates provides a comprehensive account of Gower’s career. 57 Bonner-Smith, Letters of Lord St Vincent, I: 329, 31/8/1801, 16/9/1801. 58 BL Add Ms 29915 f230v, 10/4/1808. 59 Corbett, Spencer Papers, I: 242–3, 26/3/1796. 60 Robert Blake, Evangelicals in the Royal Navy 1775-1815: Blue Lights and Psalm Singers (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008), passim. 61 Morrow, British Flag Officers, 103–5, 142. 62 Bonner-Smith, Letters of Lord St Vincent, 1: 329, 16/9/1801. 63 NA ADM 1/475, ff56–7, 8/4/1802. 64 Naval Chronicle, 4 (1800), 264. 65 See Bates, Champion of the Quarterdeck, 31–33, 155–65, for Gower’s early experiences of Newfoundland. 66 Aspinall, Correspondence of George III, 4: #2861, 178, 21/5/1804.

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Notes to pp. 25–43

67 NA CO 195/16, f79, 31/5/1804. It is unclear whether this uncertainty reflected mixed messages coming from the Admiralty Board. 68 Bates, Champion of the Quarterdeck, 300. 69 NA ADM 12/15, ff95–6. 70 Quoted Naval Chronicle, 19 (1808), 373, 22/8/1803. 71 Bonner-Smith, Letters of Lord St Vincent, II: 260, August 1802, 298, note, 302–3, 27/11/1803. 72 DCB. 73 NMM MRK/101/9/8, nd. But c. 1805–6. 74 ODNB. 75 NMM MRK/101/10/72, 25/11/1806. 76 Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third, 4 vols (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1853–5), IV: 100, 25/11/1806, 102, 5/12/1806. 77 NA ADM 1/476, ff165, 166, 16/3/1807, 21/3/1807; the rumour of Grenville’s impending resignation was reported in the Naval Chronicle’s biographical essay on Cotton; 27 (1812), 361. 78 NA ADM 1/585, 11/1/1815. 79 Naval Chronicle, 19 (1808), 363. 80 Augustus Phillimore, The Life of Admiral of the Fleet Sir William Parker, 3 vols (London: Harrison, 1876–80), I: 6, II: 418–19. 81 Whiteley, Duckworth’s Newfoundland, 7. 82 See Morrow, British Flag Officers, 181–2. 83 See Arthur Aspinall, ed., The Letters of King George IV 1812-1830, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938), I, ## 182, 240. 84 NA ADM 1/582, 18/2/1810; ADM 1/477, f10, 26/3/1810. 85 West Sussex Record Office, Admiral Murray Papers, AM 760/122,123, 19/8/1810, 27/9/1810. On Murray’s South American command and the effect of this experience on his future ambitions see Morrow, British Flag Officers, 54–7. Just before writing to Murray, Campbell had sent an expression of interest to the first lord; NMM YOR/3, f70, 18/8/1810. 86 Morrow, British Flag Officers, 170–1 and see above, p. x. 87 NMM YOR/4#8, 9, 2/4/1811, 5/4/1811; DUC 30, 9/3/1812. 88 NA CO 194/53, f37, 2/12/1812; NMM XDUC 38, ff138–9, 14/2/1813; NA CO 194/54, f39, 6/4/1813. Duckworth had topped the poll in early October 1812 with ten of the twenty votes cast in an election where the members were effectively nominated by the Duke of Northumberland. A technical irregularity in the electoral return meant that the non-contest had to be rerun in February 1813; see Thorne, The House of Commons, III: 627. 89 James Ralfe thought that the court martial finding in Duckworth’s favour was very dubious and noted that while the displaced captain was censored by the court he was subsequently reinstated in his command. He concluded his ‘historical memoir’ of Duckworth by presenting without evaluative comment two sharply contrasting contemporary views of Duckworth’s character, capacities and achievements; Ralfe, Historical Memoirs, II: 288–9, 300–1. 90 NMM DUC/19, 10/6/1814. 91 ODNB. 92 Both the original and recent versions of the DNB say that Nagle was briefly governor of Newfoundland, which may explain why Nagle’s portrait as governor

Notes to pp. 25–43

93 94

95 96 97

47

of Newfoundland in 1813 is included in the Baldwin Collection of Canadiana in the Toronto Public Library (JRR2249). There is no record of such an appointment in either the CO or Admiralty Papers relating to that command, or of the Prince Regent’s support for Nagle in his published letters covering the period. The official correspondence transitions from Duckworth to Keats with out a mention of Nagle. Keats appears to have hesitated on the grounds of ill-health in correspondence with Lord Melville in mid-January 1813; NMM AGC/33/10, 20/1/1813. Lady Georgina Chatterton, Memorials, Personal and Historical of Lord Gambier GCD, 2 vols (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1861), II: 71, 1/10/1807. See Andrew Lambert, The Challenge: Britain Against America in the Naval War of 1812 (London: Faber and Faber, 2012), 260, 268. There are no references to this possibility in Keats’s papers in the NMM or in the Somersetshire archives, and Lambert does not provide any elucidation of it. His view that Keats would have been a far better choice to succeed Sir John Warren than the first lord’s countrymen and political ally Sir Alexander Cochrane (306) may well be true, but the appointment may have overtaxed Keats’s indifferent health. NMM CAR/111, 8/2/1813. William Waldegrave, now Baron Radstock, complained bitterly that an officer thirtyfour places below him on the admirals’ list had secured this appointment; BL Add MS 38257, ff286–9, 17/5/1814. See Moira Bracknell, ‘Lord Spencer, Patronage and Commissioned Officers’ Careers, 1794-1801’ (PhD thesis, University of Exeter, 2008), I: 133, suggests an average of twenty years; this thesis provides an excellent account of the interplay of factors affecting commissioned officers’ career progression and includes data going back to the 1770s.

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Chapter 2 THE ROUTINE OF NAVAL COMMAND

While wartime naval governors responded to major challenges they also dealt with a wide range of taxing, but routine civil and naval business. As their standing with the secretary of state and the Admiralty Board and their future prospects depended on the efficient dispatch of business, it was fortunate that flag officers appointed to the command and government of Newfoundland possessed extensive administrative experience relevant to their duties on the Island. Their earlier careers in the Royal Navy also inculcated them into a professional culture that gave a distinctive quality to the way in which they approached their dual roles. This chapter considers the routine naval business undertaken by the naval governors of Newfoundland; their approach to the routine civil business of the Island is examined in the one that follows. Admirals holding supreme or subordinate commands at sea or at naval stations in Great Britain and Ireland – Cork, Plymouth, Portsmouth, the Downs, the Nore and Leith – maintained an extensive correspondence with the Admiralty Board. They were subject to a range of stringent reporting requirements on the manning, condition and provisioning of the ships under their command and were personally liable for large sums of money until such time as the Admiralty Board was satisfied that the expenditure was justified.1 Evolving operational requirements and shifting strategic priorities meant that flag officers had to be prepared to respond to the Admiralty Board’s instructions on the deployment of vessels on their station and manage frequent additions to, and detachments from, their squadrons to allow for extensive repairs and refits. Flag officers on foreign stations beyond the reach of transports from British ports also faced the challenge of ensuring supplies of the naval stores necessary to keep their fleets at sea, often in taxing climatic conditions and in the face of ongoing threats from enemy forces. The naval governors’ engagement in these routines began as they prepared to sail from England in the spring of their first year in office; it drew to a conclusion when they returned home in the autumn of their third period of residence on the Island. As commanders-in-chief, they were responsible to the Admiralty Board for collecting and dispatching convoys, for financial accountability and control, and for overseeing the seaward defence of the Island and its fisheries. Very poor internal communications between St John’s and the outports and the maritime raison d’être of the settlement meant that the size of their squadron and condition

50

The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars

of the vessels in it were a major focus of naval governors’ attention. Finally, and in common with flag officers on other stations, they responded to the Board’s authoritative ‘requests’ for the appointment and advancement of those who had come to its favourable notice through the operation of the naval branches of the patronage system.2

Preparations for departure William Waldegrave left for Newfoundland under the cloud of hurt indignation which hung over the flag officer corps when large-scale mutinies broke out in the fleets at Spithead and the Nore in the spring of 1797.3 As discussed elsewhere, the early stages of Waldegrave’s governorship were affected directly by mutinous rumblings aboard his flagship prompted by these events.4 The initial outbreak as HMS Latona was readied for departure angered and disconcerted Waldegrave. He was relieved when a change in the wind prevented the ship putting into Falmouth as planned, limiting thereby the crew’s exposure to further contagion from newspaper reports of recent developments at the Nore.5 Other naval governors quit home soundings in less dramatic circumstances but were subject to the pressures and frustrations necessarily attendant on getting naval ships to sea and convoys assembled and under weigh. Late appointments, such as those of Wallace and Keats, reduced the time available for official briefings, personal preparations and routine naval business, but the predictably limited duration of yearly service at St John’s made the personal demands of departure more straightforward than on some other commands. In late 1806 Rear Admiral Sir George Murray prepared to leave England in command of a squadron escorting a convoy of troop ships to Botany Bay via the Cape of Good Hope and then onto Chile. Facing a couple of years away from England in places where communications were extremely slow and unreliable, he worried about how his wife would manage the family’s finances in his absence.6 Communications with the Mediterranean Fleet were far better than with Botany Bay, but Lord Collingwood’s last tour of duty there lasted for six years. Like Murray he worried about how his finances were being managed by his family and was also concerned that his daughters were being brought up as rational, independent-minded creatures, avoiding ‘fine ladyism’, empty-headedness and idleness.7 Naval governors may have faced fewer difficulties managing their personal affairs than flag officers on other stations, but they still had to contend with familiar naval manning and provisioning challenges. The stress of the volume of such business was exacerbated by being advanced under the impatient eye of the Admiralty Board and in response to peremptory instructions delivered on its behalf by port admirals. During the French Wars technological developments enhanced the Board’s capacity to direct those who reported to it. Overland communication was still relatively slow, but the semaphore signalling systems set up between the Admiralty Office in London and the main south coast ports meant that fleet commanders were subject to an ongoing barrage of authoritative

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messages, including those ordering them to put to sea without delay.8 St Vincent’s sharply worded injunction to Admiral George Montague, the port admiral at Portsmouth in the early stages of the Napoleonic War, epitomized the Board’s approach: ‘you cannot push the business of equipment forward with too much rapidity, never reserving for the morrow what is practicable to be performed on the day you receive our instructions either by letter or telegraph.’9 As they prepared to leave England, governors were provided with Admiralty orders as a matter of course and might also receive copies of their predecessor’s correspondence and unexecuted orders. They put in requests for signal books and charts – the Newfoundland charts of James Cook and Michael Lane were handily collected in a single volume – and for state-of-the-art time pieces. Ships were always at risk as they approached the land, primarily because of the difficulty of determining their position in relation to it. Instruments such as these were especially important aids to navigating safe landfalls through the fogs, changeable weather and variations in visibility common off the Newfoundland coast.10 In May 1806, however, when he left for his first season on the Island, Vice Admiral John Holloway had to sail without them. He had dutifully attended the Colonial Office every day in late April and early May, but delays in finalizing the secretary of state’s instructions meant that he could not put to sea until 7 May. The Board had ordered him to get under weigh five days before and may have refused to provide the time pieces to prevent further delay. When Holloway’s flagship and its convoy finally weighed anchor, a series of contrary and fickle winds held it at St Helens off the northeast corner of the Isle of Wight for a further week. The Board eventually ordered Holloway to leave the convoy in the hands of one of his captains and proceed with all haste in his flagship, HMS Iris. Even then things did not run smoothly. Iris encountered a frustrating series of extremely adverse weather conditions which extended the passage to St John’s until late July.11​ Holloway’s successor, Sir John Duckworth, had better luck as he prepared to take up his governorship in 1810.12 A highly conscientious naval administrator and a keen asserter of his entitlements, he went to some pains to ensure that he was very well set up before leaving England. In addition to instructions from the Board and the secretary of state, he secured copies of acts of parliament relevant to the government of Newfoundland and the text of the Treaty of Paris, 1783. The latter specified US vessels’ fishing rights derived from that treaty, the exercise of which was an ongoing cause of concern in Newfoundland. Duckworth was also furnished with a string of orders authorizing courts martial, the appointment of officers, the administration of oaths, the administration of the religious test required of all officeholders and commissioned officers, and the collection of dues for Greenwich Hospital. Duckworth’s aids to navigation included the time pieces which Holloway had wanted and charts marking the limits of his command; these were important for operational reasons and in settling wrangles over prize money. With characteristically finicky thoroughness, he also sought documentary clarification of putative ambiguities in statements on the territorial extent of his government.13

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The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars

Plate 2.1  James Cook’s and Michael Lane’s charts of Newfoundland, made in the 1760s, were used by those sailing to Newfoundland from Great Britain. War-time governors oversaw attempts by naval personnel to survey uncharted parts of the coast to assist the Royal Navy’s work as the guardian of the Island’s internal and external security, and to mitigate navigational risks to local fishermen and merchant vessels arriving on and leaving a notoriously hazardous coast. (Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador. PAN MG 85.11.)

As we have seen, there was some delay in finalizing Sir Richard Keats’s appointment, but that meant that his instructions were already well in hand; he received them the day after being confirmed in his government. He was also almost certainly briefed by the Admiralty on the strategic situation in the American war and on his squadron’s role but does not seem to have received any indication that his station was to be incorporated into a consolidated North American and West Indian command.14 Keats’s preparations for departure ran smoothly and within three weeks he took command of a large convoy that had been assembled off Cork. Fog and ice off the Newfoundland coast made the latter stages of the passage very difficult, however, and meant that he did not arrive at St John’s until the beginning of June.15

2. The Routine of Naval Command

53

When flag officers were preparing their squadrons for sea they often sent plaintive appeals to the Admiralty Board to intercede with port admirals to meet their manning requirements. Perhaps because the number of ships on the Newfoundland station was always relatively small and the period of overseas service short and predictable, the naval governors seem not to have been troubled unduly about manning their squadrons for the passage out. Sir James Gambier was an exception to this general pattern, but his problems arose because the beginning of his term coincided with the short-lived peace with France in 1802–3, a time when many seamen were released from the service and found employment in merchant ships. Gambier arranged for a ‘House of Rendezvous’ to be set up in London to accommodate those who were said to be keen to serve. These manning difficulties extended into 1803 and also affected recruitment of troops for the garrison. When Gambier’s flagship sailed in May 1803 it carried fifteen women and twelve children, members of soldiers’ families who would not have enlisted for service outside Britain without them.16 While there is little evidence of manning difficulties on the English coast, data on men impressed from ships off Newfoundland suggest significant attrition through illness and desertion while on that station.17 Naval governors took firm measures to recover deserters and to discourage those who were inclined to shelter them, but, as discussed in a later chapter, they generally refrained from pressing men on the Island.18

Convoys As commanders-in-chief, naval governors were responsible, under the general direction of the Board, for providing escorts to protect and manage convoys heading for North America in the spring and leaving the Island in the late summer and autumn before the ice closed in on the coast. The convoy system was very well developed by the British and had been used to good effect during the American War of 1775–83.19 From 1798 convoy arrangements were governed by a Convoy Act which made it illegal for most ships to sail unescorted. The requirements of this act were amended in 1803.20 Government regarded the safety of trade as essential to the British wartime economy, and its responsiveness to Lloyds, the insurance underwriters in London, and to ship owners and merchants made the Admiralty Board particularly sensitive to perceived failures in its subordinates’ management of convoys.21 Commanders-in-chief were fully aware of the risk to their professional reputations and future prospects if they failed in this aspect of their duties and ensured that their subordinates paid close attention to it.22 During the War of 1812 Sir Richard Keats and Captain William Dillon (the latter inclined to peevishness and the former to truculence) threatened each other with courts martial when they got into a dispute over Dillon’s handling of a large convoy containing vessels bound for Newfoundland, Halifax and the St Lawrence. The officers had formerly been on cordial terms, and it took some time for their relationship to be restored to a reasonably amicable footing.23 Dillon’s account of this incident is interesting in that it provides a rare insight into the stresses felt

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The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars

by commanders-in-chief. He reported that at one of their meetings Keats, whose health had been affected by long periods of service at sea and injuries, wore a green shade over his eyes and ‘appeared to be in pain’.24 Most of the westbound convoys were formed of vessels from the West Country ports (primarily Poole, Exeter and Dartmouth), Jersey, Liverpool, Cork and Waterford carrying provisions for the season and officials, merchants and dwindling numbers of fishermen as ‘passengers’. From time to time these convoys also included ships destined for Halifax and the Gulf of St Lawrence which proceeded independently once on the North American coast. The east-bound convoys carried fish to whatever Mediterranean ports remained open to British shipping as the continental war ebbed and flowed, and oil, furs, skins and timber to English ports from which they were sold or trans-shipped by home-based Newfoundland merchants.25 Once Newfoundland acquired a weekly newspaper, governors used it to advise residents of the timing of convoys leaving for England and Portugal.26 The outbound fleets were not generally so large as they had been when the fishery was migratory, but in 1813 when Britain was at war with the United States, Sir Richard Keats commanded a very large convoy of 163 vessels bound for Newfoundland, Halifax and Quebec which had been assembled off Cork.27 As Newfoundland merchants sought additional markets in the West Indies to make up for the weakness of those in Europe, the demand for convoy support to and from these islands increased. In 1806 the Admiralty was sufficiently receptive to the pressure of merchant interests in England to order the commander-in-chief at Halifax to provide protection for West Indies-bound convoys from Newfoundland. Understandably, a move that was welcomed warmly in St John’s and the English West Country caused an uproar among merchants in Nova Scotia.28 Convoy arrangements took account of applications from merchants and where possible sailing dates were aligned with their needs. In early October 1793 a group of merchants at St John’s told Vice Admiral King that forty ships were ready to form the first east-bound convoy of the war and asked him to provide protection for it. King responded immediately, promising protection, setting a date for the convoy’s departure and arranging for notifications to be sent to the outports.29 The orders issued to escort vessels from England, and preparations for getting them ready for sea, were authorized by the Admiralty Board. It was not all plain sailing. Waldegrave seemed blind to the fact that merchants were independent actors in competition with one another and complained of their reluctance to coordinate plans and forward them through a single agent. At the end of the 1797 season he reacted angrily when seventeen merchants of St John’s asked him to escort ‘several vessels’ that would be ready to sail to England when he left on 25 October, rather than waiting for the convoy that had been announced for 10 November. He resented the fact that they had gained advanced knowledge of his plans and was critical of their failure to have vessels ready for an undersubscribed convoy that had left earlier. The governor’s underlying concern, however, was the spirit of entitlement and self-interest that underwrote the merchants’ request and which Waldegrave was quick to discern in many of their transactions with him. He reminded his petitioners that ‘It cannot be expected that a Commander-inChief at Newfoundland is to be ever granting Convoys for the convenience of a

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few individuals, he must look to what is suitable and for the benefit of the whole, and such you may rely on will be the constant tenor of my conduct as long as I am honoured with my present command’.30 Waldegrave had a point, and he may also have wished to avoid having his passage home hampered by having to keep station with the slowest vessel in a convoy. Convoy commanders who ran ahead of their charges risked criticism from merchant captains and ship owners and reprimands from the Board.31 So too, however, did his petitioners. Their reference to the ‘inconveniences’ of waiting for the scheduled convoy may have arisen from market considerations and the perishability of cargoes as well as the advantages of keeping ahead of the oncoming winter weather. Waldegrave’s thinly veiled rebuke almost certainly encouraged the merchants concerned to absent themselves from the harbour-side farewells that usually marked the departure of naval governors at the end of a season.32 Governors’ handling of these matters was usually less confrontational. They regularly sought merchants’ views on the timing of convoys in both directions, attempted to accommodate their wishes if possible and frequently received letters of appreciation for their efforts. Waldegrave’s experience with the Dartmouth and Exmouth merchants in the following year was far more typical. At the end of January 1798 they petitioned him for convoy protection and six months later sent a fulsome letter expressing their ‘great satisfaction in the consideration of Your Excellency’s attention to the welfare of the Newfoundland fishery’.33 Although merchants were keen to specify the sailing dates of convoys, they were not necessarily punctual to their own preferences. Delays also arose from adverse weather and collisions due to poor seamanship.34 Lieutenant Edward Chappell was in a convoy in 1813 that was delayed for two months at Cork by contrary winds that prevented all the ships clearing the harbour before the tide turned. The hazards of exposure to French and American privateers meant the commodore of the convoy could not risk separating his charges. Chappell was impressed with the way the merchant captains managed their vessels in difficult conditions off the Newfoundland coast, but Royal Navy officers were more often frustrated by what they saw as the inadequate ship-handling of merchant captains.35 Senior naval officers, used to being obeyed without question, reacted very sharply to the more independent practices of the merchant service. They provided acid commentary to the Admiralty Board on failures to see or respond to signals and casual attitudes towards instructions issued to convoyed vessels. This was a long-standing bone of contention, one that provided unwanted challenges in managing convoys and carried the risk of reputational damage to naval commanders if things went seriously awry.36 Waldegrave complained to the Board about the ill-discipline of vessels in a home-bound convoy, and Sir Richard Keats was appalled at what he described as the ‘criminal’ behaviour of some masters of vessels in a convoy that left England in the spring of 1814. They disregarded convoy orders and were reluctant to defend their ships when it became necessary. One of them displayed open contempt for the convoy commander, blatantly ignoring his directions, publicly dismissing him as a ‘hum bug’ and taking his vessel out of the convoy without authorization.37 Although

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the Convoy Act provided for criminal action against ship’s masters who breached its requirements, the Board resorted to prosecution on an exemplary, rather than a routine, basis. Keats reported the delinquent officer to the vessel’s owners and Lloyds, but he seems to have escaped the imprisonment inflicted in the previous year on another recalcitrant master.38 As the Board grappled with the fallout of the defeat of its squadron on Lake Champlain in September 1814, it no doubt had more pressing priorities. Anxiety over convoys reflected long-standing priorities of the Admiralty Board and delays in getting convoys away, or perceived failures to provide what the merchants saw as adequate protection, exposed commanders-in-chief to claims of neglect of duty. In reaction, they chivvied the secretary of the Board over its delays in issuing orders for escort vessels to complete their water and stores and for their crews to be paid.39 While this bustle was going on, merchants and their correspondents scanned the horizon for signs of anticipated escorts and convoys and sent messages up and down the south coast of England to keep their partners and principals abreast of the latest developments. Thus in the spring of 1797, Benjamin Lester, a leading merchant at Poole, followed the mutinies in the fleets at Spithead and the Nore with a weather eye to their implications for the organization and protection of convoys in which he had an interest.40​ Charles Pole was an early target of a letter from the merchants of Poole when he took over from Waldegrave in the late spring of 1800. Perhaps treading carefully after their experience of Waldegrave’s highhandedness, they smoothly informed

Plate 2.2  This 1802 depiction of the entrance to St John’s Harbour with the town in the background shows ‘flakes’ for drying fish to the right and the battery which guarded it to the left. (Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador. PAN MG 217.1.)

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him that ‘it may be in some degree useful to your Excellency to be informed of the wishes of those concerned’. These wishes focused on the need for frequent convoys to the Mediterranean on account of the perishable nature of the cargoes of dried fish which were the staple of that trade.41 Pole’s limited correspondence with the Board on Newfoundland business suggests that he was much more accommodating to the merchants’ wishes than his predecessor. He was certainly less given to displays of anxious irritation in his official correspondence. When Sir Erasmus Gower assumed command of the Newfoundland squadron in 1804, he was lobbied by the MPs for Poole and the mayors of Poole and Teignmouth over the convoy requirements of their constituents. Like Waldegrave, he found it hard to please everyone. Convoys originating from ports on the south coast faced delays when vessels loading in the Thames were unable to join them by their advertised sailing time.42 Gower gave considerable thought to the implications of convoy requirements and provided the Board with detailed advice on the arrangements necessary to satisfy them. As in the civil side of his duties, he was prepared to revisit customary arrangements and suggest amendments to them to meet changing circumstances.43 Since Commodore Palliser’s time the traditional leaving date for governors was around 25 October, but Gower thought current requirements justified extending it by two months. He suggested it would be highly desirable for governors to oversee the formation of east-bound convoys in the autumn and ensure escorts for vessels from the outports sailing to join convoys being formed at St John’s. The Port Orders issued by his successor, Vice Admiral Holloway, gave detailed instructions on the navy’s role in marshalling convoys in the harbour at St John’s. They also ordered the commanders of all vessels under his command to have their ship’s boats ready to assist merchant ships leaving the harbour.44 Gower’s proposal would mean that governors were on hand when harbour facilities were being winterized and returns for the secretary of state finalized.45 This suggestion was not taken up until almost a decade later when the exigencies of war made it desirable for Sir Richard Keats to extend his residence until late November. It was not just a matter of arranging autumn convoys. Merchants also wished to ship goods to Europe as early in the season as possible, and, given the variability in the timing of naval governors’ return to the Island, it was necessary for them to consider early season east-bound convoy arrangements as they prepared to leave St John’s in the autumn. Thus before Duckworth left St John’s in October 1810, he issued orders to the captain of a sloop to provide protection for the first convoy to England in the following July, assuming that he would not be back by then. On his return to Spithead, he urged the Admiralty to provide additional protection for the first westbound convoy leaving English waters in the spring as its safe and timely arrival was critical to the success of the fisheries.46

The seaward defence of Newfoundland Over the course of the previous hundred years a series of raids by French forces inflicted considerable damage on settlements in Newfoundland and caused

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The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars

great hardship to residents caught up in them. During the War of the League of Augsburg, troops from French Canada occupied a number of outports and in 1696–7 they looted St John’s, burnt the town and shipped off hundreds of civilians to France.47 St John’s was again taken in 1702 at the beginning of the War of Spanish Succession (although Fort William held out) and in 1762 towards the close of the Seven Years’ War. These incursions were accompanied by widespread destruction in the town and in outports. During the American Revolutionary War the latter suffered from raids by American privateers. As the Island began to resemble a colony in its demography and infrastructure, it became increasingly vulnerable to marauding enemy forces. The emergence of St John’s as a regional commercial centre in the last decades of the eighteenth century increased its attractiveness as a target of concerted enemy attention. Commanders-in-chief were responsible for the naval squadron based at St John’s and (as we will see in the next chapter) as governors were charged with maintaining the Island’s land-based defences.48 The Royal Navy’s primary roles were to protect convoys heading for Europe and the West Indies and to defend the fisheries and the Island. In addition, however, naval vessels facilitated surveying work, and as discussed in a later chapter, they provided bases for attempts to make benign contact with the Indigenous people. In 1798 Captain Ambrose Crofton’s experience of the northern coast and his alarm at the mistreatment of the Beothuk prompted him to suggest that Waldegrave commission surveys of a dangerous and uncharted coast and instruct those commanding the vessels involved to offer protection to the Indigenous people. A few years later Gambier stressed the importance of charting this coast to facilitate its development as a valuable inshore fishing ground and to make it safe for naval vessels to police intrusions by French fishermen who were returning to Newfoundland during the Peace of Amiens. Holloway’s instructions to commanders of ships on the station included the requirement that they record information that would assist navigation and undertake surveys of the coast where they were based. He provided examples and models of how this information was to be recorded.49 Duckworth directed his officers to undertake surveys in areas remote from St John’s.50 Poor or non-existent means of communication by land meant that governors relied upon ships from their squadron to convey judicial ‘surrogates’ to the outports and to deal with significant disorder. Holloway’s instructions enjoined those under his command to assist ‘civil magistrates and fishing admirals’ to preserve ‘the Peace and good Government among the Seamen and Fisherman’.51 Governors also relied on their naval forces to prevent smuggling from, and illegal emigration to, continental North America. The presence of warships in the outports was thus a practical and symbolic expression of British authority. Duckworth’s order to the captain of the sloop HMS Electra in April 1812 illustrates the range of responsibilities fulfilled by vessels in his squadron. Electra’s commanding officer was ordered to gather a convoy off the Isle of Wight and Torbay, escort it to St John’s, ‘complete water’ and then proceed to settlements on the Labrador coast, where he was to act as a surrogate and prevent illicit trade with the United States.

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He was to return to St John’s by 1 September, presumably to escort a convoy to England or the Mediterranean.52 In common with commanders on other stations, those at Newfoundland corresponded with the Board on the size of their squadrons, the availability of particular kinds of vessels – relatively small, handy ships seemed always to be in demand – and their fighting and sailing qualities. They never had large numbers of vessels under their orders, and even ships that accompanied convoys at the beginning of the season were often deployed to other American stations. The Newfoundland squadron was not large enough to provide adequate protection for the Island during the American Revolutionary War, and this concern lay behind commanders-in-chiefs’ lobbying of the Admiralty Board for larger numbers of more suitable vessels during subsequent wars.53 Prompted by a letter from the ‘leading merchants’ of Dartmouth and Exeter, Waldegrave drew the Board’s attention to the balance of land and sea defences and urged that if the garrison was not strengthened it should provide an additional ship of the line for the squadron.54 Despite this plea, however, Waldegrave’s squadron compromised only three sloops and a supply ship in June 1797. This was a very small force, even by the standards of the Newfoundland station. It was more usual for the commanders-in-chief at St John’s to have a ship of the line as their flagship and one or two frigates and a few sloops and smaller vessels under their command. When Sir Richard Keats arrived on the station in July 1813 during the war against the United States he had as his flagship the Bellerophon, a formidable ship of the line that was a veteran of the three major fleet actions of the French Wars. His squadron included two frigates and three sloops, as well as smaller vessels.55 The size of the Newfoundland squadron reflected its role in the larger context of North American naval deployment. It was common for some of the larger vessels that had escorted westbound convoys to be sent to join squadrons at Halifax or in the Caribbean during the summer months and then return to St John’s to protect the east-bound trade at the end of the season. In 1806 Gower took the initiative in providing logistical support when Sir John Warren’s squadron was in pursuit of an enemy force in the area and dealt with deserters from his ships who had been rounded up by residents at Bay Bulls.56 During the war with the United States, Newfoundland became part of an enlarged North American command based at Halifax, Nova Scotia. Vice Admiral Keats now reported to the commander-in-chief of that station and appears to have worked effectively with him. Frigates were in high demand on other stations, but as the conditions at Newfoundland required the government’s presence in remote areas, smaller vessels were of particular value. Vice Admiral Gambier was given an additional frigate and authorized to hire two cutters when war with France recommenced in 1803.57 Thereafter, schooners built in Bermuda formed the core of the more-or-less permanent force based at St John’s but frequently deployed off the outports. Four such schooners with appropriately piscatory names (Capelin, Herring, Mackerel and Pilchard) were added to Vice Admiral Gower’s squadron when he took up his command in the summer of 1804. After some hair-raising demonstrations that

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The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars

these vessels were carrying too much sail and not enough ballast for Newfoundland conditions, reductions in the height of their masts and the addition of an extra fifteen tons of ballast made them safe and valuable additions to the squadron.58 Smaller vessels were at a particular premium during the war with the United States 1812–14, when they were needed to protect the supply lines of naval provisions from Prince Edward Island.59 As this war loomed in late 1811, Duckworth urged the Board to increase the number of warships remaining in Newfoundland over the winter to protect the fisheries from early ‘annihilation’ before the squadron came out in the spring. He also advised on the need for a prison ship as there were no facilities in the country to receive prisoners expected to be taken from American prizes. The Board was not receptive to these pleas, so Duckworth felt compelled to repeat them the following year.60 When he arrived at St John’s in late July 1812 after war had been declared, Duckworth was informed of the damage already done in Newfoundland waters by an American privateer, Rossie.61 Having made repeated representations to the Board on the inadequacy of the forces available to him and having not had a response to his earlier plea, he took matters into his own hands and advised it of the steps he had taken. On his own initiative, he ordered two schooners to winter over and purchased and fitted out another vessel to be used as a prison ship.62 On his passage back to England at the end of the season, Duckworth wrote a long report for the Board on the vessels needed at Newfoundland in the current situation, detailing how they should be deployed and how the winter squadron should be provisioned. He recommended that in addition to the flagship the squadron should comprise four frigates, eight sloops and two schooners.63 It seems to have been the practice for the admiral’s flagship to spend the summer in port at St John’s, or for it to leave the squadron for deployment elsewhere. Once Newfoundland became an active theatre of war, however, it joined the other ships of the squadron in protecting the fisheries and ‘annoying’ the enemy. Although the Board accepted Duckworth’s plan it did not act upon it. As a result, when Sir Richard Keats succeeded him he advised the Board that he was unable to defend the coast and the trade with the ships available to him and referred it again to Duckworth’s proposals.64 Keats took this matter up with the Board on his return to England after his first season in Newfoundland. He reported that although the St John’s merchants had expressed satisfaction with the protection afforded their ships, he attributed this apparent success to the enemy’s lack of activity. Keats reiterated his earlier view that the present level of defensive resources left the fisheries dangerously exposed. He reminded the Board that the Americans’ knowledge of the coast made them particularly effective raiders and urged it to retain a significant naval presence until early December and to send two frigates ahead of the first spring convoy to cruise ‘at the back of the ice’. These vessels should be reinforced with another frigate and a ship of the line from Sir Alexander Cochrane’s squadron based at Halifax.65 Keats also stressed the need for ships on the Newfoundland station to have full establishments and the same level of ship’s stores as vessels fitted out for foreign stations.

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In March 1813 the US government undertook to compensate privateers for destroying enemy ships rather than selling them, a shift in strategy which made them a much more effective threat to British commerce. It was no longer necessary to finesse attacks to ensure that prizes suffered minimal damage when being taken or for the privateers to deplete their manpower to provide crews to take captured vessels into ports to be sold. Keats sought to counter this threat by taking the retaliatory initiative of sending captured crews to England, refusing to exchange them locally and excluding them from exchange calculations. He had not been instructed to take this approach, but the Board gave it retrospective approval.66 It may, indeed, have welcomed Keats’s suggestion. In mid-1813 the prospect of compensation had encouraged a few privateer investors to seek to destroy British warships by enticing them to capture low-value vessels loaded with booby-trapped explosives. One attack succeeded in killing ten crew members of the Ramillies.67 The Board had been slow to come up with effective deterrent measures, but the prospect of incarceration in a fever-infected British prison camp or hulk may well have shifted the balance of risks for the American privateers’ crews.68 The fitness and suitability of ships under their command was an issue for flag officers across the service,69 but conditions at Newfoundland were particularly demanding. Aaron Thomas, who visited the station in 1794, reckoned that his ship suffered ‘more ‘damage to running rigging etc in one month than when she was employ’d in the Channel service . . . in Three months’.70 Judging by the complaints of a number of those commanding at Newfoundland, the Admiralty Board seemed prepared to assign very indifferent vessels to them. When Waldegrave hoisted his flag in Agincourt in early 1798 he had correspondence with the Board on the mental condition of the chaplain, noting he was ‘always a little crack’d and sometimes raving’. The Board responded promptly to this problem but ignored Waldegrave’s warnings on the state of his flagship’s hull and the poor condition of other ships in his squadron. These defects were particularly concerning since there were no facilities for refitting ships of this size in Newfoundland or on adjacent stations.71 Waldegrave wrote a letter of remonstrance to the Board when he returned at the end of the year, complaining bitterly against the official at Sheerness who was supposed to have inspected Agincourt before she joined his squadron, fulminating that ‘no man should with impunity be suffer’d to sport thus with the lives of His Majesty’s subjects’.72 Structural weaknesses must have been particularly alarming in a vessel that rolled like a pig when the sea was up. Waldegrave told the Board that he had ‘often seen her Gunwale in the green Sea, and once saw her Carronades on the Quarter Deck in that situation’.73 Some of his successors faced similar challenges. Vice Admiral Gambier’s flagship, the Iris, was laid on her beam ends in a storm during the voyage out in 1802 and could only be brought head to wind by jettisoning the mizzen mast. When Gambier returned to England at the end of the season the vessel’s bottom was so foul that it made very hard work of the passage. He complained to the Board that the ship ‘sails so ill that it is grievous for an Officer who has any zeal for the King’s service to command her’. The poor condition of Iris continued to be a concern for Gambier’s successors: Sir Erasmus

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Gower and Vice Admiral John Holloway. In 1807 Holloway described the vessel as ‘Old and Crazy’ (i.e. broken down), but this comment fell on deaf ears.74 In late 1808 Holloway told the Board that the ship was very much in need of strengthening and that in the meantime it was necessary to make changes to her armament to take account of her tendency to excessive leaking; he also complained of the poor and foul condition of her coppered hull. Holloway finally got shot of Iris when Antelope became his flagship in the spring of 1809. He was also relieved of the embarrassment of the ill-named Speedy, ‘one of the worst vessels as a Sloop of War in His Majesty’s Service’.75 The condition of the ships in the squadron was but one of the factors that played a role in the Island’s seaward defences. Duckworth was concerned about the lax approach of incoming vessels to the security of St John’s harbour and used the Royal Gazette to instruct ships’ captains to show their colours when they passed the Narrows which lead into it. They were threatened with the prospect of being fired on by the shore battery if they failed to comply and charged for the shot used.76 This was not an idle threat. Two years later the representatives of Hunters & Co. were the subject of a civil suit in St John’s to recover costs of £160 for ‘sundry shots’ fired at a vessel which did not comply with this instruction.77 After his first season, Duckworth reported to the Board that the substantial chain across the harbour entrance was getting very worn and needed to be replaced if it was to secure the port against surprise attacks from enemy shipping.78 He also advised it that as the war with the United States made Newfoundland a frontline station it was necessary to sustain its naval squadron on a year-round wartime footing if it was to play an effective role against enemy warships and privateers. Once the war was in train, Duckworth extended the window for maintenance and provisioning by appointing a master attendant who could issue supplies and oversee repairs in the autumn and spring when the commander-in-chief and most of the squadron were absent from the Island.79 These matters were also of concern to Keats when he took over from Duckworth in 1813. He advised the Board that while hostilities with the United States continued, the Newfoundland squadron could not be treated as if it was on an extended summer cruise. All the ships of the squadron, including the flagship, had to be constantly at sea in very demanding conditions and faced severe wear and tear. In light of these considerations, the naval establishment at St John’s needed to be increased so that it could service a squadron without relying on personnel seconded from the flagship.80 If some vessels wintered over at Halifax they could make an early return to defend the south coast of the Island against anticipated ‘annoyance’ from the enemy.81 These measures would make it necessary to provide fresh ships and crews in the spring and increase the demands on the limited dockyard and storage facilities at St John’s. Keats arranged to appoint a senior captain to command while he was away so that naval operations in St John’s could be supervised effectively. When the implementation of this plan was impeded by the flag officer at Barbados detaining this officer on his station, Keats wrote a sharp protest to the Board on this ‘uncalled for, and as it appears to me, indelicate Interference . . . this invasion of my rights’. The Board agreed and told Rear Admiral Sir P. C. Durham it ‘highly disapproved’ of his conduct.82

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It was noted earlier that with one exception the wartime admiral-governors do not seem to have faced any unusual challenges in manning their ships for the passage out from England. Before these vessels returned home in the autumn, however, desertions, illness and injury left some of them short-handed and it was necessary to make up the numbers through voluntary recruitment and impressment. Between 1793 and 1811 approximately ninety seamen and marines were admitted each year to the Royal Naval Hospital at St John’s and most stayed there for a month or more.83 As in other trading colonies such as those in the Caribbean, tensions arose between local demands for convoy protection and resistance to the impressment of members of the local maritime workforce.84 There had been heavy impressment of seamen in Newfoundland during the American Revolutionary War, and in Sir James Wallace’s first year a press gang was active in St John’s.85 However, following the murder of a British naval officer onshore on press-related business, and the subsequent execution of two of his assailants, ship’s captains relied on men pressed out of vessels on the station. They restricted themselves to taking no more than one man in five and did not press fishermen during the season.86 These constraints did not, however, preclude threatening impressment of those who harboured deserters. Waldegrave had adopted this approach and so too did Duckworth. In 1810 he warned magistrates that as deserters could only survive with the help of fishermen or residents he would impress man for man from locations where desertions occurred. He described this measure as a ‘painful part of my duty’, although he does not seem to have had to perform it.87 Press gangs were also sometimes utilized as a weapon of social control. Thus in September 1805 Gower ordered the impressment of employees of Lester & Co who had been involved in a serious outbreak of sectarian violence at Greenspond earlier in the year. Gower had been told that Irish Catholics had behaved with a particular lack of ‘humanity’ and defended his response to the ‘affray’ by reference to their heinous behaviour and the fact that as the season had just about finished it would not have an adverse impact on the labour force.88 Merchants were particularly anxious if it seemed that those indebted to them were likely to be impressed. In September 1803 the St John’s merchants told Gambier that fear of impressment was discouraging fishermen from the outports from coming into the town to sell fish to settle debts for provisions advanced to them earlier in the season. Gambier immediately assured them that this would not be the case.89 Impressment might also disrupt traffic from England. When the fishery was largely migratory, impending hostilities in Europe resulted in levels of impressment in the West Country that threatened the upcoming season.90 Even when ‘passengers’ were very few, the convoy vessels needed to be manned and men shipping into Newfoundland were still at risk. In early 1805 Gower responded favourably to a request from the Teignmouth merchants to provide seamen in their employ with ‘protections’ (official certificates) to prevent their impressment.91 Even with such measures in place, it has been estimated that the Royal Navy recruited between 3,000 and 4,000 men in Newfoundland over the war years, of whom half may have been pressed.92 On one occasion at least, it seems, the commander-in-chief at Halifax sought to alleviate his manning problems by recruiting on the Island.93

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Reporting and financial accountability As both commanders-in-chief and governors, the naval officers who ruled Newfoundland were subject to dual systems of accountability. One line ran back to the Admiralty Board in London and through it to the Navy, Sick and Hurt, Victualling and Transport Boards which managed particular aspects of the complex business necessary to meet the operational needs of the Royal Navy. The second line was to the secretary of state; in this case reporting requirements were detailed in the instructions issued to governors before they left England in the late spring. These joint responsibilities involved the naval governors in a significant volume of correspondence, reporting on actions arising from their instructions and responding to demands from the Board and the secretary of state to explain and/or justify actions and expenditure. Admirals’ earlier experiences as captains of men-of-war ships and flag officers commanding at sea or in major ports meant they were used to dealing with large volumes of what Lord St Vincent dubbed ‘pen and ink work’.94 They were also prepared for close financial scrutiny by both their naval and civil superiors. John Wilson Croker, who began a long tenure as Secretary to the Board in late 1809, sharpened what had in any case been a demanding accountability regime, turning on senior naval officers the verbal severities which he applied in the pages of the Tory Quarterly Review to his political enemies and literary victims.95 The Admiralty Board expected commanders-in-chief to assure it that they were deploying vessels so that settlements were protected, good order upheld and convoys and the fisheries protected. They were also required to report at a micro level, providing weekly pro forma returns on the condition of each ship and its crew and the authorization and outcomes of ‘surveys’ on unfit men and dubious stores and equipment. After the traumatic experience of widespread fleet mutinies in 1797, the Board also took a close and systematic interest in the disciplinary condition of ships. In 1811 it instituted a requirement for captains to submit quarterly returns of offences committed and punishments administered.96 Commanders-in-chief were expected to review these returns, make enquiries when levels of punishment were high and send the raw data and their commentaries to the Board. It scrutinized these reports to monitor the scale of punishment inflicted by captains and to gauge the quality of discipline upheld by them. The Board viewed high levels of corporal punishment as signs of poor discipline rather than undue harshness. If the initial explanations were not deemed satisfactory, it ordered flag officers to question ships’ commanders and issued sharp reprimands when it deemed them necessary.97 Years of global warfare placed pressures on the public finances of the UK that were judged to have reached ‘almost intolerable’ levels by 1807.98 In these circumstances it is not surprising that government agencies in London sought to reduce expenditure where they could. During Sir John Duckworth’s governorship the Transport Board’s economizing gaze lighted on the naval hospital at St John’s. It proposed closing the hospital and accommodating naval patients in lodgings or tents ashore. Duckworth’s response (made through

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the Admiralty Board) was a model of withering understatement. He noted that it was his duty to ‘make known to their Lordships certain peculiar local circumstances which it is possible that the Transport Board may not be aware of ’. In the spirit of this responsibility Duckworth pointed out that the climate of Newfoundland was entirely ill-suited to the use of tents and that lodging in St John’s was scarce and extraordinarily expensive. In the following year he reiterated his view on the ongoing need for a hospital and assured the Board that it was being run as economically as possible.99 Muster figures for the hospital show that Duckworth was right. The overtaxed lodging resources of St John’s would have had to provide an additional 2,400 nights of accommodation per annum to meet the demand.100 The scrutiny of the Admiralty Board could be surprisingly fine-grained. In 1811 Duckworth was ordered to report on the disposal of five copies of a new edition of a collection of naval statutes with which he had been supplied.101 This enquiry may appear trivial, but it was part of a wider accountability regime that made flag officers personally liable for the cost of supplies and services for which they were officially responsible. This liability, which was specified in an act of parliament and incorporated from 1806 in the Board’s Regulations and Instructions Relating to His Majesty’s Service at Sea, empowered it to impose a charge (or ‘imprest’) which prevented an officer from drawing pay or half pay until the matter had been settled to its satisfaction. The act authorizing imprests specified that accounts were settled annually, but in practice this rarely happened and officers were pursued for information on, and settlement of, transactions years after they occurred.102 Naval governors of Newfoundland faced some enquiries on naval expenditure from the Board, and Duckworth was warned of the need to settle his accounts before claiming his pay from his previous appointment. For the most part, however, imprests or threats thereof do not feature in wartime naval governors’ transaction with the Board. That may have been because naval business on the station was relatively limited, squadrons were small and vessels were often dispersed to other commands soon after they had escorted convoys to St John’s. There was a victualling contractor at St John’s, but the short time that the squadron spent there and the practice of provisioning ships in England for eight months to avoid the high cost of victuals on the Island and minimize the navy’s impact on a very tight provisioning market reduced flag officers’ exposure to accountability difficulties faced by those on many other stations.103 The situation in Newfoundland contrasted particularly sharply with that faced by Vice Admiral Peter Ranier in the East Indies over the course of an eleven-year command. Ships on that station could obviously not be re-supplied from England and were thus heavily reliant on local provisioning arrangements. Partly as a result of that and also because of the machinations of the main victualling agent on the station, Ranier at one time faced an extraordinary claim of unspecified magnitude for all the bills drawn by the agent over more than a decade.104 The naval governors of Newfoundland were not exposed to anywhere near that level of risk, and their frequent returns to England meant that outstanding issues were unlikely to fester.

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But while the naval governors managed to avoid imprests, the existence of this financially and professionally embarrassing device coloured their interactions with the Admiralty Board. Waldegrave was no doubt mindful of the risk that he ran when he responded to a demand to explain bills for goods supplied to his ships at St John’s. He acknowledged the transactions were contrary to the usual requirements of the Navy Board and pleaded honest intention and adherence to local practice.105 Sir John Duckworth’s correspondence from the early months of the War of 1812 illustrates the care with which even a very experienced and confident flag officer approached financial transactions with the Board. Unforeseen circumstances led him to make a number of unauthorized payments, but he was careful to provide very full accounts of actions that were not covered by his instructions. He thus explained to the Board that as the supply of provisions to crews of ships wintering over and to American prisoners would place too much pressure on the Island’s resources, he thought it necessary to ship extra provisions from England and to appoint a half-pay post captain as agent and commissary at St John’s to manage their storage and distribution. This increase in costs, and that necessary to pay the captains of prison ships and a Master Attendant to manage the port under increasingly complex wartime conditions, made Duckworth feel anxious. When he put these arrangements into place and sought the Board’s retrospective authorization, he did so in language reflecting an appreciation of its usual attitude towards unauthorized expenditure and the consequences that flag officers faced if its approval was not forthcoming. Duckworth ‘earnestly’ hoped ‘their Lordships will approve of a measure which I have indeed been compelled to adopt by the most pressing emergency’.106 The Board accepted this plea.

Naval patronage As noted in the previous chapter, appointments to the Newfoundland command were subject to the distinctive patronage considerations that applied in the naval reaches of the statewide patronage system. So too were other service appointments on the station.107 The ‘interest’ arising from direct or indirect influence in parliamentary politics, family, friendship and service connections was brought to bear on members of the Admiralty Board and commanders-in-chief. Appointments and promotions had to be authorized by the Board, and ‘admiralty vacancies’ occurring in squadrons on active service were entirely in its hands. Others, including ‘death vacancies’ arising when appointees died while on service, could be filled by commanders-in-chief but were subject to confirmation by the Board. On stations where large numbers of ships were deployed, the scope for exercising patronage was significant and involved extensive correspondence between commanders-in-chief and the Board. This was far from being the case at Newfoundland. The small squadron at St John’s yielded so few vacancies of any kind that there are no entries for it in the first lord’s notebook ‘Recommendations

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Abroad’ dating from 1805.108 The short tours of duty on the station meant that it was not worth sending out favoured aspirants to take up supernumerary positions pending vacancies arising from death, incapacitating injury or removal on promotion. Nevertheless, the Board was characteristically jealous of its prerogatives. Thus in July 1802 when the onset of peace reduced options for both the Board and commanders-in-chief, Vice Admiral Gambier was rebuked by St Vincent’s Board for assuming that he could fill Admiralty vacancies for masters mates and midshipmen. Gambier, who was only appointed to the command in early April, clearly believed he had been misled on this matter and reminded the Board that he had been ‘given to understand’ that this patronage would be his.109 In late 1811 the Board declined to confirm the appointment of Duckworth’s candidate for a vacant purser’s position on the grounds that commanders-in-chiefs’ disposal of ‘death vacancies’ did not apply to warrant officers’ roles. When Duckworth attempted to dispute this interpretation he was met with the blank emphatic language of refusal which the Board deployed against flag officers who tried to wrangle with it: ‘their Lordships do not deem it expedient.’110 Delays in confirming acting appointments were hard on those concerned and embarrassing to their backers. In addition to anxiety caused by uncertainty, these officers may well have laid out significant sums of money on expensive uniforms and equipment and become accustomed to their new status as wardroom officers. Worse still, they lost seniority while waiting confirmation and always faced the possibility of being displaced by candidates with more interest at the Board. In late 1806 as he prepared to leave Newfoundland for the last time, Gower (who had personal experience of the frustrations of acting appointments) appealed to the Board to consider the length of time he served as an acting lieutenant as grounds for confirmation.111 As discussed in a later chapter, Duckworth placed great faith in a junior officer to realize his schemes to make friendly contact with the Beothuk, the Indigenous people of Newfoundland.112 Lieutenant David Buchan of the Adonis seemed genuinely committed to this cause, but he would also have been aware that his efforts would be evaluated by his commander-in-chief. Indeed, Duckworth told Lord Liverpool that he would use his influence to try to secure Buchan’s promotion in recognition of the energy and determination he had shown in three expeditions to remote areas where Beothuk were thought to be found. In effect, Duckworth sought to present Buchan’s performance on these expeditions as on a par with distinguished service in action which was a recognized ground in support of promotion.113 Towards the end of his command, Duckworth tried to strengthen Buchan’s claims by offering him the chance to undertake an important surveying assignment. Buchan did not think he had sufficient experience as a surveyor to perform in this capacity, so Duckworth gave him command of the survey vessel instead.114 Despite Duckworth’s support, however, Buchan was still a lieutenant at the end of his service patron’s term. When Sir Richard Keats (possibly at his predecessor’s request) commended Buchan to the Admiralty Board as a ‘highly meritorious, and perhaps Superior officer of his class’, he was told that Buchan was not entitled to any ‘special consideration’ because he had not carried out the survey.115

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At the end of his term, Keats made a renewed bid in support of Buchan’s promotion but this time he addressed it to Lord Bathurst, the secretary of state. Keats no doubt expected that Bathurst would bring his interest to bear on the Admiralty Board and may also have hoped that Buchan would receive the benefit of a convention that gave special consideration to the recommendations of flag officers on leaving their commands. Keats commended Buchan for his work as a surrogate in St John’s over the difficult winter of 1815–16 when the chief justice was on sick leave in England and the supreme surrogate was indisposed through ill-health. He noted that during his ten years as a lieutenant he had ‘uniformly maintained a high and respectable character in the Navy’. Duckworth also wrote to Bathurst at this time, and he evidently took the matter up with Lord Melville, the first lord of the Admiralty. Although peacetime promotions were hard to secure, Bathurst’s intervention was effective and Buchan became a commander immediately. In his response to Bathurst, Melville referred to Duckworth’s and Keats’s support of Buchan, perhaps with a view to reminding the secretary of state that this was a naval matter.116 On one occasion, a succession of naval governors gave their collective weight to a petition to the secretary of state to provide a pension to Chief Justice Jonathan Ogden on his retirement on the grounds of ill-health. Ogden had a long and honourable record of service in Newfoundland and the request to Lord Hobart was supported by no less than five governors: Milbanke, King, Waldegrave, Pole and Gambier.117 Although the admirals’ request was directed to the secretary of state, it may be regarded as an exercise in naval patronage. Ogden had been a naval surgeon and, before succeeding Richard Routh as chief justice in 1801, was the chief surrogate at St John’s, a senior position in a branch of the Newfoundland judiciary in which naval personnel played a significant role. Having sought further information from Waldegrave (now Lord Radstock), the secretary of state granted Ogden a pension of £200pa.118 It was very common for senior sea officers to support those who were connected with them by ties of kinship, interest and shared service by seeking the Admiralty Board’s permission to appoint them to their flagships.119 These ‘followers’ were widely recognized to have claims to the favourable attention of their patron and the Board. Thus in early 1795 Sir James Wallace received a ‘humbel pittion’ from four seamen from the Barfleur to move with him into his new flagship, and in January 1798 Waldegrave wrangled with the Board over the transfer of some of his followers into the Agincourt.120 When Charles Pole stepped aside from the governorship in the early summer of 1801 to take temporary command of a squadron off Cadiz, he arranged with the Board to transfer thirteen followers from his Newfoundland flagship: seven ‘young gentlemen’, two office staff, a coxswain, cook, butcher and servant.121 These numbers were consistent with current practice. Duckworth made a similar request when he took up his command in the spring of 1810.122 He asked the Board to appoint the San Josef’s captain, first lieutenant, master, surgeon, ‘young gentlemen’ and band members into his new flagship, Antelope.123 These men had served under Duckworth’s command on the London before being appointed to their present ship.

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Transatlantic naval routine The preparations for departure each spring in English waters were mirrored by those necessary to conclude the squadron’s tour of duty in Atlantic waters in the following autumn. Commanders-in-chief were responsible for putting arrangements in place for convoys leaving the Island in the late autumn and early spring, securing the maritime infrastructure of St John’s against the winter weather and protecting ships remaining on the station. Flows of loose ice stripped the copper sheets off the bottoms of war ships moored in the harbour and left them vulnerable to highly destructive worms and to fouling by weed that seriously affected their sailing qualities. The ice also damaged the mooring cables of ships and buoys and the large wooden and chain boom that was placed across the harbour entrance to protect it from enemy warships. The damage to vessels was minimized through the vigilance of their captains and by ensuring they were maintained properly when they had access to appropriate port facilities. The buoys and booms were protected by being taken up and stored ashore over the worst of the winter months. As the incident that took place in Sir James Wallace’s term illustrates, senior officers might also need to address shortfalls in manning before they began the voyage home.124 Once under weigh, the naval governors faced the usual vagaries of an ocean passage, exacerbated in some cases by the poor condition of their flagships. Occasionally, they saw some action. Sir Erasmus Gower recaptured a couple of prizes on the way home in 1805 and Sir Richard Keats, who had a very distinguished record as a frigate captain and a highly active flag officer, also struck some direct blows at the enemy. His battle-hardened flagship, the Bellerophon, captured enemy merchant ships and an American privateer when returning from escorting a convoy to Bermuda in the summer of 1813. With Keats aboard on the way home from Newfoundland late that year, Bellerophon snapped up a French privateer with seventy-three men aboard off Portland and also recaptured an English vessel that had been taken by another privateer and was on its way to a French port.125 When not taxed by storms and the enemy the naval governors used their time at sea to prepare reports and correspondence for the Admiralty Board and the secretary of state. They made routine returns on the condition of their ships, stores and crews and, as noted above, raised issues about the number and quality of the vessels assigned to their station. Some of their correspondence involved personal financial claims arising from official duties. When governors were in England over the winter it was common for them to seek reimbursement of postage costs incurred in correspondence with their subordinates in the service, the Board and the secretary of state, and with merchants’ representatives in West Country seaports. Governors’ salaries were itemized in the annual estimates from which all those on the civil establishment of the Island were paid, but they had to apply to the Admiralty Board to authorize their naval pay and allowances as commandersin-chief. Gambier and Gower, neither of whom was rich, made pay claims to the Board at the end of each season. Others who were better off seem to have followed

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the more usual practice of asking the Board to settle their pay, allowances and expenses at the end of their commission. Thus Waldegrave made a single claim at the conclusion of his term covering the period from April 1797 to May 1800. He was due more than £4,000. The Board’s statement of approval miscarried, so Waldegrave had to wait several months before a reminder settled the matter.126 As in its other financial transactions, the Board was careful to ensure that flag officers received no more than they were due. Months after his command had finished Duckworth expressed his ‘utter astonishment’ that the Board had adjusted his claim for stationery costs by £9/9/9 because he had struck his flag one month short of completing a year.127 After spending a couple of weeks on their flagships at Spithead, the naval governors were routinely given permission to travel to London to consult the secretary of state and then to live ashore over the winter. In common with other flag officers in home waters, however, they were liable to be called to serve on courts martial and could be summoned by the Board for other duties. Before leaving for Newfoundland in April 1805 Sir Erasmus Gower was a member of a court that tried an officer who was to be a successor in the Newfoundland command. In a case which was not helpful for his reputation, Sir John Duckworth was found not guilty of illegally removing a post captain from his command when he protested at the inordinate amount of private property that Duckworth was shipping from Jamaica on his flagship.128 While ill-health spared Gower from sitting on the highly damaging court martial that Vice Admiral Sir Richard Calder requested in late 1805, he could not avoid being a member of the court in the only marginally less controversial trial of Captain Sir Home Popham in early 1807. Popham’s unauthorized seizure of Buenos Aires and delay in notifying the Board of its subsequent recapture set the scene for a further British attempt on the city that ended in an embarrassing fiasco. Gower submitted a claim to the Board for £20/6/8 to cover his travel costs and expenses while attending this trial.129 Vice Admiral Holloway served on another high-profile court martial involving a predecessor in the Newfoundland command. In May 1809, Lord Gambier, as he had now become, requested a court martial on a subordinate flag officer in the Channel Fleet. The officer in question, the Trafalgar veteran Vice Admiral Sir Eliab Harvey, was found guilty of showing gross and open disrespect to a senior officer and ‘dismissed the service’.130 Non-judicial duties varied greatly. Some were ceremonial, while others utilized flag officers’ professional expertise. In late 1797 Waldegrave was on hand to respond to the Board’s forceful invitation to attend a celebration to mark the great naval victories of the first four years of the war. This was a demanding occasion requiring flag officers to gather in Westminster Palace Yard at seven o’clock on a midwinter’s day to begin six and a half hours of processing, singing, sermonizing and praying.131 Other special duties taxed naval governors’ nautical skills rather than their ceremonial fortitude. Thus in the spring of 1812 Duckworth (along with one of his predecessors, Lord Gambier) was called to the Admiralty Office to examine and evaluate a proposed code of new signals to be used at sea.132

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Conclusion Although the squadron at St John’s was small when compared with the major Royal Navy commands, it involved the naval governors in the full range of responsibilities that flag officers faced on other stations. During the French Wars Newfoundland governors were never engaged personally in significant naval actions against enemy forces, but that was the fate of all but a handful of those who commanded fleets and squadrons at sea in this period.133 In common with the vast majority of their colleagues, their naval responsibilities were primarily administrative and logistical, although, as discussed in a later chapter, two of the wartime commanders-in-chief also faced disciplinary challenges from mutinous seamen in ships of the squadron. Three aspects of the governors’ naval responsibilities had direct implications for their relationship with ‘principal inhabitants’ of the settlement. Commanders-in-chief had to ensure that their naval forces were deployed effectively in the seaward defence of the Island and the fisheries and were manned and maintained to do so. From time to time they also responded to requests for a vessel to be sent to one of the outports to assist the magistrates to deal with unruly members of the local community. Finally, naval governors provided convoy escorts to ensure the safety of cargoes and personnel shipped to and from Newfoundland. The fulfilment of these responsibilities involved naval governors in a range of operational and logistical activities that required them to engage with the complex administrative and business practices specified by the Admiralty Board. Their earlier experiences as captains and flag officers were invaluable in helping them fulfil the Board’s reporting and accountability expectations. They were also relevant to handling the business arising from the routine aspects of their civil government of Newfoundland. These matters are the focus of the chapter that follows.

Notes 1 See John Morrow, British Flag Officer in the French Wars, 1793-1815. Admirals’ Lives (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), 15–17. 2 Ibid., 13–16, 23–5, 127–64. 3 Ibid., 107–26. 4 See herein, pp. 50, 103. 5 NA ADM 1/473, ff380-v, 9/6/1797. 6 C. R. Markham, ed., The Correspondence of Admiral John Markham, 1801-1807 (London: Navy Records Society, 1905), 227, 12/12/1806; Morrow, British Flag Officers, 54–5. 7 See Morrow, British Flag Officers, 223. 8 See Roger Knight, Britain Against Napoleon: The Organisation of Victory (London: Penguin, 2014), 301–3, for the semaphore systems to ports on the south and east coasts of England. 9 D. Bonner-Smith, ed., The Letters of Earl St Vincent, 1801-1804, 2 vols (London: Navy Records Society, 1922, 1927), II: 302–3, 27/11/1803.

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10 See Roger Knight, Convoys. The British Struggle Against Napoleonic Europe and America (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2022), 252, 257–8. 11 NA ADM 1/476, f173, 1/5/1807, f193, 11/6/1807, f183, 2/6/1807, f186, 5/6/1807, f200, 16/8/1807, f210, 23/6/1807, f214, 26/7/1807. 12 NA ADM 1/477, f36, 2/5/1810. 13 NMM XDUC/38, ff6–7, 8/5/1810; NA ADM 1/477, f41, 9/5/1810. 14 See Andrew Lambert, The Challenge: Britain Against America in the Naval War of 1812 (London: Faber and Faber, 2011), 83–4. Warren was offered the command at the end of July 1812, by which time Keats had been absent from England for several months. 15 NA ADM1/478, f118, 26/4/1813, ff133–5, 17/7/1813. 16 NA ADM 1/475, f70, 11/6/1802; f152, 12/5/1803. 17 See Keith Mercer, ‘The Murder of Lieutenant Lawry: A Case of British Impressment in Newfoundland, 1794’, Newfoundland and Labrador Studies, 21, no. 2 (2006): 264 and herein pp. 117–18. 18 See herein, p. 63. 19 See David Syrett, ‘The Organisation of British Trade Convoys, 169-181’, Mariner’s Mirror, 62, no. 2 (1976): 169–81; Shannon Ryan, A History of Newfoundland in the Atlantic to 1818 (St John’s: Flanker Press, 2012), 40, 47–8. 20 Knight, Convoys, 28. 21 Lambert, The Challenge, 212–4. 22 See Morrow, British Flag Officers, 29 for examples on the Mediterranean, North Sea, Leeward Islands and Jamaica stations. 23 Michael Lewis, ed., A Narrative of My Professional Adventures (1790-1839) by William Henry Dillon, KCH., Vice-Admiral of the Red, 2 vols (London: Navy Records Society, 1953), II: 314–16. 24 Ibid., 318. 25 The Lester Diaries provide an interesting insight into the lives of two particularly active and successful members of the English side of this trade. Benjamin Lester was still supervising the loading and unloading of cargoes at Poole two days before his death at the age of seventy-five; ‘Benjamin Lester Diaries’, Dorchester, Dorset County Records Office, copy and transcript produced under the supervision of Professor Gordon Wood, Memorial University Library, St John’s, Newfoundland. 26 See, for example, Duckworth’s announcements in the Royal Gazette and Newfoundland Advertiser, 2, 6/7/1810, 2, 13, 20, 27/8/1810. 27 NA ADM 1/478, f118, 26/4/1813. See Knight, Convoys, 246–7, for the impact of the War of 1812 on convoy arrangements. 28 Julian Gwyn, Frigates and Foremast: The North American Squadron in Nova Scotian Waters, 1745-1815 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 2003), 121. 29 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 5: 1–3, 8/10/1793. 30 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 7: 230–4, 19/10/1797. 31 Knight, Convoys, 206. 32 NA ADM/1/474, f261, 14/7/1799. See herein, pp. 119–20 for Waldegrave’s complaint to the secretary of state on this score. 33 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 8: 5–7, 31/1/1798, 165, 25/6/1798. 34 NA ADM 1/474, f232, 9/5/1799. 35 Edward Chappell, A Voyage … to Newfoundland (London: J. Maw, 1818), 2–4, 18–19.

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36 See Knight, Convoys, 69–72 and N. A. M. Rodger, The Command of the Ocean. A Naval History of Britain 1649-1815 (London: Allen Lane, 2004), 359. 37 NA ADM 1/474, f187, 15/1/1799; 1/478, ff377–9, 380–1, 386, 28/10/1814. See also Knight, Convoys, 261–2, for reference to the psychological strain imposed on convoy commanders by nature, the enemy and those they were protecting. 38 See Lambert, The Challenge, 218–9. 39 NA ADM 1/247, 6/6/1799. 40 ‘Benjamin Lester Diaries’, 27/5/1797, 30/5/1797, 5/6/1797. 41 NA ADM 1/474, f379, 17/6/1800. 42 NA ADM 1/475, f240, 2/6/1804. 43 NMM MRK/101/10/31, ff35–6, 11/6/1806. See herein, pp. 148–50 for Gower’s role in the civil aspects of government. 44 PAN MG 204, Duckworth Papers, box 1, ff00251–2. 45 NMM MRK/101/10/38, 30/11/1806. 46 NMM DUC/16, 24/10/1810; XDUC/38, f20, 25/11/1810. 47 Ryan, A History, 73–7. 48 Ian Bates’s biography of Sir Erasmus Gower includes detail of the day-to-day responsibilities of the commander-in-chief at St John’s; see Ian M. Bates, Champion of the Quarterdeck. Admiral Sir Erasmus Gower, (1742-1814) (Pomona: Sage Old Books, 2017), 254–79. 49 PAN MG 204, Duckworth Papers box 1, ff00272–6, 1809. 50 NA ADM 1/474, ff 30v–31, 10/1/1798; NA CO 194/43, ff 129–30, 3/2/1803; NMM DUC/38, ff78–9, 11/4/1812. 51 PAN MG 204, Duckworth Papers, box 1, 00261, 1809. 52 NMM DUC/30, 9/4/1812, not paginated. 53 Olaf Janzen, ‘The Royal Navy and the Defence of Newfoundland in the American Revolutionary War’, Acadiensis, 14, no. 1 (1984): 28–48. 54 NA ADM/1/474, f12, 31/1/1798. 55 These figures are taken from Steel’s Navy List; see also William S. Dudley, The Naval War of 1812. A Documentary History, 2 vols (Washington DC: Naval Historical Centre, 1985), I: 182, II: 172. 56 NA ADM 1/475, ff75–7, 11/8/1806, 14/9/1806; PAN D’Alberti Papers, 16: 61, 64, 66, 78, 10, 11, 14, 20/8/1806. 57 NA ADM 1/475, f148, 25/5/1803, f151, 7/6/1803. 58 NA ADM 1/475, f398, 23/9/1805. 59 NA ADM 1/478, f314, 31/3/1814. 60 NMM XDUC/ 38, ff50–1, 27/8/1811, f92, 9/6/1812. 61 Dudley, The Naval War, I: 248. 62 NMM XDUC/38, f96, 23/7/1812, ff100–1, 20/8/1812, ff104–5, 31/8/1812; ff97–8, 23/7/1812, f102, 20/8/1812. 63 NMM XDUC/38, ff 126–8, 2/11/1812; NA ADM 1/477, f434–6, 2/11/1812. 64 NA ADM 1/478, f131, 21/6/1813. 65 NA ADM 1/478, f239, 18/12/1813, f306, 22/3/1814. 66 NA ADM 1/478, f185, 25/8/1813. Cf Knight, Convoys, 250–2, who mentions the treatment of prisoners but not the context of the US legislation. 67 Compensation was authorized by Congress in March 1813. Lambert, The Challenge, 246–7, deals with this legislation wholly in terms of its encouragement of ‘improvised explosive devices’ of a kind referred to by contemporaries as ‘torpedoes’; in this he follows the Naval Chronicle (Nicholas Tracy, ed., The Naval Chronicle. The

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69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77

78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87

Notes to pp. 49–71 Contemporary Record of the Royal Navy, 5 vols (London: Chatham Press, 1999), V: 168–9). While the act in question ‘authorised’ the use of ‘torpedoes, submarine instruments, or any other destructive machine whatever’, the bounty of half of the value of a destroyed vessel, its ‘guns, cargo, tackle and apparel’ applied regardless of the mode of destruction; see Dudley, The Naval War, 160 and United States House of Representatives, Statutes at Large, vol. 2, Statute 2, ch. 47, 816. Keats’ strategy (and the Board’s response to it) clearly reflected their understanding that the so-called ‘torpedo act’ extended to encourage the destruction of enemy ships rather than taking them as prizes, as was common in actions involving government vessels and universal with privateers. Clive Lloyd, Napoleonic and American Prisoners of War (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007), 97, 101, estimates that the overall mortality of prisoners was about 8 per cent; it was significantly higher for those imprisoned in hulks moored in estuaries and harbours. See Knight, Convoys, 179, 203–5. Jean M. Murray, ed., The Newfoundland Journal of Aaron Thomas 1794 (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1968), 45. NA ADM 1/474, f50, mid Feb 1798, f55, 19/2/1798; f58, 20/2/1798, f59, 28/2/1798, f71, 9/3/1798. NA ADM 1/474, f176, 13/12/1798. NA ADM 1/474, f297, 9/11/1799. NA ADM 1/475, f92, 12/9/1802, f183, 15/11/1803, f280, 19/11/1804; ADM 1/476, 240, 25/11/1807. NA ADM 1/f341, 19/11/1808, f397, 23/4/1809 f391, 14/2/1809. Royal Gazette, 18, 25/10/1810. PAN D’Alberti Papers, 25: 13–14, 11/1/1815. The large sum sought included a penalty because the company’s agent would not accept the far lower ‘customary modest charge’. The chief justice was concerned about the penalty and suspended the case while he sought legal advice from London; it seems not to have proceeded. However, the existence of a ‘customary’ charge suggests that the proclamation had been applied earlier. NMM XDUC/38, ff18–19, 25/11/1810. NMM XDUC/38, ff102–4, 31/8/1812. NA ADM 1/487, f246, 1712/1813, f260, 24/12/1813. NA ADM 1/478, f402, 31/12/1814. NA ADM 1/478, f402, 31/12/1814, f435, 1/2/1815. Tricia Munittrick, ‘A Nursery for Seamen: Life Histories From the St John’s Naval Hospital Cemetery’ (MA thesis, Memorial University, St John’s, 2015), 80, 88. Siân Williams, ‘The Royal Navy and Caribbean Colonial Society during the Eighteenth Century’, in The Royal Navy and the British World, c. 1750-1820, ed. John McAleer and Christer Petley (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 40–1. Denver Brunsman, The Evil Necessity: British Naval Impressment in the EighteenthCentury Atlantic World (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013), 130–1. See Mercer, ‘The Murder of Lieutenant Lawry’, 255–89; Brunsman, The Evil Necessity, 129–32. PAN D’Alberti Papers, 10: 156–7, 16/10/1799 for Waldegrave and for Duckworth see NMM ADM 50/73, Duckworth’s Journal, 18, 22, 23/8/1810 and PAN D’Alberti Papers, 20: 149–50, 28/8/1810; see also William H. Whiteley, Duckworth’s Newfoundland (St. John’s: Harry Cuff Publications, 1985), 12.

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88 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 15: 95–6, 1/8/1805. 89 Ibid., 13: 131, 133, 21/9/1803. 90 Derek Beamish et al., Mansions and Merchants of Poole and Dorset (Poole: Poole Historical Trust, 1976), I: 10–11. 91 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 15: 1, 2, 2/1/1805, 4/1/1805. 92 Mercer, ‘The Murder of Lieutenant Lawry’, 264–5. 93 Gwyn, Frigates and Foremasts, 100. 94 BL Add Ms 31167 f70, 10/6/1799; Morrow, British Flag Officers, 23–5. 95 See Knight, Convoys, 42–7, for the early stages of Croker’s long tenure of the secretaryship. 96 John D. Byrn, Crime and Punishment in the Royal Navy: Navy Discipline on the Leeward Islands Station, 1784-1812 (Cambridge: Scholars Press, 1989), 20. 97 NMM XDUC 38, ff14–17, 24/7/1810 (Duckworth); NA ADM 1/478, f155, 18/7/1813, f515, 23/9/1815 (Keats); Morrow, British Flag Officers, 124. 98 Roger Knight and Martin Wilcox, Sustaining the Fleet 1793-1815. War, the British Navy and the Contractor State (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2010), 12. 99 NMM XDUC/38, f23, 27/11/1810, ff52–3, 25/11/1811. 100 The figure is based on patient data recovered by Munittrick, ‘A Nursery for Seamen’, 79–81. The author does not discuss the Treasury proposal, but she is focusing on personnel, not policy. 101 NMM XDUC, f51, 25/11/1811. 102 Geo III c35; see Morrow, British Flag Officers, 15–17 for examples of the operation of a system which involved very large sums and long delays in settlement. 103 NA ADM 1/475, f72, 21/6/1802. 104 See Morrow, British Flag Officers, 16–17 and Peter A. Ward, British Naval Power in the East 1794-1895: The Command of Admiral Peter Rainer (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013), 208–9. 105 NA ADM 1/474, ff182–3, 31/12/1. 106 NMM XDUC/38, ff104–5, 31/8/1812, ff116–17, 1/11/1812. 107 See, pp. 27–8. 108 NMM MID/9/10. 109 NA ADM 1/475, f81, 15/7/1802. 110 NMM XDUC/38, f66, 19/11/1811, ff68–9, 26/11/1811; NA ADM 1/477, f297, 20/11/1811. 111 NA ADM 1/476, f78, 14/9/1806. For Gower’s slow and frustrating progression to post rank see Bates, Champion of the Quarterdeck, 93–119. 112 See herein, pp. 67–8. 113 Moira Bracknell, ‘Lord Spencer, Patronage and Commissioned Officers’ Careers, 1794-1801’, 2 vols (PhD thesis, University of Exeter, 2008), I: 23–7, for ‘action’ promotions. 114 NMM DUC/38, ff78–9, 11/4/1811, f142, 6/3/1813. 115 NA ADM 1/478, ff182–3, 27/7/1813, 15/11/1813. 116 NA CO 194/57, ff17–18, 12/4/1816; CO 194/58, 23/4/1816, f102-v, 29/4/1816. Buchan’s promotion was backdated to 13 April to coincide with Keats’s approach to Bathurst; David Syrett and R. L. DiNardo, eds, The Commissioned Sea Officers of the Royal Navy 1660-1815 (Aldershot: Scholar Press/Navy Records Society, 1994), 60. 117 NA CO 194/43, f137, 18/4/1803. 118 NA CO 194/43, ff309–10, 313, 4/7/1803.

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119 See N. A. M. Rodger, The Wooden World. An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy (London: William Collins, 1986), 119–24. 120 NA CO 1/473, f161, 25/3/1795; NA ADM 1/474, f54, 18/1/1798. 121 NA ADM 1/475, f44, May 1801. 122 See Bracknell, ‘Lord Spencer’, II: 183ff for the conventions applying to followers. 123 NMM XDUC/38, f1, 10/4/1810. 124 See herein, pp. 117–18. 125 David Cordingly, Billy Ruffian. The Bellerophon and the Downfall of Napoleon (London: Bloomsbury, 2003), 227; NA ADM 1/478, f229, 19/12/1813. 126 NA ADM 1/474, f138, 6/4/1803, f219, 5/4/1804, f372, 15/5/1800. 127 NA ADM/583, 9/5/1813. 128 On Gower see Bates, Champion of the Quarterdeck, 64–5, and for Duckworth’s extraordinary baggage and court martial see Morrow, British Flag Officers, 215. 129 NA ADM 1/476, f159, 13/3/1807. 130 NA ADM 1/476, f409, 13/5/1809. 131 NA ADM 1/473, f465, 15, 12, 1797; The Times, 20/12/1797. 132 NA ADM 2/1094, f122, 24/4/1812. 133 See Morrow, British Flag Officers, 3; less than 10 per cent of those who held the rank of admiral in the years 1793–1815 were involved in the large-scale ‘fleet actions’ which were the acme of flag officers’ fighting ambitions.

Chapter 3 THE ROUTINE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT

As noted earlier, the naval governors of Newfoundland exercised their government in person from St John’s during the summer and early autumn and returned to England on their flagships until the next season. Sir Erasmus Gower referred to a convention governing the length of residence, but in practice there were significant variations. Before the war Admiral Mark Milbanke did not arrive at St John’s until late September 1790 and was back at Spithead within two months. Such a short period of residence was unusual, but the timing of appointments sometimes affected the departure date of incoming governors, and although the passage out was not a long one by the standards of the late Georgian Royal Navy, challenging climatic conditions sometimes delayed governors’ arrival at St John’s. Storms and contrary winds slowed progress across the Atlantic, and once convoys got close to land they risked being enveloped in the formidable fogs of the Grand Banks. Thus in 1805, after a thirteen-day passage, Gower’s small squadron was beset by fog for two days on the outer banks. Having made a land fall just south of St John’s, more fog and ‘a considerable quantity of ice’ delayed its arrival a further six days.1 All things being equal, however, the practice was for naval governors to leave England in late May and sail for home in the second half of October. Gower thought that the press of reporting and wartime business warranted extending the period of residence by a month.2 This advice had no immediate effect, but, as we have seen, when Sir Richard Keats governed the Island during the War of 1812 he left England in mid-April and did not return there until late December. The relatively short period of annual residence attracted adverse comment from contemporary political critics of naval government that is sometimes echoed, albeit wryly, by modern historians. But while longer or year-round residence may have had some advantages, it would not necessarily have met the objection that naval governors were poorly informed about the Island they governed. As Jerry Bannister notes, they would have been snow-bound in St John’s for most of the winter months.3 Although Gower canvassed the idea of year-round residence, he recognized that during their time in England governors were able to consult directly with those to whom they reported in London. The pattern of governors’ correspondence certainly demonstrates that they were engaged very actively with the affairs of their government over the winter months. Following occasional

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communication with the secretary of state from St John’s, there was usually a burst of correspondence between October and May. Much of the governors’ correspondence was generated in response to requests from inhabitants seeking their approval on matters which would now be dealt with by local government officials. Petitions seeking leave to build, repair or alter buildings all passed through their hands, as did an increasing number of requests for access to land for agricultural, domestic and business purposes purportedly relating to the trade of the Island and the fisheries. The volume of such correspondence was significant, but those used to dealing with the wide range of authorizations that passed across the desks of flag officers commanding at sea or in large naval ports took it in their stride.4 Nor were they put out of countenance by requests on more trivial matters, giving considered responses to the promoters of a theatrical troupe from Quebec, the owner of a ‘learned’ pig (also from Quebec) who proposed enlivening winter evenings by demonstrating its talents, and to local entrepreneurs who wished to set up (real) tennis courts, gambling rooms and billiard halls in St John’s.5 In addition to responding to requests from those subject to them, naval governors were also required to report to the secretary of state. The volume of this correspondence increased significantly over the course of the war. Variations reflected both the character and business style of the governors concerned and the extent to which they wished to promote measures that they thought necessary to meet the emerging needs of the resident population. For example, both Waldegrave and Duckworth were exceedingly conscientious but also rather needy administrators who reported at great length to their superiors and endlessly sought their authorization and approbation. The Duke of Portland made systematic replies to no less than thirty-four letters written by Waldegrave over the winter of 1797–8. Gower, forthright and independently minded, was not prepared to be fobbed-off by high-handed official dismissals of his arguments about the changing needs of the settlement. It is instructive to compare Gower’s style with that of Waldegrave. While the latter was assiduous in reporting to his superiors and willing to canvas solutions to problems he discerned in the government of Newfoundland, his approach was often characterized by a passive alertness rather than the sense of direct agency which is manifest in Gower’s correspondence. Thus while Gower noted Waldegrave’s concerns over the independence of the magistracy, he reported on steps he had taken to address this issue, ‘flattering’ himself that the benefits ‘will entitle this measure to your Lordship’s approbation’.6 This difference notwithstanding, governors’ enhanced degree of engagement with the affairs of the community was reflected in the volume of their correspondence with the secretary of state. Over the period of their government Waldegrave’s and Gower’s correspondence ran close to 700 folios; Duckworth’s was closer to 900. Even the less active governors (Sir Charles Pole and Vice Admiral Holloway) made heavier demands on the secretary of state than Waldegrave’s predecessor, Sir James Wallace. His correspondence amounted to only 100 folios in 1796 when he reported on the French attacks on the Island; during the other years of his governorship he rarely troubled his political masters in London.

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As with flag officers serving at sea, those who governed Newfoundland had very limited executive and clerical assistance. From 1779 to 1791 governors had a permanent, Newfoundland-based secretary (known later as the colonial secretary) to support them in dealing with civil business, as well as the secretary who served on their flagship.7 From 1791 until 1806 the civil secretaryship went unfilled, so for the first half of the war years naval governors managed both their naval and civil business with the level of secretarial support provided to flag officers commanding a small squadron at sea. That is, the commander-in-chief ’s secretary and a clerk went ashore when his flagship arrived at St John’s at the beginning of the season to staff the governor’s office. In April 1806, however, the secretary of state acted on Sir Erasmus Gower’s proposal (which echoed earlier suggestions by Chief Justice Reeves and Sir James Gambier) to revive the appointment of a permanent Secretary.8 This move restored an element of professionalism and consistency in the government of Newfoundland that was eventually reflected in the establishment of a set of official records at St John’s and the purchase of a fireproof safe housed in a specially constructed records office adjacent to Government House.9 Joseph Trounsell, the first permanent secretary in this period, was appointed in 1806 but resigned the post in the following year. At that stage Gower’s successor, Vice Admiral Holloway, unsuccessfully resisted the idea of having a permanent secretary on the grounds that he would presume to be the governor’s ‘tutor’.10 He may have had in mind the reputation of Aaron Graham who was the permanent secretary from 1779 to 1791 and thus in office when Holloway visited the Island earlier in his career. Graham had been described as ‘a much greater man than his master’.11 This chapter will examine a number of aspects of the wartime governors’ handling of routine civil government. It will consider their role in civil appointments, their attention to the Island’s land-based defences and their responses to the accountabilities imposed on them by the secretary of state. It concludes by tracing the wartime governors’ long-running efforts to maintain an appropriate official residence at St John’s. These important, but essentially routine and recurring, responsibilities contrast with the naval governors’ promotion of the programmes of improvement discussed in a later chapter.

Patronage and civil appointments The flag command and governorship of Newfoundland were not part of the patronage available to secretaries of state, and they played no role in appointing judges to the Vice Admiralty Court which dealt with prize adjudications; these appointments sat with the First Lord of the Admiralty.12 They did, however, play a determining role in a few of the very limited range of civil appointments on the Island. It seems that the interest of Poole merchants was influential in these appointments up until 1800 but was then displaced by that of the leading merchants from Dartmouth.13 The Newfoundland patronage that resided with secretaries of

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state did not compare with that of other colonial possessions and, like much else about the legal framework of government, was not always clear. Since Newfoundland lacked an Assembly, it did not generate the levels of income which made colonies in the West Indies a rich source of patronage appointments controlled by senior political figures in London. Offices in these colonies were often held by well-connected absentees who lived entirely in England and paid a small fraction of their salary to a local deputy.14 By contrast, only six offices were listed in the Newfoundland civil establishment estimates in 1802 and nineteen at the end of the wars.15 Except for the remuneration of chief justices, the judges of the Vice Admiralty Court and governors’ secretaries, Newfoundland official salaries were very modest, although some of them were augmented by fees. However, the common practice of plural office-holding meant that officials had some prospect of securing aggregated incomes sufficient to support a style of living deemed appropriate to their status. With one exception, it seems to have been the practice for officeholders to reside in Newfoundland for the season at least. Naval governors made recommendations on the appointment of the officials who were later styled the ‘Colonial Secretary’, but the language they used makes it clear that they recognized these appointments were made formally by the King and sat within the patronage of the secretary of state. However, when the revived governor’s secretary role was being discussed in early 1807, Joseph Trounsell, who had served as secretary to both Gambier and Gower and was clearly an aspirant for an ongoing appointment, queried whether the establishment of a permanent post would impinge on governors’ prerogative to appoint their own secretaries. William Fawkener, a senior official (‘Clerk in Waiting’) of the Committee of Council for Trade and Foreign Plantations in Whitehall, who advanced its recommendation in favour of Trounsell for consideration by secretary of state Windham, did not appear to have any reservations on that score. Nor did Gower when he wrote to Windham’s successor to advance Trounsell’s candidature a few months later.16 Gower’s support for Trounsell, formally a purser in the Royal Navy, was similar to exercises in ‘service interest’ in the sense that it relied on references to his exemplary professional character and meritorious performance while serving as his secretary. Trounsell’s candidature was also endorsed by the commander of the garrison and ‘all the Principal Merchants of St John’s’.17 By contrast, the royal Duke of Kent’s recommendation in favour of William Smith’s appointment to the post was addressed to Lord Castlereagh and represented the sort of direct intervention by exceedingly well-placed figures that were common across the Georgian patronage network.18 There seems to have been no question that the appointment of the chief justice was in the hands of the ministry in London. In mid-1798 Waldegrave wrote to the Duke of Portland in very warm terms supporting Jonathan Ogden’s claim to be the next chief justice: ‘he is in every way more calculated to fill that station to the general satisfaction of the inhabitants . . . and the Government than any other man I know.’ Waldegrave based this claim on Ogden’s record of outstanding service in the Royal Navy and in the civil administration of the Island.19 Leading merchants also attempted to influence this appointment. George Garland MP, the son-in-law

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of Benjamin Lester, and his fellow MP for Poole, John Jeffrey, pressed their case for John Street with Prime Minister Henry Addington in early 1803. Garland followed up with a letter to Addington assuring him that he and Jeffrey spoke not only for themselves but for ‘the principal merchants in the trade here’. He made it clear to the prime minister that these worthies would not welcome the appointment of John Bland from Bonavista who had just landed in Poole with a view (Garland claimed) to promoting his candidature for the chief justiceship.20 Neither of these applicants was successful. The post went to Jonathan Ogden, Waldegrave’s nominee. As noted in the previous chapter, Ogden enjoyed the support of a number of governors.21 Questions concerning rights of appointment occurred in a number of different contexts during the war years. Vice Admiral Holloway questioned the chief justice’s right to appoint court officers (in this case the clerk of the Probate Court), but a Crown law opinion upheld it. It noted, however, that as the salary was part of the Estimates for which the governor was responsible, he needed to agree to the salary attached to the post.22 This ruling did not seem to apply to officers of justice. In late 1809 Holloway appointed John Bland as High Sheriff in place of Henry Phillips and issued a commission to him.23 Five months later, Edmund Bastard, a long-serving MP for Dartmouth with close connections to the dominant family in the Dartmouth trade with Newfoundland, used a version of the Crown law opinion to argue that the appointment rested with the secretary of state and that the ‘inhabitant’ appointed by Holloway could only hold the office until such time as a permanent appointment was made from England. Bastard expected that the appointee would travel out to Newfoundland with the governor at the beginning of the season.24 This argument, almost certainly an attempt by Bastard and his Dartmouth friends to influence the appointment in favour of their own nominee, failed and Bland’s tenure was not disrupted. Holloway’s appointment of the High Sheriff followed Gambier’s practice when appointing Henry Phillips in late 1802. Gambier appointed Phillips under letters patent which charged him with the responsibility to ‘constitute and appoint the necessary officers and ministers for the better administration of Justice’.25 Appointment to the position of ‘Naval Officer’ at St John’s gave rise to a prolonged and serious dispute over the patronage of governors and secretaries of state.26 This case is curious because it went unnoticed for twenty years and the number of wartime governors who were unwitting parties to it was symptomatic of a lack of clarity on civil patronage in late Georgian Newfoundland. The affair also provides the solitary example of sustained absentee office-holding in Newfoundland in the period. Naval officers were usually civilians employed in the management of naval dockyards or port facilities, but in Newfoundland this official was responsible for organizing the collection of data for the annual return submitted by governors and coordinating returns from the outports furnished by subordinate officials.27 He was also responsible for providing the documentation for masters of vessels seeking ‘Mediterranean passes’ to reduce the risk of interference from armed cruisers from the Barbary states. The office attracted a salary of £100pa, and fees from ‘Mediterranean passes’ were between £300 and £400 a year.28 It proved

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sufficiently lucrative to be worth the attention of an absentee officeholder resident in England. The question of who had the right of appointing naval officers surfaced in May 1799 when the incumbent, a half-pay sea officer called Archibald Buchanan, died in post at St John’s. Vice Admiral Waldegrave, who had not yet left England, was advised of the perilous state of Buchanan’s health by Jonathan Ogden, who clearly had designs on the appointment. He told Waldegrave that he hoped his letter would reach England ‘before the grand Monopolisers of NFLd appointments can have an opportunity of applying’. Ogden’s connections were to the navy – he had been a naval surgeon – and his target may have been the West Country merchants, who were strong backers of the current chief justice, Richard Routh.29 The naval officer’s duties were taken up initially by Peter McKie, but he does not appear to have been appointed formally and had to apply for payment when he was superseded.30 After Waldegrave’s return to St John’s, Ogden’s immediate ambitions were fulfilled, but the terms of the appointment made it clear that the governor did not see himself as the final dispenser of the office. Ogden was to ‘hold the said appointment until His Majesty’s Pleasure shall be known thereon’.31 This language meant that the appointment was to be made by the secretary of state. In the event, any representations that Waldegrave may have made on Ogden’s behalf were unsuccessful. At the beginning of April 1800 (a month before Waldegrave’s term finished) the appointment of Richard Hatt Noble was authorized in a warrant issued under the king’s sign manual at the instigation of the Duke of Portland, the secretary of state. It was a classic exercise in unalloyed political patronage. The grounds of the appointment become clear when Noble’s family connections are considered. His father, John, was a Newfoundland merchant from Bristol, involved in both the Atlantic and Mediterranean aspects of the trade. John Noble was a member of the ‘Common Council’ of the Corporation of Bristol by 1789 and an alderman in 1794.32 These positions meant that he was a leading figure in the Bristol Corporation, well placed to play an influential role in the tumultuous electoral politics of the city. It is significant that Portland was directly involved in government attempts to manage parliamentary elections in Bristol in the 1790s and that before being appointed naval officer at St John’s, Richard Hatt Noble had been made a clerk in the secretary of state’s office.33 Nobles’ position in Portland’s office, the fact that he travelled to Newfoundland to appoint a ‘Deputy Naval Officer’34 to perform the duties, retained half of the fees coming into the Naval Office and then returned to London reflected the practice in British colonies in the West Indies. Other aspects of the appointment and its subsequent history were, however, related closely to the Newfoundland context. The arrangement by which Noble continued to receive income from his office was settled not with Peter Carter, the Deputy, but between Noble and Carter’s father, a member of a long-established Newfoundland family and a member of the Vice Admiralty Court. This suggests that Peter Carter’s appointment reflected his family’s influence in the settlement, its relationship with John Noble and possibly with his brother Richard Hatt Noble, a major figure in the Portuguese wine trade. It almost certainly emboldened the Deputy to increasingly act as if the office was

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his by right. Over the years, Peter Carter was variously described as the ‘naval officer’ and the ‘deputy naval officer’, and Noble was only occasionally consulted by governors on the appointment of Carter’s assistants in the outports. Moreover, Sir Erasmus Gower, who seems not to have been aware of the circumstances of either Noble’s or Carter’s appointments, was reported by Carter as having appointed him as ‘naval officer’ in 1806, without notifying either Noble or the secretary of state. The history of this exercise in civil patronage reflected the uncertainties of the legal basis of aspects of naval government of which Gower and a number of his colleagues complained. In 1821 when Carter faced being replaced as Noble’s deputy he not only challenged the latter’s right to remove him but also his right to the substantive position. The ground for these claims – that the disposal of the office rested with governors, not with secretaries of state – was upheld in a ruling given by Francis Forbes in the Newfoundland Supreme Court. He determined that Portland’s appointment of Noble contravened legislation dating from Charles II’s reign that reserved powers of appointment on the Island to the Governor.35 Portland no doubt acted wrongly without knowing it, but whatever the legal position, the younger Carter appears to have played a highly duplicitous role in the affair. His claims to have been appointed naval officer by Gower have left no trace in the record and were almost certainly false. In granting Carter leave to travel to England on personal business in late 1806 Gower referred to him as ‘Dy. Naval Officer at St John’s’.36 Noble later pointed out that Carter continued to remit half of the fees to him for another twelve years.37 Significantly, Carter was subsequently reappointed as Noble’s deputy by Vice Admiral Holloway in circumstances that seem incompatible with his claim to be the naval officer. In July 1808, Holloway received a request from Noble to identify a ‘fit person’ for the role of deputy and a blank form-letter of authorization to make the appointment. Noble claimed that Carter’s shortcomings had been an issue for Gambier and Gower, and his performance must certainly have been a concern to Holloway as he and Noble had discussed the matter in London. Although Noble seems at this stage to have been determined to remove Carter, he also advised Holloway that his deputy’s father had told him that his son was now a reformed character ‘become steady and attentive to his duty’. As Holloway received this letter when he was back in St John’s his (re)appointment of Carter suggests that the father’s plea was accepted, presumably because the local considerations which had induced Noble to make him his deputy in the first place still applied.38

The Island’s land defences Governors did not command the Newfoundland garrison, but except for tensions during Waldegrave’s and Gower’s time (discussed in a later chapter) they seem to have collaborated effectively with the senior army officer at St John’s who reported to the army commander-in-chief at Halifax. In their civil roles, however, governors were responsible for the land-based defensive infrastructure of the Island, and up until the spring of 1799 they were also part of the chain of financial accountability

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for the garrison. They advised the secretary of state on the availability of provisions and accounting for them, and on arrangements for paying members of the garrison. Since the last of these matters was thought to have a bearing on the steadiness and loyalty of the troops, it had implications for the defence of the Island. Governors also provided support to a series of volunteer corps based at St John’s. In the early years of the war the garrison was increased from its pre-war strength of just less than 200 men to 550, and there were also significant changes in its composition. Having initially been made up of Marines, from the early 1740s the garrison had been manned by men from British foot regiments. By 1795, however, Newfoundland was garrisoned by detachments of the newly formed Royal Newfoundland Regiment at St John’s and Placentia, supplemented by a handful of gunners of the Royal Artillery.39 This arrangement had advantages in terms of local identity and knowledge, and, as Olaf Janzen observes, the presence of a distinctive land force also provided scope for displays of colourful military pageantry to reinforce the authority and dignity of naval governors.40 At the same time, however, the fact that a large number of the Regiment’s recruits were originally from Ireland was seen as a risk at times of civil tension. After 1799 when a general was appointed to command the garrison at St John’s, governors were no longer concerned directly with its management but continued to be responsible for the fortifications and ordnance of the Island. Royal Artillery detachments were not part of the army and reported through the governor to the Master General of Ordnance, a political appointee with cabinet rank whose position paralleled that of the First Lord of the Admiralty. Funding came through the estimates for the Ordnance Office, not from those for the civil establishment of the Island.41 Ordnance responsibilities extended beyond St John’s to the outports, some of which, such as Placentia, were centres for extensive fisheries that would collapse if they were captured by the enemy.42 They involved naval governors in extensive routine correspondence with the Board of Ordnance in London on engineering, personnel and provisioning requirements and in wrangles over land in St John’s that was reserved for ordnance purposes but which had been subjected to official and private encroachments.43 The focus on St John’s reflected its status as the most densely populated and prosperous centre on the Island and the base from which the navy would provide military assistance to the outports. In 1796 Sir James Wallace lacked the military capabilities to confront the French at sea or prevent the spoilation of some outlying settlements. Nevertheless, he managed to see off a French threat to St John’s by deploying his small squadron effectively and strengthening the land forces by the judicious use and timely support of seamen and volunteers from among the civilian inhabitants. As the French force stood off the harbour he directed that the ‘usual’ allowance of rum was provided to all concerned in the defence of the town.44 These precautions notwithstanding, Wallace and the residents of the town may also have benefitted from disinformation on the strength of the garrison given to the French commander by a captured Newfoundland fisherman.45 Wallace had earlier protested to the military authorities in Halifax when it had proposed deploying some of the garrison to the Canadian mainland.46

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With the experience of the recent events in mind he subsequently gave careful thought to consolidating the barracks, magazine and stores houses on a more easily defensible position with a good supply of water adjacent to Signal Hill on the outskirts of the settlement at St John’s. This move would have the additional advantage of distancing the troops from the suppliers of liquor and from other nefarious influences in the town.47 Although this proposal was not taken up by the government in London, Wallace’s successors paid heightened attention to the land defences of the Island. When leading residents petitioned Vice Admiral Waldegrave in late 1797 on the poor condition of ordnance in the outports, they were probably surprised to receive an upbraiding reply pointing out that Governor Edwards had made ample provision for ordnance stores in 1779 and that Waldegrave assumed that the inhabitants were expected to keep the defences in ‘good repair’. Their poor condition was thus ‘entirely owning to neglect’. However, even an irritable governor could not risk claims that he was ignoring the views of the local elite, and Waldegrave undertook to forward this petition to the secretary of state and to act on any instructions received from him.48 As discussed in a later chapter, Waldegrave was also exercised over attempts to recruit troops in Newfoundland by the Halifax command. While Waldegrave’s views on the defence of the Island were coloured by past events, impending danger prompted Sir James Gambier to prioritize the Island’s land-based defences in 1803. He had written to Lord Hobart on this question in November 1802 during the Peace of Amiens but received no response. By the middle of the next year, however, the recommencement of hostilities lent the question a new urgency. Gambier reminded Hobart of the inadequacies of the fortifications and ordnance at St John’s and urged him to increase the size of the garrison.49 Directions on the landward defences of the Island were among the standard Instructions to governors, but in 1805 Lord Castlereagh, who was then secretary of state, made a point of reminding Sir Erasmus Gower of this responsibility.50 Sir John Duckworth inherited a copy of Castlereagh’s letter when he became governor in 1810. Castlereagh had cautioned Gower that since the resources available for garrisoning overseas territories were very limited in wartime it was necessary for governors to build and maintain fortifications that would allow small garrisons to hold out against attack until relief was provided by sea.51 This authoritative advice may explain why Gower and Duckworth paid particularly close attention to land defences, showing the same energy and forthrightness in addressing them as they did in other transactions with the secretary of state. On returning to England after his first season on the Island, Gower resisted proposals for ‘continental’ regiments to recruit in Newfoundland because it would deprive the Royal Newfoundland Regiment of the services of local men with knowledge of the Island. He was also concerned that it would provide an emigration route to the mainland for fishermen who enlisted with a view to deserting to neighbouring American states.52 His advice on this matter was rejected by the government, and to Gower’s obvious annoyance it took further steps which positively weakened the defences of the Island. The Royal Newfoundland

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Fencible Infantry (as the force was for a short while named53) was transferred to the mainland and replaced by an inadequate number of troops from Nova Scotia who lacked their predecessors’ intimate knowledge of the country and seemed to have been selected with a view to ridding the garrison at Halifax of its least fit and least competent members. Gower, prompted by local opinion, boldly declared to the secretary of state that if he had had fore knowledge of the impact of this transfer he would have withheld troops from the Newfoundland garrison to make up for the shortfall. He warned that inadequate troop numbers and fortifications left St John’s open to easy attack and destruction at a time when the town had become so important that its capture would be a huge blow to the entire fishery. He told Lord Camden that a garrison of 2,000 men was required and that its present strength was less than 400. Gower advised the secretary of state that he would not cooperate with attempts to recruit Newfoundlanders for service in Nova Scotia. He also urged the government to encourage and support the volunteer force being raised in St John’s by providing rations for it when on duty and payments towards the cost of uniforms and equipment.54 Since Newfoundland lacked a local assembly, governors were unable (as was the case in other colonies) to work with local elites to provide a legislative basis for authorizing and paying a militia regiment.55 As an alternative, they gave their support to efforts to establish a volunteer force on the Island. The naval governors’ involvement with the volunteers went back to the start of the French Revolutionary War in 1793 when there was a shortage of seasoned troops, and Sir James Wallace thought that by providing material support for this body he would be able to exercise control over it.56 The governors’ interest in the volunteers provided an example of collaboration with community leaders to meet the needs of the settlement. In this case, the volunteers had been formed through local initiatives, and Wallace then sought support for them from the government in London. As he prepared to leave for Newfoundland in the late spring of 1795 he wrote to Henry Dundas, the secretary of state, seeking approval to provide provisions for members of the volunteer force raised in the previous year.57 Gower made a similar successful appeal, and in late 1806 he reported favourably on the loyalty and enthusiasm of the corps and its good sense in adopting a body of rules and regulations that he had drawn up.58 Holloway maintained his predecessors’ interest in the volunteers and followed up on an earlier request for the government to pay for their equipment. He stressed the benefits to morale and efficiency of giving the corps ‘a Military appearance’ and asked for it to be supplied with swords, belts, breast plates and appropriately feathered cockades.59 Despite official support and these impressive accoutrements, local enthusiasm for the volunteer force waxed and waned. By 1810 Duckworth reported that it had shrunk from 350 to 65 and was not active. He proposed to regenerate interest by providing new uniforms at the government’s expense.60 The revival of the volunteers became a pressing matter when the United States and Great Britain went to war in mid-1812. Before this development, Duckworth had acted on Lord Castlereagh’s strictures on landward defences and had conducted a thorough survey of the fortifications at St John’s and at the outports he visited on

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his summer cruise in 1810. His reports painted an alarming picture of the defensive infrastructure of the Island, and with characteristic thoroughness he worked with a military surveyor and engineer to develop a remediation programme.61 Duckworth’s responsibilities for ordnance involved him in potentially embarrassing transactions arising from charges of corruption made against John Houston, the Ordnance Storekeeper on the Island. In 1811 this official was charged with irregularities in his financial reporting and ongoing conflicts of interest in also holding a commission in the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, engaging in trade and exporting species from the Island at a time when other officials of the Ordnance Board were having to advertise in St John’s to be supplied with it.62 Having made preliminary enquiries into the matter, Duckworth determined to refer it to the Ordnance Board in London. He was then confronted by the alleged offender who made veiled allegations about the propriety of private purchases of antiques he had made on behalf of the governor.63 The official may perhaps have known that Duckworth’s shipment of a huge volume of exotic personal affects at the conclusion of his Jamaica command exposed him to accusations that he had to answer at a reputationally risky court martial. If that was the case, Houston was mistaken if he thought this unfortunate history would divert the governor from his duty. Duckworth referred the entire correspondence to the Board. It was incensed by the attempt to blackmail him and gave prominence to its ‘indignation’ on this score in its letter of dismissal to Houston.64 Despite Duckworth’s attention to the Island’s defensive infrastructure, the onset of war prompted extreme alarm among the inhabitants of the Island which, he told the secretary of state (now Lord Bathurst), ‘threatened to be ruinous even of itself ’. In response, he collaborated closely with the senior army officer at St John’s to improve the land-bound defensive capacities of both St John’s and the outports. He also set up a Committee of Defence in St John’s which drew some of the principal inhabitants of the town into planning for its defence.65 These measures helped to reassure residents and give them confidence in government and in their own resources. As discussed elsewhere, Duckworth’s relationship with the Society of Merchants at St John’s was an uneasy one, so it is particularly significant that when he left the Island at the end of his term, its members presented a fulsome tribute to him for ‘the zeal and attention you have manifested for the safety of your Government’.66 Although Duckworth was unable to provide protection for the provision trade from Canada and was worried about the east-bound convoys,67 he deployed the naval forces at his disposal to provide cover for the most populous outports which he had visited in 1810. He also facilitated the inhabitants’ active participation in their own defence by authorizing magistrates to provide small arms and training, floated the idea of a ‘sea fencible’ force drawing on local fishermen, took steps to reinvigorate the volunteer force under the title of ‘The St John’s Volunteer Rangers’ and organized the population so it could man the batteries and undertake field work in the case of attack. Duckworth went beyond his instructions in conferring commissioned appointments on the officers of the Rangers and providing payment for duty days and clothing. He excused himself to Bathurst by explaining that if

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he had waited for authorization from London the zeal of the people would have ‘subsided’ and their confidence in government ‘so significant in times of difficulty, would have been diminished’.68 Duckworth’s hopes for the volunteers proved overly sanguine. Sir Richard Keats reported poor attendance for drills and parades; by the spring of 1814 he regarded the corps as virtually ‘in abeyance’ and halted all payments for uniforms and provisions.69 He did not doubt the volunteers’ loyalty, just their commitment in the face of an employment boom in the fisheries which took them away from St John’s during the season.70 Fortunately, improvements to the fortifications at St John’s and the outports in the summer of 1813 meant the volunteers were no longer seen as critical to the defence of the Island.71 As both governors and commanders-in-chief, the naval governors were responsible for managing relationships with the subjects of foreign powers who exercised rights in Newfoundland waters derived from earlier treaties. On the outbreak of war Wallace sent a force to seize control of the small island territories of Miquelon and St Pierre off the southern coast of the Island, and throughout the wars French fishermen were prevented from exercising long-held rights to participate in the fisheries and occupy land on what was known as ‘the French shore’. When these rights were restored at the end of the war, there was ongoing tension between French and Newfoundland fishermen over alleged breaches of them. The fact that the French also received a bounty from their government was one of a number of grievances aired by Newfoundland merchants who testified before a House of Commons Committee in 1817.72 US rights in the fisheries were also seen as problematic by Newfoundland interests. By the terms of the Treaty of Paris that had ended the war with the fledgling American republic in 1783, US citizens retained the right to fish off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador and to dry their catches on the adjacent shores. These rights were forfeited when hostilities with the United States began in mid-1812. As that war drew to a close in mid-1814 Keats briefed Lord Melville, the First Lord of the Admiralty, on Newfoundland issues that might play a role in the peace settlement. The Americans’ rights in the fisheries had been a source of friction in the past. Over the years governors had been told of claims of unwarranted aggression by fishermen from New England in specifying and enforcing their rights under this treaty. As far back as 1798, Waldegrave had reported to the Board on the Americans’ intrusions into the estuarian salmon fisheries.73 Successive governors had also been exposed to letters from their irascible colleague Vice Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin, a former naval commissioner at Halifax, who complained of Americans trespassing on two small islands in the Gulf of St Lawrence to which he had been granted rights in the 1780s.74 Towards the close of the War of 1812, Keats told Lord Melville that even the Americans’ legitimate rights gave them a significant competitive advantage in exploiting the fisheries and related trading activity.75 They also facilitated the desertion of British fishermen to US vessels and the smuggling of provisions from the mainland to the Island. These matters were raised in a memorial which Keats received from the Society of Merchants in late 1813 and which he was pleased to lay before the ministry to support his own position.76 He urged the British

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government to include a review of the relevant clauses of the Treaty of Paris in the forthcoming peace negotiations and to consider whether rights under that Treaty extended to salmon fisheries which were located in rivers rather than in coastal bays.77 When Keats found that the Treaty of Utrecht did not provide for the restoration of US fishing rights off the Newfoundland coast, he enthusiastically set about excluding its vessels from the fisheries. This triumph was short-lived. The American rights were restored by the Convention of 1818 which addressed a range of issues which had not been settled during the peace negotiations.78

Accountability and reporting The naval governors’ financial accountabilities to the secretary of state and the Treasury Board were not supported by the legislation which authorized the Admiralty Board to withhold pay and allowances until its demands were satisfied. Nevertheless, governors were personally responsible for bills drawn on official business if the Treasury declined them. Thus, when they paid judicial officers’ annual salaries, governors were obliged to provide the secretary of state with a sworn declaration of payments from the chief justice and receipts from payees. Sir Erasmus Gower’s failure to do so in 1804 led the Treasury to question a bill for £1054 that he had drawn to make these payments. He also faced a series of other accountability queries at this time and a year after his term finished the Audit Office was still wrangling with him over a payment of less than £50 made to drill sergeants and drummers of the St John’s Volunteer force.79 Both Pole and Gambier were engaged with the Treasury over payments made on Newfoundland business several years before.80 When governors returned to England in the late autumn of every year they provided the secretary of state with a ‘General Return of the Newfoundland Fishery’. This document, which ran to more than twenty pages, provided detailed information on the fisheries, the population of the Island, and the garrison. It thus reported on the numbers, origins and tonnage of the ships which had visited during the season and whether or not they had been employed in the various fisheries, the numbers of their crews and passengers, the size of the catch and the destinations to which it was shipped. Governors were also obliged to report on the state of the settlement on the Island, detailing the artificers employed there, the acreage of improved land, the number of dwellings and public houses and the status, gender, religion and location of the settled population, whether they were adults or children (i.e. under fifteen years old), and on the births and deaths that had occurred since the last return. Finally, the ‘General Return’ furnished details of the composition of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment and other forces, the numbers of officers, engineers and men employed in maintaining the fortifications and the state and condition of them. The barrack bedding and stores at St John’s were reported in great detail, as was the ordnance and associated munitions and supplies. The fact that governors were responsible for these returns raises questions about the criticisms that naval governors were ill-informed about the settlement

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they governed.81 Ironically, their returns continue to be a primary source for research on the social and economic history of early modern Newfoundland. In addition to their standard reporting to the secretary of state, the naval governors had also to seek retrospective approval for, and effective reimbursement of, expenses that were not itemized in the annual estimates authorized by parliament. These sums could be significant. Thus in November 1796 Sir James Wallace sought approval for expenditure of close to £500 incurred supplying clothing for the volunteer force at St John’s during the recent emergency, providing relief to destitute residents burnt out of their homes in the Bay of Bulls by the French in the course of their attack on the Island, and the costs of employing local scouts and hiring boats as he responded effectively to enemy incursions.82 Vice Admiral Waldegrave prided himself on having run a tight ship during his term as governor. He clamped down on the long-standing practice of officials receiving government rations to which they were not entitled and reported proudly that he had discontinued their supply to the governor’s residence. This act of self-sacrifice irritated Waldegrave’s immediate successor who complained to the secretary of state that Government House was no longer supplied with candles and firewood from the Barracks, and it may have been the source of a bitter confrontation between Sir Erasmus Gower and an army official in 1806.83 In Gower’s report to William Windham at the end of the season, he complained that he had been harassed by a dispute with Thomas Winter, the Acting Commissary for Stores and Provisions at St John’s. Winter, who was clearly nervous about his own financial exposure and acted on incorrect information from a Treasury official in London, refused to follow the usual practice of settling the cost of minor repairs and housekeeping expenses for Government House. He was dismissive of documentation provided as precedents from previous years and dealt with Gower in a way he thought was ‘highly derogatory to the rank and dignity of the Governor of Newfoundland’.84 Winter would only accept the bills if Gower provided him with a ‘positive Order in Writing from the governor for deferring the same, approved by [the Treasury] Board’. An order of this kind would need to be authorized by the secretary of state or the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury. In the meantime, Winter suggested that the governor’s secretary or someone responsible to him should accept the bills. Gower rejected this suggestion as it would make him personally liable for the charges but then had to endure the ‘indignity’ of being dunned by unpaid tradesmen who confronted him at Government House. The secretary of state was sympathetic to Gower’s position and authorized the continuation of the practice to which he had appealed.85 Waldegrave’s earlier experience when commanding ships at sea made him highly suspicious of the scale of condemnation of military provisions at St John’s.86 A day before he boarded his flagship in 1798 to return home, Waldegrave was asked to sign off on a survey of provisions which condemned goods to the value of £1,457. He believed that the request was timed to conceal deception and had grave doubts about the veracity of the survey. The surveyor had condemned 99 per cent of pork in storage and all of the ‘pease’. Although it was claimed that these stores were very old, they had only been shipped to the Island at the

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beginning of the season and had not been surveyed on arrival. In the course of his service career, Waldegrave would have had extensive experience in authorizing condemned stores and was fully aware that the scale of condemnation in this case was extraordinary. A calculation based on data from the Seven Years’ War showed condemnation rates for both pork and pease of significantly less than 1 per cent.87 Before he sailed for England, Waldegrave gave orders to ensure that if these transactions were corrupt, the benefit to the perpetrators would be minimized. It had been the practice to dispose of condemned stores by private treaty to favoured merchants who then found a market for them among the poorer sections of the community as winter shortages began to press them hard. Waldegrave gave orders for the condemned provisions to be sold by public auction overseen by the magistrates so that they would fetch a fair price and ordinary members of the population would have direct access to them. The price fetched at auction (about 30 per cent of the condemned value) convinced Waldegrave that the survey significantly misrepresented the quality of these stores. By chance, the Commissary of Stores and Provisions spent the winter in England, and Waldegrave urged the secretary of state to arrange for him to be examined on the management of government stores on the Island.88 Investigation suggested that it was a matter of gross inefficiency rather than corruption on the part of the Commissary. It also revealed that he was, contrary to acceptable practice, holding a commission as a member of the garrison, as well as for his commissary role. By addressing these matters and ensuring that officers in the Royal Newfoundland Regiment who were directly or indirectly engaged in trade were not able to exploit their official positions, Waldegrave claimed to have reduced the cost of the military establishment at St John’s by £11,000.89 His attention to these matters extended beyond a concern with economy and probity. It also reflected an official determination to treat the ordinary population fairly, and an awareness that the mishandling of stores on this scale might compromise the safety of the Island by limiting the capacity of the garrison at St John’s to withstand a prolonged attack by enemy forces.90 In late 1810 Duckworth received a form-letter from the Audit Office requiring him to respond to questions on his accounts for the year ending in October 1810 and to submit a sworn statement that they were ‘just and true’.91 Duckworth probably did not need any prompting on the veracity of his financial accounting as he proved to be overly conscientious in these matters. Thus in 1812 he wrote to tell the Audit Office that although other governors had not done so, his reading of the regulations was that he was required to consolidate rental revenue in the account he was submitting for audit. The Office, which was probably not used to officials volunteering information for which it had not asked, queried Duckworth’s interpretation.92 Its communications with Duckworth suggest a tightening of formal accountability requirements that might also explain why Sir Richard Keats sent the secretary of state a detailed list of all bills drawn over the course of the season as a way of launching them on the tortuous route to final approval.93 As noted earlier, Duckworth’s governorship corresponded with an extended crisis in state finance precipitated by the prolongation of the war.

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Although Duckworth had faced his fair share of vexatious accountability demands from the Admiralty Board in the course of his service at sea,94 he was not deterred from taking bold steps when Newfoundland was open to attack from the United States. He authorized magistrates to provide small arms to inhabitants of the outports, and, without seeking approval from London, drew a Treasury bill of close to £1,800 to clothe and equip the volunteer force at St John’s. In addition, he assumed personal responsibility for more than £300 to provide the volunteers with rations from the garrison stores.95 The secretary of state approved this expenditure, but, as Sir Richard Keats took up his appointment, he was told that while using his discretion to support the Newfoundland Volunteers, he should be careful ‘not to engage in any undertaking of which a regular Estimate has not been submitted for the Consideration and Approbation of His Majesty’s Government’.96 Keats heeded this warning but still had to deal with the financial implications of actions taken by Duckworth in the early stages of the war. He explained to the secretary of state that he faced charges of more than £400 incurred in supporting passengers from captured American ships. These costs could not by law be charged against the ships’ cargoes which had been condemned as prizes of Duckworth and his squadron. Keats sought to reduce these expenses by offering captured passengers the option of being shipped to England or emigrating to Prince Edward Island.97

The Government House saga The upkeep and repair of Government House in St John’s involved governors in a series of ongoing financial interactions with officials in London. Until the mid-1780s the amphibious character of the government of Newfoundland was symbolized by being exercised from the commander-in-chief ’s flagship moored at St John’s. In 1786, however, a house was built for the governor within Fort Townsend, the headquarters of the garrison. This building underwent various ad hoc repairs and extensions over the years that followed, but while the accommodation was relatively extensive, it was otherwise unsatisfactory. In Gambier’s time the building consisted of a parlour, dining room, bedroom, two rooms for the governor’s secretary, a large and a small office, kitchen and servants’ hall. A report written for Duckworth described the house as having three ‘best’ bedrooms and included a room for the governor’s flag captain.98 The fundamental problem was that the building was not substantial enough to withstand the climate and was in constant need of repair. Thus before he left the Island in 1799 Waldegrave reported that all the putty around the windows had fallen out and ordered it to be replaced before the onset of winter.99 The furniture did not last long either, presumably because of the effect of exceedingly hard winters on the interior of a partially uninhabited, poorly built, house rather than from rough treatment by the governors. Waldegrave took the precautions of ordering the senior resident naval commander to live in the house over the winter of 1798–9 and ensuring that fuel was supplied so that fires would be kept up throughout the winter months. He hoped that these measures would check the

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all-pervading icy damp that had invaded the house in the previous winter and the effects of which had greeted him on his return to the Island in the spring of 1798. These initiatives became standard practice but proved to be of only limited utility. At the end of Gambier’s first season of residence he sent the secretary of state an extensive inventory of ‘unserviceable’ furniture that had to be replaced from England.100 Repairs to the house and replacement of furniture had to be approved by the secretary of state and the financial arrangements for them authorized by the Treasury. In this case, Henry Addington at the Treasury approved funding for repairs to the house and replacement of the furniture, both of which were described as being in a ‘ruinous state’.101 Sir Erasmus Gower’s decision in 1805 to spend £100 on a stable and carriage house that would make the residence more ‘convenient’ for governors became the focus of a wrangle that was only finally settled in early 1807.102 The furniture seems to have served through his term but was starting to show signs of dilapidation by the first year of Vice Admiral Holloway’s.103 By 1810, the first year of Duckworth’s governorship, both the house and furniture were again in need of expensive attention. On his return to England at the end of that year he provided Lord Liverpool with a very full account of the deficiencies of the property and forwarded an engineer’s report on what might be done to improve it. Duckworth told the secretary of state that the house ‘originally built of very slight materials, has now become so miserably out of repair as to be nearly uninhabitable’. Although the engineer opined that the mode of original construction meant the building could never really be fit for a governor’s residence, Duckworth nevertheless sought authorization for expenditure of £1,253 on extensive repairs and necessary additions to the outbuildings. The report also identified much unserviceable furniture that would need to be replaced.104 At one stage, Duckworth may have contemplated abandoning this house and finding another one outside of Fort Townsend. In late 1810 a putatively disinterested resident of St John’s offered to sell a house at the allegedly bargain price of £3,000, claiming that he would ‘gain little or nothing’ by the transaction.105 This offer was not accepted, and after Duckworth pursued Lord Liverpool on the need for repairs in early 1811, the work was done over that summer.106 This was not the last of Duckworth’s worries over Government House. While he was in England over the winter of 1811–12 he received news that the kitchen had been destroyed by fire and wrote to Liverpool telling him it was necessary for the good of ‘the Governor and the Governed’ that it was rebuilt before his return.107 In the event, the rebuilding was not completed in time so in the 1812 season Duckworth governed first from HMS Antelope, and then took over part of the parsonage house when his flagship went to sea. An escalation of timber costs during the American War meant that the new kitchen would cost £600 more than estimated, and timber required for other maintenance had been destroyed in the fire. The assistant commissary general wrote Duckworth a letter of profuse apologies for the inconvenience he had suffered and sought successfully to gain approval to press on with the work despite the cost overruns.108 Although Duckworth had already surrendered his commission, he wrote to Lord Bathurst

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in late March 1813 urging him to ensure that the renovations were completed in time for the coming season.109 This plea was ineffective and Duckworth’s successor, Sir Richard Keats, had to oversee the final stages of the project when he resided in Newfoundland in 1813. His footsteps were dogged by the same commissary officer who had blighted Gower’s last summer on the Island. Thomas Winter refused to authorize a payment for ‘fences and out offices’ that were in the estimates but omitted by mistake from the instructions he had received. Keats appealed to the secretary of state to expedite authorization, but the Treasury did not settle the matter until early in 1814.110 One of his last acts as governor was to seek authority for expenditure necessary to replace a carpet and twelve dining room chairs which had become ‘warn and defective’.111 There was a tragic post-war coda to the government house saga. Despite the best efforts of the wartime governors, Duckworth’s engineer’s verdict on Government House proved all too true. During his first season at St John’s, Vice Admiral Francis Pickmore, who succeeded Keats, learnt to his dismay that he was required to reside permanently in his seat of government. His first winter in residence was 1816–17, a particularly harsh one even by Newfoundland standards. The severe weather conspired with the well-established shortcomings of Government House and the underlying frailties of Pickmore’s constitution to precipitate a fatal attack of coronary thrombosis.

Season’s end As the admiral-governors’ periods of residence came to an end each autumn, they prepared to remove the seat of their government to England. Returns had to be secured from the outports and from officials at St John’s, and a flurry of last-minute paperwork required their attention. It was common for governors to receive addresses of appreciation from officials and merchants as they prepared to leave St John’s at the end of their terms and to issue acknowledgements of them.112 Requests for permission to erect, repair and alter buildings flooded in at this time, presumably prompted by a desire to get work under way before winter set in and perhaps also to increase the chance of successful applications in the press of endof-season business.113 The governors’ preparations for departure occurred at a time when the fishing season was over and the civilian residents, having previously been engaged in what Lieutenant Edward Chappell, a naval visitor, termed ‘incessant and uninterrupted industry’, turned their attention to leisure activities. For the wealthier classes these took the form of ‘balls, dinners and entertainments’ and for at least some of the poor sections of the population passing affluence facilitated intoxication and rowdiness.114 Joseph Banks recalled a ball with a ‘really Elegant Supper’ given by Commodore Palliser to mark the anniversary of the king’s coronation in October 1766, and long after the event Sir Thomas Byam Martin (who visited Newfoundland when a midshipman in 1786) gave a highly unreliable, secondhand account of a hopelessly inebriated naval governor aping royalty in the course

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of an elaborate ball to mark the birthday of the Prince of Wales in 1785.115 There is, however, no indication that the wartime governors took part in the more sedate forms of socializing in St John’s. Captain William Dillon reported on a ‘grand dinner’ in the Town Hall at Halifax to mark the anniversary of the king’s accession to the throne but did not mention anything on that scale at St John’s. He and a few fellow captains dined informally with Sir Richard Keats and Dillion also attended an ‘official’ dinner to mark the end of the governor’s last season on the Island. This appears, however, to have been a purely naval or perhaps official occasion, with no mention of attendance by leading merchants or professional residents of St John’s. As part of their rapprochement following the convoy management dispute, Dillon made a point of sitting next to Keats and entertaining him, a gesture that would probably have been inappropriate at a formal dinner involving non-service personnel.116 If the naval governors of Newfoundland did not engage socially with local elites in the way their naval counterparts did on other stations, it might be explained by their absorption in pre-departure business when the St John’s season was getting underway, or by the social distance created by their status as the king’s representative. Naval governors’ combined roles and the fact that they did not bring their spouses to St John’s may also have reduced the scope for entertaining and being entertained. In other colonies where commanders-in-chief were not governors, civil and naval leaders were part of a network of reciprocal hospitality. Thus Lady Nugent’s account of her life as the wife of the governor of Jamaica in the early years of the nineteenth century shows her orchestrating social occasions at which flag officers (including Sir John Duckworth) were frequent guests and enjoying hospitality provided by them.117 Apart from the reception given at Government House when they came ashore, mentions of official celebrations of anniversaries of the accession of George III, Waldegrave’s record of a regular evening walk and the possibility that governors’ horses were used for recreational purposes, the social and personal lives of the naval governors in Newfoundland remain a mystery. The extent and complexity of their correspondence might mean that they, like their subjects, spent the season in ‘incessant and uninterrupted industry’. Officers of the garrison were integrated into the social life of the settlement and may, as noted elsewhere, have been uncomfortably close to some of the local business elite.118 Unlike their naval colleagues with whom they do seem to have socialized to some extent, army officers wintered over in Newfoundland and as members of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment were based there for long periods of time. By contrast, naval personnel seem to have been relatively isolated. Chappell frequented the billiard room at the London Tavern, described by a modern historian as St John’s ‘most exclusive establishment’, but complained that he and his service colleagues were only entertained in the homes of the local elite when its members positioned themselves to secure passages to England on naval vessels at the end of the season.119 The apparent isolation of naval governors in Newfoundland contrasted sharply with the extensive social interactions enjoyed by their service colleagues on other

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stations. Nelson’s onshore engagements at Naples became notorious and Vice Admiral George Berkely found the social demands of his command at Lisbon so great that he complained to his friends of the ruinous expense of the posting. Nearer home, family ties, local connections and shared religious and political values provided the basis for commanders-in-chief at Cork and those commanding the Channel Islands squadron to play active roles in local society.120 Extensive and lavish mutual hospitality between senior naval officers and colonial elites has been seen as an important contribution to integrating the Royal Navy with the power structure of Britain’s Caribbean colonies. These ties were thought particularly important where the navy would be expected to support the civil power in the event of uprisings by the enslaved populations of these colonies.121 Duckworth, who had commanded at Jamaica at an earlier stage in his career, would have been particularly alive to the difference between naval life at Kingston and St John’s. Like Berkeley, he had complained sharply of the personal cost of entertaining. In his case, this burden included the maintenance of an extensive house ashore for which the Board adamantly declined to pay.122 Having utilized the passage home to come to grips with their official paperwork, the naval governors reported from their flagships at Spithead on their actions during the recent season and sought approval for measures that lay outside, and sometimes ran contrary to, the instructions with which they had been issued before they sailed. As their awareness of the increasingly complex needs of the settlement developed, they made proposals for the better governance of the Island. The naval governors remained on their flagships for a few weeks, then sought the Admiralty Board’s permission to travel to London to consult with the secretary of state and were invariably given leave to spend the winter months ashore. They continued, however, to attend to the civil business of the Island. As in the naval side of their duties, governors acted as a conduit of local demands and were able, as a consequence of their prolonged residence in England over the winter, to bring these matters directly to the attention of the secretary of state and his senior officials. John Reeves had identified this practice as an advantage of migratory naval government.123 Over the winter months, the governors responded to interrogatory enquiries from government agencies that were channelled through the secretary of state’s office. They also pressed for responses to proposals for improvements made in their reports and other correspondence. They rarely received decisions on their requests until shortly before they set sail in the spring. Over the course of the war, a practice emerged of providing governors with a single consolidated response to a multitude of questions they had posed over the course of the previous half a year from St John’s, Spithead, London and various country residences. Sometimes the timing was very tight. Thus in mid-1806 Sir Erasmus Gower, who had made many calls on the secretary of state’s attention, wrote from Spithead telling William Windham that he had received no replies to a string of letters addressed to him and his predecessor dating back to late November 1805. He reminded the secretary of state that he would be sailing for Newfoundland in a week or so.124

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Conclusion The aspects of civil government discussed in this chapter were routine in the sense that they were part of the standard requirements of the role. The naval governors took these responsibilities seriously and were well prepared for them by the heavy administrative load carried by flag officers who commanded fleets at sea or major ports in England. Although the wartime governors’ military responsibilities were onerous, there is no indication that they absorbed all their attention and detracted from their consideration of other matters.125 In addition to applying their wellhoned administrative and logistics skills to their routine civil and military duties, the naval governors of Newfoundland also undertook a range of initiatives in response to their perception of the developing needs of an increasingly large and diverse residential population. Their approach to these challenges, which will be considered in a later chapter, was hampered by the peculiar financial position of the settlement they governed. By the end of the war the civil establishment estimates for Newfoundland were £5,080, a very significant increase on the provision for the early war years. This sum was, however, about a thousand pounds less than the estimates for New Brunswick and twelve hundred less than those for Prince Edward Island.126 Moreover, these colonies, like those in the Caribbean, possessed elected assemblies that were empowered to raise local revenue for local purposes. In their absence, the naval governors’ capacity to respond to the changing needs of those subjects was determined by their ability to appeal to the government in London and to harness the philanthropic goodwill of the local elite.

Notes 1 NA ADM 50/39. 2 NMM MRK/101/10/38 30//11/1806, not foliated. 3 See herein, p. 217, and Jerry Bannister, The Rule of the Admirals. Law, Custom, and Naval Government in Newfoundland, 1699-1832 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 113, for the implications of winter weather and very poor internal communications. 4 See John Morrow, British Flag Officers in the French Wars, 1793-1815: Admirals’ Lives (London: Bloomsbury Academic 2018), 24–5. 5 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 15: 183, 1/10/1805, 16: 54, 29/7/1806, 17: 256, 25/10/1807. 6 NA CO 194/44, f130–2v, 18/7/1805. 7 Bannister, Rule of the Admirals, 165. Bannister does not deal with the lapse and restoration of this post. 8 CO 194/43, f177, 12/12/1803 (Gambier); 194/45, f48, 16/4/1806 (Gower); John Reeves, History of the Government of Newfoundland &c (London: J. Sewell, J Debrett and J. Downes, 1793), 98–9. 9 NA CO 194/54, f132, 25/9/1813; CO 194/55, f11, 23/3/1814; CO 194/56, f110, 10/11/1815. 10 NA CO 194/45, f48, 16?/4/1806, f247, 19/5/1806; CO 194/54, f132, 25/9/1813; CO 194/55, f110, 10/11/1815; CO 194/46, f76, 25/11/1807.

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11 Quoted John Davenport Rogers, Newfoundland: Historical and Geographical (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1918), 154. On Graham see DCB, V. 12 Newfoundland was included in a raft of colonial Vice Admiralty Court appointments that Earl St Vincent approved in mid-1803; D. Bonner-Smith, ed., The Letters of Lord St Vincent, 1801-1804, 2 vols (London: Navy Records Society, 1922, 1927), II: 219, 14/7/1803. 13 See ‘Thomas Tremlett’, DCB, VI. 14 See Helen Taft Manning, British Colonial Government After the American Revolution 1782-1820 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1933), 93–5. 15 Dispatches Received by the Governor of Newfoundland from the Secretary of State, 3 vols (St. John’s: Memorial University DAI, nd), 1: 64; II: 47. 16 NA CO 194/46, ff108–15, 27/1/1807, f32, 1/5/1807. Trounsell’s query was framed by a peculiar and perhaps self-serving suggestion that the perceived difficulty might be avoided by redefining the role as that of a half-year ‘superintendent’ who would stand in for the governor when he was absent; presumably governors would continue to appoint the secretaries who managed their office and much of their correspondence. It’s unclear if Trounsell saw himself combining both of these posts. He suggested a salary of £400pa; by 1816 the governor’s secretary’s salary was £182/10, Dispatches Received, II: 47. 17 NA CO 194/46, ff114–v, 23/1/1807, f118v, 22/10/1806. 18 NA CO 194/46, ff194–5, 22/9/1807. The weight of the Prince’s interest was not put to the test on this occasion because he had been wrongly informed that the chief justice’s position was vacant. 19 NA CO 194/40, f88–v, 12/6/1798. 20 NA CO 194/43, f255–v, 9/1/1803. 21 See herein, p. 68. 22 NA CO 194/49, ff211–12, 2/3/1810; Holloway’s challenge is recorded in CO 194/50, f318, 24/10/1809. 23 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 19: 287, 21/10/1809. 24 NA CO 194/49, ff224–6, 23/3/1810. 25 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 12: 262, 19/10/1802. 26 The first notice of this case seems to have been made by Charles Penny in ‘Peter W. Carter’, Newfoundland Quarterly, 108, no. 1 (Summer 2015): 48–54. Penney provides a number of details on the dispute but is primarily interested in the role of law and custom in the judgement that concluded it. He does not delve into Noble’s background and is not concerned with his appointment as an exercise in patronage. 27 Professor Nicholas Rodger has drawn attention to the propriety of distinguishing between this designation and that of a commissioned officer of the Royal Navy (a ‘sea officer’) with which it is often confused; see N. A. M. Rodger, The Command of the Ocean. A Naval History of Britain 1649-1815 (London: Allan Lane, 2004), 380. Keats referred to a ‘naval officer’ in the usual sense of the term when he suggested the appointment of an official to manage naval port facilities at St John’s during the war of 1812; NA ADM1/478, f260, 24/12/1813. 28 These figures are based on the accounts that Peter Carter provided after the court case when he was seeking appointment to the office; NA CO194/64, f42, 24/1/1821. 29 NA CO 194/42, ff277–8, 20/5/1799; for Routh’s relationship with the merchants see herein, pp. 82, 111, 129, 146. 30 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 10: 176, 19/10/1799. 31 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 10: 114, 27/9/1799.

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32 ‘John Noble Esq’ is recorded as a ‘Newfoundland merchant’ in Sketchley’s Bristol Directory (Bristol: James Sketchley, 1775), 70, as a member of the Common Council in E. Shiercliff, The Bristol and Hotwell Guide etc (Bristol: E. Shiercliff, 1789), 97 and as an alderman in Matthews’ New Bristol Directory for the Year 1793-4 (Bristol: William Matthews, 1794), 3. For Noble’s clerkship see J. C. Sainty, ed., Office Holders in Modern Britain: Volume 5, Home Office Officials 1782-1870 (London: University of London, 1975), 47–61. His appointment as a senior clerk in 1822 may have been compensation for the loss of his Newfoundland sinecure. 33 Portland’s involvement in Bristol electoral politics in the 1790s is reported in the constituency entry for 1790–1820 in R. G. Thorne, The House of Commons, 5 vols (London: Secker and Warburg, 1986), II: 168–9. 34 Waldegrave’s successor granted Noble leave of absence in late April 1801, noting his appointment of a ‘proper person to act . . . during your absence’. Pole’s permission was for a year’s leave, but, although there are no further records of requests for extensions, it seems to have been treated as perpetual; PAN D’Alberti Papers, 12: 9, 29/4/1801. In Carter’s case, appointment was as a substantive officeholder deputizing for the naval officer rather than as one of the subordinate officials working in the outports who were confusingly known by the same title. 35 NA CO 194/64, ff141–2, 24/1/1821. 36 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 16: 325, 22/10/1806. 37 NA CO 194/63, f231v, 21/6/1820. 38 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 18: 30, 14/6/1808, f51 20/7/1808. Penny, ‘Peter W. Carter’ seems unaware of Carter’s dubious role in this murky affair, but it did not have any bearing on the legal question on which he focused. 39 James Candow, ‘The British Army in Newfoundland, 1697-1824’, Newfoundland Quarterly, 79, no. 4 (1984): 23, 25–6. 40 See Olaf Janzen, ‘Garrison’, in Encyclopaedia of Newfoundland and Labrador, ed. Joseph Smallwood et al., 5 vols (St. John’s: Newfoundland Book Publishers (1967) Ltd, 1981–94), III: 547, for the garrison’s role in upholding the aura of governorship. 41 In 1805, they amounted to £2,500; House of Commons, Finance Accounts of Great Britain 1805 (London, 1805), 275. 42 On the role of Placentia see John Mannion, ‘Irish Merchants Abroad’, Newfoundland and Labrador Studies, 2, no. 2 (1986): 138. 43 NMM DUC/17, 11/12/1811. 44 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 5: 255, 1/9/1796. 45 G. W. C. Nicholson, The Fighting Newfoundlanders: A History of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006), 33-4. 46 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 5: 82–3, 31/8/1794, 84–6, 1/9/1794. 47 NA CO 194/39, f66, 2/2/1797; Naval Chronicle, 7 (1802), 330. 48 NA CO 194/39, f126, 25/10/1797; f129, 3/10/1797. 49 NA CO 194/43, f153, 21/5/1803. 50 Castlereagh’s concerns lend support to Olaf Janzen’s argument that the American Revolutionary War demonstrated that the defence of the Island required a degree of integration of naval and military capacities; see Olaf Janzen, ‘The Royal Navy and the Defence of Newfoundland in the American Revolutionary War’, Acadiensis’, 14, no. 1 (1984): 28–48. 51 NMM DUC/16, dating from 22/8/1805.

100 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86

87

Notes to pp. 77–97 NA CO 194/44, ff40–3, 28/11/1804. Nicholson, The Fighting Newfoundlanders, 48, 64. NA CO 194/44, ff120–1, 18/7/1805. See Manning, British Colonial Government, 121 for the practice elsewhere in the empire. NA CO 195/15, f251, 28/1/1794. NA CO 194/41, ff91, 30/4/1795, 92–3, 12/5/1795. NA CO 194/45, ff127–31, 24/10/1806. NA CO 194/46, ff40–2, 28/5/1807. NA CO 194/49, f45, 25/11/1810, See William Whiteley, Duckworth’s Newfoundland (St John’s: Harry Cluff Publishing, 1985), 14. PAN D’Alberti Papers, 21: 333, 8/11/1811, 17/12/1811. Ibid., 345, 27/12/1811. PAN D’Alberti Papers, 22:1, 6/1/1812; see Morrow, British Flag Officers, 215 for Duckworth’s extraordinary accumulation of luxuries and curiosities in the West Indies. PAN D’Alberti Papers, 22: 138–9, 13/8/1812. Ibid., 22: 504–6, 22/10/1812. Ibid., 171, 20/8/1812. NA CO 194/52, f74, 23/7/1812, f95, 1/11/1812; see Whiteley, Duckworth’s Newfoundland, 47–50. NA CO 194/55, ff23–4, 5/7/1814. Nicholson, The Fighting Newfoundlanders, 57. NA CO 194/54, ff160–2, 18/12/1813. D. A. Sutherland, ‘1810-1820. War and Peace’, in The Atlantic Region to Confederation, ed. John G. Reid and Philip Buckner (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 248; Great Britain House of Commons, Select Committee on the State of Trade to Newfoundland and the Situation of the Settlement, June 1817 (London, 1817), 4–7. NA ADM 1/474, 10/1/1798. NA CO 194/43, f295, 30/4/1803. NMM AGC/33/10, MS/49/255/5, 18/4/1814, 20/4/1814. PAN D’Alberti Papers, 23: 413–17, 7/10/1813, 418, 9/11/1813. NMM AGC/33/10, MS/49/255/5, 18/4/1814, 20/4/1814; NA CO 194/56, f30, 29/5/1815. Convention of 1818 between the United States of America and Great Britain, Article 1. NA CO 194/44, f267, 30/11/1804; CO 194/47, ff88–9, 5/2/1808. NA CO 194/44, f314, 3/8/1805, f316, 29/10/1805. See herein, pp. 209–11, 216. NA CO 194/39, f66v, 2/2/1797. NA CO 194/42, f226, 25/10/1800. NA CO 194/45, f179, 9/11/1806. NA CO 194/45, ff179–80, 9/11/1806; CO 194/46, f192, 9/3/1807. See Roger Knight and Martin Wilcox, Sustaining the Fleet, 1793-1815. War, the British Navy and the Contractor State (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2010), Chapter 3, for the wider context of flag officers’ provisioning responsibilities and accountabilities. See N. A. M. Rodger, The Wooden World. An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy (London: William Collins, 1986), 84–5.

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88 NA CO 194/40, ff129, 133–4, 29/10/1798, f164, 26/12/1798; CO 194/42, f1, 22/1/1799. The survey condemned more than 50,000 pounds of flour, all but 33 of 3,000 pieces of pork and the entire stock of 1,640 gallons of pease. When sold by public auction even the pease fetched £34. 89 NMM WDG/4/20, c May 1800. 90 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 7: 340–1, 25/10/1797. 91 NMM DUC/16, MS 83/089, 11/12/1810. 92 NMM DUC/18, MS 83/089. 93 NA CO 194/56, f71–2v, 25/10/1815; see Roger Knight, ‘Politics and Trust in Victualing the Navy, 1793-1815’, Mariner’s Mirror, 94, no. 2 (2008): 133–49, 143–5, for the increasing stringency applied to this aspect of the Navy’s financial operations in the period. 94 See Morrow, British Flag Officers, 16. 95 NA CO 194/52, ff91, 94–6, 1/11/1812. 96 NA CO 194/54 f44, 7/4/1813. 97 NA CO 194/54, ff81–2, 30/7/1813. 98 NA CO 194/43, ff 45–6, 20/4/1802; NMM DUC/30, 18/2/1812. 99 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 10: 136, 5/10/1799. 100 NA CO 194/43, f41, 20/4/1802. 101 NA CO 194/43, f225, 11/5/1802. 102 NA CO 194/44, f110, 4/4/1805; CO 194/46, f107, 15/1/1807. 103 NA CO 194/46, f72, 25/10/1807. 104 NA CO 194/49, ff183, 185–7, 192–3, 25/11/1810. 105 NMM DUC/16, 22/12/1810. 106 NA CO 194/50, f69, 19/2/1811; CO 194/51, f43, 9/11/1811; NMM DUC/17, 3/6/1811, 20/12/1811. 107 NA CO 194/52, f6, 12/3/1812. 108 NA CO 194/53, f21, 4/11/1812; PAN D’Alberti Papers, 23: 415–17, 12/10/1812. 109 NA CO 194/54, f33, 29/3/1813. 110 NA CO 194/54, f77v, 29/7/1813, CO 194/55, f141, 17/3/1814; CO 194/55, f11, 22/3/1814. 111 NA CO 194/57, f42, 26/4/1816. 112 See herein, pp. 205–7. 113 This correspondence plays a major role in the Colonial Secretary’s Letterbook for September and October of each year as transcribed in the D’Alberti Papers. Unless decisions became causes of significant contention they were not brought to the secretary of state’s attention and do not appear in CO 194. 114 Edward Chappell, A Voyage … to Newfoundland (London: J. Maw, 1818), 208. 115 A. M. Lysaght, ed. Joseph Banks in Newfoundland and Labrador, 1766. His Diary, Manuscripts and Collections (London: Faber and Faber, 1971), 146–7; R. V. Hamilton, ed. Letters and Papers of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Thomas Byam Martin GCB, 1773-1854, 3 vols (London: Navy Records Society, 1898–1903), I: 37–43. The editor of this material cautions that it is the ‘confused remembrance of traditional yarns’ (37, n.1). The officer described in it was never governor of Newfoundland, although he shared a surname with a man who was. 116 Michael Lewis, ed., A Narrative of My Professional Adventures (1790-1839) by William Henry Dillon, KCH., Vice-Admiral of the Red, 2 vols (London: Navy Records Society, 1953), II: 299–300, 300, 317.

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117 Philip Wright, ed., Lady Nugent’s Journal of her Residence in Jamaica from 1801-1805 (Kingston: University of West Indies Press, 2002), passim. 118 Janzen, ‘Garrison’, 547. In the immediate post-war period one of the army officers was on sufficiently familiar visiting terms with Dr William Carson’s family to make a saucy comment to his daughter. She does not seem to have resented this but the doctor did and the matter became a subject of legal action; see Joseph R. Smallwood, Dr. William Carson. His Life, Letters and Speeches (St John’s: no publisher, 1938), Centre for Newfoundland Studies, St John’s, DAI, typescript, 141–2. 119 Keith Mercer, Rough Justice: Policing, Crime, and the Origin of the Newfoundland Constabulary, 1729-1871 (St. John’s: Flanker Press, 2021), Chapter 5, 5. 120 Morrow, British Flag Officers, 213. 121 Siân Williams, ‘The Royal Navy and Caribbean Colonial Society during the 18th century’, in The Royal Navy and the British World c. 1750-1820, ed. John McAleer and Christer Petley (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 33–5. 122 Morrow, British Flag Officers, 215. 123 John Reeves, Mr Reeves’ Evidence before a Committee of the House of Commons on the Trade of Newfoundland (London: J. Sewell, J. Debrett and J. Downes, 1793), 98–9. 124 NA CO 194/45, f101, 17/6/1806. 125 Cf A. H. McLintock, The Establishment of Constitutional Government, 1783-1832 (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1941), 82, 94. 126 House of Commons, Parliamentary Papers, Estimates of the Charges for Defraying the Civil Establishments of … Colonies, 1 January-31 December 1815, 18/4/1815 (London, 1815), 207.

Chapter 4 AUTHORITY, DISCIPLINE AND PUBLIC ORDER

The naval governors of Newfoundland were responsible for maintaining their authority as commanders-in-chief and governors, administering justice to the civilian inhabitants of the settlement and maintaining public order among them. These responsibilities were interlocking to some considerable extent because governors’ authority was closely tied up with their effective control of the naval forces under their command and would be compromised if (as had occurred in Newfoundland prior to 1729 and was currently playing out in New South Wales) senior officers of the garrison were not seen as subordinate to them. This chapter will consider the wartime governors’ responses to challenges to their authority arising from the naval crews under their command and from jurisdictional disputes with senior army officers. It will then look at their attempts to strengthen the Island’s judicial system and related infrastructure and to maintain their authority over a diverse community of public officials, wealthy and well-connected merchants, artificers and those employed in the fisheries.

Discipline in the Newfoundland squadron The late Georgian flag officers’ cadre was imbued with a strongly developed sense of its status in a markedly hierarchical service. In the wake of the large-scale and prolonged mutinies at Spithead and the Nore in the spring of 1797, however, its members were particularly alert to any challenges to their authority.1 In common with flag officers on other stations, those commanding the Newfoundland squadron needed to maintain the discipline and effectiveness of their ships’ companies and were aware of the Admiralty Board’s demanding expectations. They knew that if reports of ill-discipline in their squadron reached the Board they posed a threat to their professional reputations and to their prospects of future employment and other rewards. In the Newfoundland context, however, serious challenges to naval governors’ authority might also have adverse implications for their gubernatorial responsibilities. As Jerry Bannister put it, ‘the squadron comprised both the symbolic and material power of the British Crown.’2 During the war years two naval governors, William Waldegrave and Sir John Duckworth, faced significant disciplinary challenges in vessels under their command.

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Waldegrave’s problems were residual effects of the Spithead and the Nore mutinies.3 As he was preparing to leave England to sail to Newfoundland, his peace of mind was seriously disturbed by mutinous rumblings among the crew of his flagship, the frigate Latona. In common with the officers of other ships caught up in these mutinies, Waldegrave and his senior colleagues suffered the ignominy of being sent ashore by the crew. When they were permitted to return on board he was relieved at being able to remove his ship promptly from the contagious atmosphere on the English coast. The Latonians again refused obedience during a brief stop in St Michael’s Channel in the Azores, but Waldegrave appeared to have settled matters when he extracted a promise from the crew to obey their officers in future. To his indignant surprise, this promise was broken soon after the ship arrived at St John’s. Prime (and irreplaceable) seamen serving as foretopmen refused obedience, behaved riotously on shore and, when back onboard, uttered threats of violence from the anonymity of their hammocks: ‘The Marines were threatened to be thrown overboard, and blood-work promised as soon as the Ship should again be in blue-water.’4 The role of the foretopmen in these disturbances followed a common pattern for mutineers to be drawn from among the best seamen.5 These grave challenges to Waldegrave’s authority as a flag officer were exacerbated by his dual roles as governor and commander-in-chief. The Latonians’ onshore demonstrations caused disquiet among the business community at St John’s and threatened to weaken the governor’s authority in its eyes. Their actions also promoted fears that the spirit of disaffection would spread to the garrison. Concerns about the ‘loyalty’ of Irish Roman Catholics in Newfoundland had cropped up from time to time earlier in the century, and flag officers’ brought to the governorship perceptions that Irish seamen played leading roles in recent large-scale mutinies in home waters.6 Waldegrave was particularly concerned that the prevalence of Irish troops in the Royal Newfoundland Regiment increased its susceptibility to the seditious example of disaffected members of his own ship’s company. While this risk did not materialize in 1797, the threat to Waldegrave’s professional reputation was compounded by the likelihood that reports of disturbances would make their way to England in private correspondence. He tried to mitigate this risk by communicating directly with the Duke of Portland, the secretary of state, on what were essentially naval matters.7 Waldegrave took early steps to address legitimate grievances among his crews over shortages of fresh beef, lemon juice and sugar. When insubordination continued, however, he threatened the mutinous Latonians with the full severity of the Articles of War and the firepower of the garrison artillery. These threats were backed up with warnings of an even more painful fate awaiting mutineers: ‘[Y]our guilty consciences will torment you day and night, till an untimely end shall relieve you from the Miseries of this world, to face that awful Tribunal, the Justice of which neither the Monarch or the Beggar can escape.’8 Waldegrave’s warnings of divine retribution mirrored those made by Admiral Adam Duncan, the commander-in-chief of the North Sea fleet, when faced with mutiny on ships of his squadron moored off Yarmouth.9 Waldegrave refused to accept placatory

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gestures from other members of the ship’s company and abused them roundly for giving covert encouragement to their openly mutinous brethren. In an attempt to protect his reputation at home and divide and rule military and naval personnel at St John’s, Waldegrave responded effusively to demonstrations of loyalty from the non-commissioned officers and privates of the garrison and the Marines in his squadron and commended the ‘honest integrity’ of those who had resisted the threats and blandishments of the mutineers. He capitalized on local resentment at what he termed the ‘plundering’ behaviour of the Latonians ashore to convince them of their lack of popular support. Waldegrave underlined the point by authorizing the magistrates to seize and punish crew members for infractions committed onshore. He also ordered them to assemble the constables of St John’s, issue stern warnings to the townspeople and urge them to unite against the forces of disorder and disloyalty. The constables were threatened with the loss of their tavern keeper’s licences if they did not act vigorously against those who disrupted public order.10 When Waldegrave received news of the execution of Richard Parker, seen as the prime ringleader in the Nore mutiny, he immediately passed it on to the crew of the Latona. He told the secretary of state that this communication had a salutary effect on them and on civilian bystanders.11 These measures may have helped to prevent disaffection in the garrison but the Latonians continued to be troublesome. Waldegrave railed at the ‘diabolical and wilful spirit of mutiny which has so long contaminated’ the crew and courted the displeasure of the Admiralty Board by sending the ship without authorization on a convoy to Portugal.12 He announced apologetically to the Board that ‘the only mode of taming them was by giving the Ship a very long cruise’.13 Senior officers often dealt with large-scale disobedience by getting affected ships to sea in the expectation that it would give their officers a chance to re-impose habits of discipline through the demands of work routines and by eliminating the idle hours in which disaffected ‘ringleaders’ could ferment discontent among their biddable ship mates. Waldegrave’s actions were consistent with this approach, but it was unusual that he did not identify alleged ringleaders and subject them to fearsome exemplary punishment.14 The contrast between Waldegrave’s alarmist and violent language and the leniency of his measures were indicative of a deficiency of the ‘nerves under responsibility’ that Earl St Vincent regarded as a key quality for successful flag command.15 In Waldegrave’s case, the pressure of responsibility was increased by an appreciation of the link between upholding his naval authority effectively and its practical and symbolic implications for his authority as governor. In common with other flag officers, Waldegrave reacted sharply to what he saw as weak disciplinary practice among his officers. These claims were often associated with the outcomes of courts martial. Although commanders-inchief did not preside at these hearings and could not interfere in their findings, there were ways in which they could express their disapproval if they thought presiding officers had discharged their duties with discipline-sapping leniency. In 1798 Waldegrave clashed with two of his captains over the outcome of a court martial which resulted in a seaman receiving a sentence of thirty lashes for

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showing contempt for his commanding officer. Waldegrave criticized Captain Henry Blackwood of the Brilliant for speaking in the man’s favour because of his brave role in a subsequent enemy action and demonstrated his displeasure with Captain Southeran, the president of the court, by pardoning the offender.16 When Waldegrave became aware that Southeran intended to write to the Board protesting his action (a not uncommon move when senior officers came into conflict), he felt obliged to provide it with an explanation. He told the Board that this outcome would be less likely to undermine a system of naval discipline that relied on exemplary punishment than to carry out a sentence that was ‘wholly inadequate to the offence’.17 Sir John Duckworth was the only other wartime commander-in-chief at Newfoundland to face serious disciplinary challenges in his squadron. In late September 1812, as he was preparing to leave Newfoundland for the last time, he had to respond to an outbreak of mutinous conduct on HMS Pomone at St John’s, a frigate commanded by Captain Francis Fane. When Duckworth went on board to inspect the ship, crew members asked to speak to him and then made complaints against the captain and the first lieutenant. He was already aware that there had been grumblings on board since the ship was first commissioned, largely due to the crew’s resentment at the amount of hard work involved in getting the ship ready for sea. As Waldegrave’s reaction to the Latonians’ misconduct and earlier responses to incidents in fleets at Spithead and Yarmouth showed, it was not uncommon for flag officers to attempt to nip widespread mutiny in the bud by exerting their personal authority over the crews involved. Highly accomplished officers such as Admiral (later Lord) Duncan and Lord Keith had taken this approach in the earlier mutinies in English waters. Rather than leaving the matter to their captains they intervened directly. Having acted quickly on the complaints they then engaged personally and forcibly with the crews concerned, reminding them of their duty to the country and the service, and pointing to the evil consequences that would be visited on them if they refused it. These disciplinary sermons often included warnings to the men to avoid being led astray by plausible manipulative ‘ringleaders’ from the lower deck.18 Earl St Vincent had played a leading role in dealing with mutineers in his Mediterranean command in mid-1797, and two years later a mutiny at Cape Town was put down after effective intervention by Vice Admiral Pringle.19 In 1794 when he was still a captain Duckworth had handled a mutinous incident on his ship without resorting to courts martial20 and was equally assured in handling the threat of mutiny as a flag officer. He immediately investigated the Pomonians’ claims, and having judged them to be groundless, returned onboard, gave the crew a stern lecture and ordered their ship to sea. According to the record of the incident in his journal, Duckworth ‘reprimanded them in the strongest language for their vile conduct and assured them that if they dared resist the First Lts orders and refused to weigh the anchor, I would immediately order the Forts to fire upon the ship’.21 Waldegrave had made an identical threat against the Latona, and the proximity of shore batteries had also played a role in putting an end to a widespread mutiny among crews of ships anchored off Sheerness in the spring of 1797.22

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Duckworth’s handling of this crisis of naval discipline was far more self-assured than Waldegrave’s transactions with the Latonians and more successful. The crew of the Pomone maintained obedience as it prepared to leave St John’s and on the short restorative voyage on which the ship had been ordered. During the cruise another piece of the puzzle fell into place when a particularly reprehensible ringleader was identified in the form of William Geydon, the quartermaster. While conducting a search for stolen property, one of the Pomone’s officers discovered it in Geydon’s sea chest. He also found an autobiographical manuscript detailing a career of serial desertion, piracy and double murder. As the Quartermaster, Geydon wielded considerable influence over the crew, and Duckworth formed the view that he had been the instigator of their unsettled conduct. He was transferred to a home-bound ship and put in irons. The exposure of Geydon as the ringleader who had led otherwise sound men astray provided the opportunity for Duckworth to further steady the crew when the ship returned to St John’s by granting pardons to two men upon whom Captain Fane had requested courts martial.23 This move was quite different from Waldegrave’s idiosyncratic pardon of a seaman who had already faced a court martial. Having identified a leading offender who would be the subject of exemplary punishment, Duckworth felt he was in a position to recognize the crew’s return to discipline by an act of leniency towards two men who had very likely acted out of character. In so doing, he followed the line of selective severity that was commonly applied by senior officers in the late Georgian navy.24 Fane would have understood the significance of this gesture and did not, as had been the case in the pardon granted by Waldegrave, take any steps to challenge it by writing to the Admiralty Board.

Naval governors and the army Up until 1799 the governor was accountable for provisions supplied to the garrison at St John’s but the troops who manned it were under the immediate control of the local army commander on regimental matters. This officer, a colonel, reported to the senior general officer commanding the British military forces at Halifax, Nova Scotia. The troops of the garrison were subject to systems of army discipline for which he was ultimately responsible, and until 1798 ‘General Courts Martial’, with the power to pass death sentences over both army and naval personnel, could only be called on his authority. For most of the war years the relationship between the local army commanders and the naval governors ran smoothly and showed no signs of the heated and prolonged inter-service conflicts in which some flag officers became embroiled in other theatres of war.25 On occasion, however, ambiguities in the language of commissions, delegations and instructions and the professional sensitivities of the officers involved gave rise to jurisdictional disputes between naval governors and senior officers in the Nova Scotia high command. During his term as governor Admiral Mark Milbanke was reputed to have thrown an order from the army high command into the fire, and a few years later Sir James Wallace was snubbed by the War Office when he attempted to appoint

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a surgeon to the garrison at St John’s. He also had a testy exchange with the army high command over recruitment on the Island.26 This last issue was the starting point of later disputes involving William Waldegrave and Sir Erasmus Gower. As noted in an earlier chapter, the establishment of naval government had been due in part to the reluctance of some senior army officers to accept the supremacy of the commander-in-chief in civil affairs. A more recent re-enactment of this scenario had been played out in Botany Bay, another settlement under the government of the senior naval officer on the station. In the 1790s and early 1800s army officers’ obstructive attitude had seriously impeded the administration of justice in both civilian and military cases and cast a shadow over governors’ authority that took decades to dispel.27 The naval governors’ reaction to the army’s claims over recruitment in Newfoundland were underpinned by their concern that it signalled subordination to the army commander-in-chief, compromised their government and impeded the effective defence of the Island. In late October 1797 Waldegrave wrote seeking Portland’s support when one of the king’s sons, Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent, the senior army officer in Halifax, ordered him to facilitate the work of a recruiting party he was sending to Newfoundland. This order raised the question of whether the naval government of Newfoundland was subordinate to that of Nova Scotia. In a series of formally deferential exchanges Waldegrave resisted this idea firmly but was told by the Duke that as commander at Halifax he acted on the orders of General Prescott, the commander-in-chief of His Majesty’s Forces in Canada and Nova Scotia, whose commission extended to Newfoundland. In correspondence with the secretary of state, Waldegrave described the Duke’s order as an affront to the naval ‘corps’  ’ ‘hereditary’ right to govern Newfoundland. It was also, he claimed, inconsistent with the terms of his commission as governor which ‘declares me to be . . . Military as well as Civil Governor, and as wholly independent of Nova Scotia, as of the Empire of China’ and it also threatened the security of the Island.28 He reminded the secretary of state that Sir James Wallace’s recent success in repelling a French attempt on Newfoundland had showed quite clearly how important it was for the commander-in-chief and his officers to have complete and independent responsibility for the defence of the Island and control of the naval personnel who were mobilized in support of the army. Waldegrave declared himself ‘all astonishment’ to find he was reduced to being ‘only the civil governor and naval commander’.29 These arguments found favour with Lord Spencer at the head of the Admiralty Board. He told Henry Dundas, the secretary of state for war, that the army’s position was ‘preposterous’. It would be ‘as full convenient . . . that [the government of Newfoundland] should be under the orders of the Governor of Gibraltar as the Governor of Canada’. Spencer thought that naval government was appropriate to Newfoundland’s distinctive character and endorsed Waldegrave’s claims that Wallace’s success demonstrated the defensive importance of naval supremacy.30 In 1793 a former lieutenant governor had declared before the House of Commons Committee on the State of the Trade of Newfoundland that he had acted on the assumption that he was ‘under the government of ’ Lord Dorchester, the

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‘Governor-General of Canada.’31 This witness, Major John Elford, was a relatively junior army officer, and Dorchester was a general in that service. The position he advanced would certainly not have been accepted by the naval governors of the Island. During the course of his governorship, Waldegrave was highly sensitive to perceived challenges to his dignity and authority, and in this case he saw himself as the champion of the naval government of the Island. It may also be significant that when he was commander-in-chief at Portsmouth he had been embroiled in a bitter inter-service dispute over whether troops on board ships of the Royal Navy were subject to the disciplinary power of ships’ captains or their own officers.32 Over the winter of 1797–8 Waldegrave pursued this matter with great vigour, consulting legal texts on North American colonies and supporting his claim to unqualified government by reference to the dating of his commission. He argued that since it postdated that of General Prescott it ‘superseded’ it. Waldegrave also stressed the distinctive defensive requirements of Newfoundland – the lack of means of internal communication meant that only the navy could defend the outports – and warned of the dangers of any hint of ‘divided authority’: ‘I can discover nothing in this divided authority but perpetual broils and endless references to His Majesty.’ These disputes would disrupt the harmony prevailing between the naval squadron and the garrison with ‘fatal consequences’ for the security of the Island.33 On this occasion Waldegrave won a partial victory over his army rivals. General Prescott was issued with a new commission which excluded Newfoundland and the naval governor was given authority to convene ‘General Courts Martial’ which could hand down death sentences. These arrangements satisfied Waldegrave’s sense of the governor’s supremacy, but experience elsewhere suggested that they could have become a source of bitter intra-service conflict. Waldegrave’s recognition that although the army commander reported to him on the management of the garrison, he did not have the right to ‘interfere’ with the ‘details of . . . Regimental Duty and discipline’34 relied on a distinction derived from instructions issued in 1764 which had given rise to concerns of ‘divided authority’ in other British territories, including Dominica and Barbados.35 As noted earlier, it had been exploited to the discomfiture of Waldegrave’s naval colleagues in New South Wales. In wartime Newfoundland, however, the risk that Waldegrave’s position would provoke serious friction between the naval governor and the army was short-lived. While there was no question of the governor being subordinate to the military commander of North America, his overall responsibility for the garrison would cease if an officer of the rank of brigadier general was appointed to command the army forces on the Island. When Brigadier General John Skerrett took up the command in April 1799, there were a few ongoing grumbles over prevailing equivalences between army and navy ranks and further iterations of the disputes over recruitment. These were not sufficiently serious to cause any lasting damage to relations between army commanders on the Island and its naval governors.36 In addition to clashing with the army high command at Halifax, Waldegrave also came into conflict with local officers over the outcome of a court martial on a non-commissioned officer of the garrison. Sergeant James Daly of the Royal

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Newfoundland Regiment was put on trial for treason after being overheard making seditious remarks to some seamen from Latona. To Waldegrave’s open indignation, the army court martial found Daly not guilty of the charge on the grounds that he was so hopelessly inebriated that he had no recollection of what he had said and that there was no evidence that he had acted with treasonous intent. Waldegrave was incensed at this verdict. While he could not overturn it, he ordered an enquiry into the conduct of the court martial and complained to the Duke of Portland about the way the case had been handled. These actions led to murmurings of arbitrary proceedings among army officers and their friends at St John’s, but Waldegrave was able to insist on using his powers as governor to banish Sergeant Daly from the Island and send him to serve in Halifax.37 As noted elsewhere in this study, Sir Erasmus Gower challenged the recruiting plans of mainland regiments on the grounds that they weakened the Island’s defences by removing from it men who were familiar with the terrain. These moves also compromised the manpower available in the fisheries by providing a means of emigrating to continental America.38 In 1804 Gower’s attempts to uphold his own authority by resisting these demands aroused the ire of the commander-in-chief at Halifax. He wrote a blistering letter to the War Office in London decrying the pernicious novelty of the governor’s behaviour: ‘for the last forty or fifty years no Governor has obstructed or interfered with, the Recruitment for His Majesty’s Service in the Island of Newfoundland until the arrival of Sir Erasmus Gower.’39 Given Waldegrave’s dispute with the Duke of Kent, this was certainly stretching a point but in any case, the General’s diatribes did not deter Gower. In the following year he took steps to ensure that recruiting did not denude the Island’s workforce and wrote to tell Lord Castlereagh that he was doing so in accordance with his overarching responsibility to promote the fisheries and with the declared support of the leading residents of St John’s.40 This determination led to a testy correspondence with Brigadier General Skerrett with whom Gower usually got on well. Fortunately, their personal and professional relationships survived this disagreement, and Gower left the governorship with a message of warm appreciation from the brigadier general and his colleagues.41

The administration of justice Since the establishment of naval government in 1729 a series of steps had been taken to improve the administration of justice in Newfoundland.42 By the end of the century a supreme court was established in St John’s presided over by a chief justice. While John Reeves, the first incumbent, was learned, politically astute and well-connected, those who succeeded him in the post were far less impressive. In addition to the chief justice, provision had also been made for magistrates and justices of the peace at St John’s and in the outports. These officials were well supported by governor’s ‘surrogates’, judicial officials entitled to hear legal cases on behalf of the governor. Surrogates were initially appointed from among the commissioned naval officers on the station but later including civilians, one of

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whom was based in St John’s and designated as the ‘chief ’ surrogate.43 There was no established police force in St John’s, but the holders of public house licences were obliged to serve as constables. Publicans in the outports were free of this obligation but were encouraged to assume it in exchange for the waiver of tavern licence fees.44 As Keith Mercer notes, constables’ wide range of responsibilities – court work, pursuing and detaining criminals and deserters, executing warrants, conducting searches and investigations – were hardly compatible with the tavern keeper model and in 1812 Duckworth responded to magistrates’ complaints about the inadequacy of constabulary policing in St John’s by abolishing the system. In its place he appointed twelve full-time constables and addressed the perennial problem of the lack of funding for law enforcement services by raising extra revenue from increased tavern licensing fees.45 Over the course of the war years, the naval governors paid considerable attention to various aspects of the judicial system of the Island with a view to improving its coverage, quality and independence. Waldegrave thought the good order of the Island could be enhanced by the year-round provision of the judicial and paternal influence of the chief justice and made a recommendation on this matter to the secretary of state. The Duke of Portland agreed with Waldegrave’s proposal, but this requirement was not popular with the current officeholder or his friends among the leading merchants. On one occasion, Chief Justice Richard Routh’s petition to be permitted to return to England received the support of twenty-one merchants.46 Routh’s determination to avoid wintering in Newfoundland on grounds of pressing family business and ill-health involved him in a series of transatlantic voyages that were perilous and finally fatal. He almost drowned in a swamped cabin during a particularly severe storm, was captured by the French and eventually died when his ship foundered.47 In addition to strengthening the year-round judiciary in St John’s, governors also sought to increase provision beyond the town by arranging for commissioned naval officers to extend their judicial roles as ‘surrogates’ in the outports into the winter months. Waldegrave secured approval to pay these officers £50 for their extra duties, in recognition that they forfeited the chance of prize money while performing them and faced increases in living costs as a result of the especially high price of provisions in the outports.48 A few years later, Vice Admiral Holloway told the secretary of state that a growth in the population beyond St John’s necessitated an increased provision of surrogates and secured the appointment of a further four of these officials.49 The naval governors also drew attention to the need for government to support local efforts to improve the judicial facilities in the outports. In 1800 Pole secured an undertaking for £200 to be included in the estimates as the government’s contribution to rebuilding the courthouse and gaol at Trinity. Although this sum was approved for 1802 the project was completed only in 1813.50 Gambier’s attention was drawn to the inadequacy of courts and gaols in the outports in Chief Justice Tremlett’s report of a tour of the southern coast in 1803. His suggestions about the need for government support for building or repairing these facilities in Burin, Fortune Bay, Hermitage Bay, Placentia and Trespassey were forwarded

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to the secretary of state.51 Two years later, Gambier secured public funding for a gaol at Bonavista and undertook to press residents at Conception Bay to subscribe to build a gaol and courthouse there. Gambier’s efforts at persuasion were unsuccessful, as was Gower’s initial attempt, but by 1807 he was able to tell the secretary of state that residents of Harbour Grace had raised £400 and appealed successfully for a government contribution of £300.52 Throughout the war years, naval governors raised concerns with secretaries of state over the quality of the magistracy. There was no expectation that magistrates would be legally trained, but they needed to be men of good character and sound judgement and sufficiently independent to withstand what Waldegrave called the ‘despotism’ of dominant merchants in the outports. As things stood, magistrates’ need to follow other occupations to support themselves and their families posed an ongoing threat to their independence. Waldegrave urged Portland to review magistrates’ salaries so that capable and independent men would be attracted to serve on the bench and proposed meeting the cost from taxes on rum and molasses and a levy paid by the employers of ‘dieters’, that is, those from among the migratory population who were engaged to winter over and maintain shorebased fishing facilities.53 Waldegrave made this proposal before he had learnt that there was no legislative basis for taxes and rates within the settlement. He remained concerned about the quality of the Island’s judiciary, however, and even raised the practice of making the governor responsible for the bills through which its members were remunerated as a further impediment to its status as an independent agent of justice. Waldegrave’s views on the need to improve the competence and impartiality of magistrates, particularly in the outports, were shared by his successors. Gambier’s approach was informed by Chief Justice Thomas Tremlett’s detailed report. He told Gambier of the difficulties of administering justice in settlements outside St John’s where there was a marked shortage of capable magistrates.54 Gower was also concerned about the quality of the magistracy and the threats to its independence arising from plural office-holding and engagement in private business. He suggested increasing salaries by consolidating various fines and fees rather than leaving these as discrete and variable sources of income.55 In 1809 Holloway resisted demands from the Society of Merchants to reduce court fees, and this was followed up by Duckworth’s promulgation of a table of set legal fees which was applied in St John’s and the outports.56 Duckworth secured an increase in magistrates’ salaries in 1813 from the secretary of state, but two years later Keats still thought they were not sufficient to encourage able, independent and respectable men to take on the role.57 Over the course of the Napoleonic War naval governors were increasingly concerned that the salaries paid to chief justices were too low to maintain their status and ‘respectability’. Richard Routh took advantage of winter residence in England to raise the matter of his salary directly with the Duke of Portland in 1800 and followed up with a letter. This appeal was repeated to Portland’s successor in the following year.58 Routh’s efforts were unsuccessful, but in 1805 Gower petitioned Lord Camden to increase the salary from £300 to £500pa; this request was granted

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as he left office in mid-1807.59 Two years later, questions of respectability and the increase in business arising from the growth of St John’s as a commercial centre were advanced by Holloway when he proposed an increase of £150. This request, which was made when Holloway was seeking to have the incumbent replaced, was ignored initially, but a year or so later the salary was raised to £700pa and in 1814 to £1000pa.60 From 1812, however, the salaries of all law officers were effectively reduced by 10 per cent by the unexpected imposition of the income tax applied in Great Britain. Duckworth interceded to have this deduction abated for 1812, but the secretary of state insisted it would apply thereafter. The governor advised him that in this case the level of remuneration would be inadequate to meet the reasonable needs of the officials concerned.61 Chief Justice Tremlett may have been an exception to Duckworth’s views of the adequacy of judicial salaries. He stood aloof from St John’s society and never entertained at home. But while Tremlett’s spartan style of living meant that he was unlikely to make excessive financial demands on governors, it was symptomatic of more serious causes of concern for them. Both Holloway and Duckworth were subjected to repeated complaints from the ‘Society of Merchants for Improving the Trade and Fisheries of Newfoundland’ about the chief justice’s competence, honesty and temperament. As this affair unfolded it became clear that Tremlett’s personality and social isolation were significant factors in the opposition to him. In late 1809 Holloway forwarded a memorial to Lord Castlereagh signed by prominent local figures accusing Tremlett of gross partiality and ignorance in conducting the business of his court, interference in the duties of magistrates and incurring expensive delays by allegedly unnecessary references to English courts. Holloway had already had a passage of arms with Tremlett when he sent him a sharp upbraiding letter pointing out that the chief justice had only once attended church while the governor was in residence. He reminded Tremlett that his conduct weakened the Protestant cause on the Island and strengthened the influence of the Roman Catholic Church. In his covering letter to Castlereagh on the merchants’ claims, Holloway sided with local opinion and without further enquiry assumed they were well founded.62 As we shall see, there were some sharp exchanges between Waldegrave and Chief Justice Routh, and the latter was once treated to a tart reprimand that was worthy of the Governor’s naval bête noire, Earl St Vincent: ‘when I wrote to you . . . it was to inform you what you were to do and not to enquire of you what you had done.’63 There is, however, no indication of tension between either Gambier or Gower and Tremlett, and their correspondence is cordial and professional. By contrast, when the magistrates at St John’s complained to Holloway that the chief justice had ‘interfered’ with their business by announcing publicly in his court that their proceedings had been ‘influenced by partial motives’, his response reflected significant pre-existing dissatisfaction with Tremlett’s character and performance. Holloway told the magistrates that he had warned the chief justice to desist from any further interference and expressed his ‘extreme’ concern that the court of justice should be turned into a ‘Brothel of corrupt manners and unbecoming language’ and that the ‘Judge of the Supreme Court . . . has been the Chief Aggressor and

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is highly culpable’. The ground for this extraordinary outburst may have been prepared during a meeting that Holloway held with the Committee of the Society of Merchants at Government House late the previous month.64 Be that as it may, the Society became the vehicle through which these concerns were pursued and seemed always to have had Holloway on its side. Although Castlereagh ordered a formal investigation into the merchants’ claims in late 1809, it did not take place. Nevertheless, Holloway offered the secretary of state his ‘firm opinion, that [Tremlett] is unfit and unworthy to hold so dignified a Station’.65 When Duckworth succeeded Holloway in early 1810 he was not told of the complaints against Tremlett, an oversight that resulted in a prickly letter from the ‘Society of Merchants’ accusing him of ‘silent indifference’ to their charges and noting that Tremlett’s conduct had not improved. In its memorial, the Society accused Tremlett of ignoring the legal claims of merchants who had advanced credit to fishermen and importers and favouring his court officers in handling deceased estates and other court business. In favouring debtors, Tremlett was held to be encouraging fraudulent transactions and bringing the civil power into disrepute out of a sense of animus against ‘a Society of Men, whom from his seat on the Public Bench he has designated by illiberal and opprobrious epithets’. The Society claimed that there had been no improvement in Tremlett’s conduct since they had raised their concerns with Holloway. It told Duckworth that the chief justice continued to display ‘the same arbitrary dispositions to convert his will into Law’.66 Duckworth had responded to the Society’s original claims by stating that a full investigation was absolutely necessary and telling the Society that he would advise the secretary of state accordingly. He provided the chief justice with a copy of the charges laid at his door and (this never seems to have occurred to Holloway) invited him to provide a written response to them. Duckworth declined to accede to the Society’s request that he gather testimony from ‘reliable’ people before he sailed for England on the grounds that a ‘partial investigation can never answer’, that ‘untainted’ testimony would be necessary and that he would stand aside until instructed to conduct a proper enquiry. This implied rebuke is unlikely to have soothed the Society. True to his word, when Duckworth arrived at Spithead in November 1810 he told Lord Liverpool of the renewal of the merchants’ ‘violent . . . dissatisfaction’ with the chief justice and that ‘some decisive interference has now become indispensable’.67 Early in 1811 Duckworth forwarded Tremlett’s statement to the secretary of state. Tremlett claimed that Holloway had been ‘misled, I had almost said imposed upon’ by his enemies. He insisted that his conduct was strictly impartial and showed due disregard for the ‘convenience or interest of individuals’.68 In June 1811 Duckworth was provided with a paper written by John Reeves, the legal secretary of the Committee of the Council for Trade and Foreign Plantations, which addressed a range of questions about Tremlett’s handling of legal business. Reeves’s paper exonerated Tremlett on these points, while noting a growing discordance between the laws applying in Newfoundland and the changed character of the settlement. The Committee instructed Duckworth to follow up

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on some unsettled points and recommended that the secretary of state investigate claims made about the appropriateness of its reliance on Reeves’s advice.69 The Society of Merchants had questioned Reeves’s integrity and impartiality on the grounds that he ‘participated’ in the chief justice’s salary after he resigned his commission, refused to give an opinion on a case in which the current chief justice was involved and had demonstrated the ‘prejudice of his mind’ towards the merchants in his History.70 When he received the Committee’s initial response, Duckworth summoned the Society’s representatives and other complainants to Government House to hear ‘in the presence of the Chief Justice’ responses to some of its legal claims against him. They were clearly not satisfied by these determinations, demanded to see Tremlett’s written submissions on its earlier charges and outlined new grounds for dissatisfaction.71 It does not seem, however, to have produced a formal statement of any additional matters of substance.72 As instructed by the secretary of state, Duckworth looked into the chief justice’s handling of judicial business and the circumstances in which the charges against him had arisen. He reported in a far more even-handed way than Holloway and placed considerable weight on the role that Tremlett’s personality had played in exacerbating the impact of his limited legal expertise. Duckworth painted a picture of an upright, unbending man who stood aloof from other members of St John’s society. He was, Duckworth wrote, not to be influenced by the ‘approbation or disapprobation of any man’. He had ability and had acted with ‘diligence’, ‘application’ and with impartiality. Unfortunately, by ‘an irritability of temper, and a certain rudeness of manner, which are natural to him, and by separating himself entirely from the Society of the People of the Town’, Tremlett ‘had rendered himself in the last degree unpopular’. Duckworth did not think that the chief justice’s personal style was likely to change.73 Having received Duckworth’s report, Lord Liverpool instructed ‘the Council of Trade’ to consider the matter. In due course the Council rejected the accusations made against Reeves and effectively upheld Duckworth’s preliminary findings on the substantive issues. ‘No wilful Injustice’ had been ‘committed or sanctioned’ by Tremlett, and no proof was found of ‘partiality or unjustified delay’.74 This determination is interesting in light of the Society of Merchants’ clear sense of resentment that Tremlett’s administration of justice had not been sufficiently attentive to the interests of its members. Neither Tremlett, Duckworth nor the Council Committee appears to have endorsed the Society’s openly declared assumption that these interests were to be protected without regard for the rights of those it stigmatized as ‘not influenced by principles of honour’.75 But while the secretary of state accepted the Council Committee’s views on the charges levelled against Tremlett, he was aware that the chief justice’s position had become untenable. In a ‘separate’ private communication from Downing Street, Lord Bathurst endorsed Duckworth’s earlier observations on the extent to which Tremlett’s personal disposition contributed to the complaints made against him. They arose from ‘the Invidious nature of the Duties which he is called upon to Execute, as well as the Ungracious Manner in which they may be occasionally

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performed’. The secretary of state ruled that as these latter circumstances interfered with the ‘smooth’ conduct of legal business, Duckworth should discuss with Tremlett the prospect of a transfer to an equivalent position elsewhere. Within six weeks Tremlett had agreed to this proposal and he and Duckworth identified Prince Edward Island as a possibility. Caesar Colclough, the chief justice of that colony, was also embroiled in bitter, ongoing and intractable disputes with influential members of the local community.76 The transfer took place in the first half of 1813 and not surprisingly, given the background on both islands, was not a great success. Within a couple of years Tremlett’s rebarbative style had caused deep offence on Prince Edward Island and lent weight to the complaints of the numerous enemies he made in the faction-fighting of local politics. Colclough, a legally trained member of the Irish Protestant gentry, fared no better in Newfoundland. As noted in the next section of this chapter, he looked with deep abhorrence on the working-class Irish Catholics of the Island and, as we shall see, precipitated disorder among them by his high-handed action. He was also a thorn in the side of successive governors, complaining repeatedly of the high cost of living in St John’s and the inadequacy of his salary. Colclough bewailed the exchange as ‘ruinous’ to him and his family.77 The salary was subsequently increased from £800 to £1,000 pa, but the chief justice still complained that it was damaging his finances and dignity. A further increase to £1,270 was made in late 1815.78 There had been complaints about Tremlett’s lack of legal knowledge, but Colclough was criticized in St John’s for his excessive legalism. He was deeply disturbed to the point of nervous collapse by the riotous behaviour of his Catholic fellow countrymen, received a death threat from one of them and became anxious about appearing in his court. He was also plagued by the resurfacing of sixteen unsubstantiated claims about his abuse of judicial powers as chief justice of Prince Edward Island.79 Keats declined to excuse Colclough from hearing cases but gave him permission to go on leave at the end of the 1815 season to restore his physical and mental equilibrium.80 Colclough pleaded ill-health to postpone his return to the Island but was vigorous in pursuit of outstanding financial claims. When he resigned his post in mid-1816 he commanded sufficient interest or nuisance value in London to secure a pension of £400pa from the British government.81 Colclough was succeeded as chief justice in August 1816 by the far wiser and more able Francis Forbes.

Civil authority and public order The officials, merchants, artificers, fishers, trappers and their dependents who made up the population of Newfoundland were subject to the civil authority of the naval governors and to laws they administered. It is unclear whether the ordinary people of Newfoundland were any more unruly than the denizens of other contemporary frontier societies, even though the forces of law and order were spread very thinly over the settlement. One historian has pointed to the rarity of serious group violence in Newfoundland,82 and it is worth noting that

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eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Britain was not immune to significant physical challenges to the forces of law and order. When the House of Commons committee asked former governor Vice Admiral Edwards about drunkenness among the ‘lower orders’ it received the laconic reply that is was ‘Much as at other places of the same kind’.83 There is some indication that attitudes to what has been termed ‘institutionalised forms of popular aggression’ changed over the course of the eighteenth century and saw increasing reliance on legal mechanisms to address incidents even when they did not affect the wider community.84 Moreover, the high proportion of Irish natives in the settlement was a source of particular anxiety to members of the official classes in late Georgian Newfoundland.85 A mid-eighteenth-century commentator had made much of the fact that some Irish residents joined the French invasion of the Island during the Seven Years’ War, and as noted earlier in this chapter, flag officers believed that Irish seamen were prominent instigators of large-scale mutinies in the British fleet in 1797.86 The revolutionary outbreaks in Ireland in 1798 revived more widespread concern about the loyalty of Roman Catholics from that country.87 The rudimentary state of policing arrangements in Great Britain sometimes necessitated the use of the regular or auxiliary army units to assist magistrates dealing with particularly threatening outbreaks of public disorder. While this option was also open to the governors of Newfoundland, the pattern of settlement beyond St John’s and the very limited means of internal communication gave the navy a distinctive role there. In this respect, its role as a tool of public order mirrored that identified for naval forces stationed in the West Indies.88 However, the very limited reported incidents of serious disturbances in wartime Newfoundland suggest that the presence of small naval vessels in remote areas was largely symbolic of the governor’s authority and at most served a deterrent role rather than being a material determinant of public order. In October 1794 Sir James Wallace sent naval patrols ashore to round up civilians suspected of beating to death Lieutenant Lawry of HMS Boston who was escorting two recently pressed fishermen so they could recover their pay and belongings. Wallace interrogated the suspects on his flagship and at one stage threatened to hang them from the yardarms if they were not more forthcoming. This threat exceeded his powers, but he did not follow up on it, and when the ringleaders had been identified they were sent ashore and tried before the chief justice.89 The day after the murder Wallace ordered the magistrates and constables to meet him as he came ashore, and in his subsequent report to the Admiralty Board he described himself as having acted ‘in Conjunction with the Civil Power’.90 When Captain Morris of the Boston had asked for permission to post recruitment placards in the town, the governor said he was surprised that Morris did not know that he should ‘get seamen in any way in my power’. The correspondence of flag officers in this period often shows them demonstrating their power over their subordinates by oblique imperatives; in this case the point was underlined by Wallace asking another captain present if he did not ‘consider it was his duty to do so?’91 This exchange may have been shaped for Wallace’s amusement, but it meant that he was directly implicated in events that

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led to Lawry’s murder and that heightened the importance of his response for his authority as governor and commander-in-chief. It probably had a bearing on the illegal threats he made to suspects and to his subsequent interactions with the civil powers at St John’s. The highly ritualistic execution of those found guilty of the murder, and the elaborate public funeral of the victim involving a procession around the harbour of formally manned boats from naval vessels, reflect similar considerations.92 Finally, Wallace was able to demonstrate the connection between his civil responsibilities and his command of naval resources by responding to the alarmed representations of the principal inhabitants of St John’s (acting through the grand jury) by delaying his departure for England so he could address threats to public order that might arise during the course of a trial held under such potentially volatile circumstances.93 In the absence of any remotely adequate provision for civilian law enforcement in the outports, these communities had to rely on naval resources at the disposal of governors.94 In 1797 Waldegrave responded to an appeal from residents of Harbour Grace by seeking authorization to deploy armed vessels against lawless gangs who were reported to be at large in the area. They were alleged to be engaged in illegal fishing and smuggling fishermen and deserters to the United States, and were also accused of terrorizing residents and subjecting females to gang rape.95 In 1804 Gower agreed to send a ship of war to Greenspond to assist the Justices of the Peace to ‘correct disorders’ in the settlement, but when it came to it his resources would not allow him to do so.96 At a later stage of the war, Duckworth advised the Board that small vessels should winter over in the outports to ensure that good order was maintained and that rowdiness did not give rise to sedition. The inhabitants were ‘generally Irish, and Roman Catholic, by no means too peaceably disposed, under no control from the necessarily ineffective police, and as they are remote from St John’s, and winter communication is difficult, in little apprehension of the military force’.97 Towards the end of his term Duckworth thought it necessary to send a sloop to support a naval surrogate who was addressing public disorder problems in Burin.98 In most instances, however, while governors were backed by the sanctions of the law and able to exercise whatever prerogative powers the secretary of state allowed them, they could not rely in their dealings with the civilian population on the disciplinary aids to obedience which they wielded over naval personnel under their command. They were sparing in their use of troops and sailors to support the civil power and probably subscribed to the view that Keats expressed to the magistrates at Harbour Grace when he declined to send troops to support them in their struggles with an unruly populace in late 1815. He told them that it was better to rely on civil power and the active assistance of upright members of the local community. Without it, ‘the support of the Military would but ill effect that which is always (when practicable) much better maintained without it’. Keats sent the magistrates information on establishing ‘a Police Guard and Patrols should circumstances render it necessary’.99 He later changed his mind on using the military at Harbour Grace when those terrorizing the neighbourhood were reported to be army deserters.100 Deserters were the military’s responsibility and

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may also have been perceived to be more desperate and more dangerous than civilian delinquents. The dispatch of the Latona did not entirely relieve Waldegrave of anxiety over the internal order and security of his territory. These concerns were on his mind when he urged Portland to require chief justices to be year-round residents. He told the secretary of state that the permanent presence of this senior official would provide a moderating influence on the icebound population of St John’s that would help prevent minor disputes from festering into major causes. Waldegrave claimed that given the ethnic composition of the garrison troops and the large numbers of Irish people on the Island, the Royal Newfoundland Regiment could not be relied upon to deal effectively with civil disturbances. In these circumstances, it required the constant vigilance of civil power and the ‘speedy and impartial administration of justice’ to ‘preserve peace and good order’ among a potentially volatile populace.101 Waldegrave saw the chief justice as a key figure in a system of formal and informal authority embodied in the governor. Over the course of his term, however, strained relationships with this official threatened the dignity of his office and posed a risk to the effectiveness of his government. On his way back to England at the end of his third season at St John’s, Waldegrave penned a letter of complaint to the Duke of Portland about Chief Justice Routh’s disrespectful conduct. As a flag officer, Waldegrave was accustomed to elaborate marks of respect as he joined and left his flagship, and his sense of what was due to him as governor had been satisfied fully when he first came ashore in the late spring of 1797. On that occasion the chief justice, military and civil dignitaries, and the principal merchants greeted him ‘with that distinction which my Office of Governor demanded’. He had been received ‘with all due honour’. As his term progressed, however, Waldegrave was incensed when first the leading merchants, and then the chief justice, who had close connections with them, besmirched his dignity by absenting themselves from ceremonies marking his arrival and departure.102 None of the merchants gathered to mark Waldegrave’s departure at the end of his first season, and they only attended reluctantly to the chief justice’s summons when he came ashore in 1798. Over the course of the next twelve months, Waldegrave’s insistence that the chief justice should winter over, a series of acrimonious exchanges on his right to probate fees and alleged mishandling of communications with the merchants over a rum tax soured their relationship further. On the governor’s return in the spring of 1799, the chief justice declined to wait upon him until summoned to receive his salary. Waldegrave thought that these signs of deliberate neglect demonstrated a disrespect for his office that threatened the peace and order of the settlement. The volatility of the ordinary populace meant that ‘of all places in His Majesty’s Dominion, [Newfoundland was] the one most prone to adopt the doctrine of Liberty and Equality; the slightest opposition, therefore, shown to Government by its inhabitants, should be watched with a jealous eye’. The ‘very pointed disrespect . . . offer’d to my person, as Governor of Newfoundland’ by the chief justice was a deliberate attempt to ‘signal to the populace the insignificance of the Governor’.103

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A decade later, Vice Admiral Holloway saw Chief Justice Tremlett’s refusal to bow to his views as a threat to the governor’s authority, not just a failure to accommodate the interests of the Society of Merchants. He asked the secretary of state whether ‘the Governor His Majesty’s representative . . . [was] to be supported as Supreme of that Government or the Chief Justice to be continued thereby rendering the Governor a mere Cypher?’104 An early historian of Newfoundland saw Waldegrave as a declared enemy of the appeals to natural rights which underwrote the American and French Revolutions.105 He was by no means alone in taking this stance. Indeed, it would have been remarkable if a senior naval officer expressed anything but alarmed contempt for such potentially subversive notions. In Waldegrave’s case, they were seen as an active threat mobilized by self-interested members of the local elite. His views on this point were reflected in his response to alleged slights of the chief justice and also in his assumption about the motives of those who thwarted his plans for expanding the burial ground at St John’s. When his preferred plot was unexpectedly sold to another buyer at twice its market price, Waldegrave rejected any suggestion that the sale was just a characteristically sharp piece of speculative business practice by a non-resident proprietor. As with the ceremonial snubs he had suffered at the hands of the chief justice and principal merchants, Waldegrave saw this transaction as a deliberate, politically motivated slight. It arose from ‘a determined long-established intention of certain persons in St John’s to oppose Government in all her measures, and thereby, lessen his dignity in the eyes of the ignorant and the lower classes’. Their aim was to manipulate popular sentiment by making the burial ground issue seem ‘a fair conflict between Government and the Rights of the People’ and use it in pursuit of a strategy to undermine the authority of the governor by mobilizing public opinion against him.106 Waldegrave’s alarm at the risks posed by a shifting population that he thought was inclined to casual disorder and open to manipulation by others prompted him to propose a raft of measures to banish the spectre of ‘masterless men’ from the Island. This term has been applied to a possibly mythical group of naval deserters who were said to haunt the Island in mid-century and more generally to servants who removed themselves from the control of their employers or those who, having been thrown out of work at the close of the fishing season, moved into St John’s in wintertime and lived there in dissipation and wretchedness. The fact that many of these unruly transients were single Irishmen heightened official perceptions of the threat they posed to good order and the safety of ‘respectable’ members of the community.107 Waldegrave’s response to this threat evinced a prescient commitment to Foucauldian surveillance. He proposed that those who harboured renegade fishermen, sailors and soldiers were to be fined heavily and those who informed on them rewarded handsomely. Seamen’s and fishermen’s employers were obliged to issue discharge certificates and publicans (who were often sworn constables) were ordered to check their customers’ certificates and to detain those without them. Employers and those providing working men with lodgings had to notify a peace officer within three days or face a hefty fine of £10 for each failure to report.108 In the event, Waldegrave’s plans were frustrated by the flimsy legislative

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basis of Newfoundland government, but these proposals give a clear insight into his intentions.109 Although Waldegrave’s grave concerns about cross-contamination between the garrison and disaffected seamen proved largely unfounded, the closing stage of his governorship saw a serious conspiracy involving members of the garrison and some townsfolk. During the winter of 1799–1800 fifty members of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment were involved in a mass desertion plot. Their scheme was discovered, but nineteen soldiers absconded and threatened extreme violence if action was taken against them. These events seemed to have been provoked by the arrival of an extremely authoritarian commander in the garrison and the troops’ realization that they were liable for service elsewhere in North America.110 The conspirators were said to have formed a ‘combination’ and bound themselves by an oath used by the United Irishmen. The connection with the events of 1798 in Ireland was of particular concern to local officials and much was made of it in reports to the governor, who was at this time in London.111 The putative ringleaders were seized by the local army commander, and five soldiers were sentenced to death by a court martial. In February 1800 the secretary of state advised Waldegrave that as English law provisions for prosecuting civilians who seduced soldiers from their duty did not apply in Newfoundland, he could banish those who were party to the plot if there was insufficient evidence for charges of high treason to be brought against them.112 As Waldegrave’s term ended a few months later, it fell to his successor to give effect to this advice.113 Waldegrave’s alarm at the implications for his government of a series of challenges to the established order in contemporary Britain and Ireland was coloured by a very highly tuned sensitivity to the carapace of authority bestowed by aristocratic lineage and high office. This sensibility was demonstrated in displays of high-handed indignation towards putatively impertinent subordinates on the one hand, and by the personal insecurity apparent in appeals for approval from grandees such as the Duke of Portland, on the other. Even in a naval context, Waldegrave was not graced with easy manners towards his subordinates; when he was a flag officer in the Mediterranean fleet it was said that his officers did not look forward to the prospect of dining with him.114 It must be allowed, however, that Waldegrave faced some significant challenges to his authority and that during the government of his immediate successors the squalls of apparent sedition moderated, Newfoundland was less subject to internal alarms and governors were generally more confident in responding to them. The garrison mutiny did not seem to have left any lasting impact on the conduct of the general population or the garrison, and when Pole arrived on the Island for his only period of residence, he reported on the air of ‘tranquillity’ prevailing in St John’s. At the end of his term he assured the secretary of state that his successor ‘will find the People of Newfoundland as tranquil and well disposed, as any of His Majesty’s most loyal subjects’.115 As governors made a link between the material deprivation of the ordinary people, the weakness of agencies of social control and popular disorder, their actions to address these challenges may have contributed to the relative social peace that

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prevailed for the first decade of the new century. It is widely held, however, that threats to public order increased in the closing years of the war and became acute thereafter.116 Given the naval governors’ views on the volatility of the Irish population of the Island, it is significant that growing official concerns about disorder coincided with a large influx of migrants from Ireland which began in 1812. Initially, these new arrivals helped to meet a growing demand for labour as the markets for products of the fisheries recovered. As the wars drew to a close, however, the economy of Newfoundland faced increasingly strong headwinds and wages came under downward pressure.117 These developments were the context for growing alarm among the local elite and officials. In 1815 Sir Richard Keats told the Admiralty Board that the influx of 6,000 ‘rowdy’ Irishmen had alarmed the longersettled inhabitants to the extent that he had found it necessary to arrange for two sloops and a schooner to winter over so that their crews could assist magistrates, constables and justices of the peace.118 Over the winter of 1814–15 outbreaks of public disorder at St John’s were precipitated initially by a cull of wandering dogs ordered by Chief Justice Caesar Colclough as a (entirely unnecessary) precaution against the spread of rabies from a dog on a ship. A sailor who visited the Island in 1794 noted that the dogs wandered freely and were ‘commonly . . . their own caterers’. He extolled their skill in fending for themselves and their value in hauling firewood from the countryside outside St John’s.119 They were particularly useful to poorer sections of the population who reacted strongly to an attack on their property by an official who was openly contemptuous of his Catholic countrymen. Colclough had acted in response to representations from the grand jury, but while his measures were actually less draconian than those proposed by the ‘principal inhabitants’ they provoked widespread vociferous protests, complaints about his prejudicial attitude towards Irish Roman Catholics and a letter threatening his personal safety.120 Colclough reported the initial disturbances to Keats in February 1815. He followed this up with a heated account of more widespread disorders outside St John’s involving roaming bands of fifty to a hundred men said to be bound by United Irish oaths of secrecy and commitment.121 Colclough’s perception of these events was coloured by radically prejudicial attitudes to Irish working-class Catholics that were not uncommon among members of the Protestant Irish gentry from which he sprung.122 His alarmist and self-promoting reports to Keats in London were as exaggerated as his view of the risks posed by the canine working population of St John’s.123 Interestingly, although Keats chided Colclough for overreacting on the rabid dog issue, he was concerned about the threats made against him and endorsed his efforts to act against those who had uttered them. In the event, the extermination plan does not seem to have gone ahead and Colclough’s investigation came to nothing.124 On his return in late July Keats found St John’s in a state of ‘tranquillity’ and told Lord Bathurst that recent disorders had no discernible political cause. He attributed them to drunkenness made possible by idleness and spare money which prompted a replication of inter-county rivalries and faction fights of a kind that were common in rural Ireland. These affrays were endemic around Waterford

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in the early years of the nineteenth century, an area with close trading ties to Newfoundland and a significant source of migrants.125 Keats reported that there had been a short-lived combination to force masters to pay the high wages of the previous year, but as the men’s money ran out and the new season began, the movement collapsed and wages dropped to half of that level. Those supporting the combination had taken an oath, but it related to this cause rather than being directed against the government.126 Since these outbreaks of disorder did not pose a significant threat to his government, Keats did not seem to feel the need to take legal action against those involved in them.127

Ceremonies and the Authority of Governors Waldegrave’s reaction to the perceived slights of the merchants and magistrates raises the question of the extent to which the authority and dignity of naval governors was upheld through ceremonials. The presence of an enlarged garrison provided the personnel for such displays but it is unclear how common, elaborate or routinized they were. Waldegrave had decided ideas of the honours due to an incoming governor but, in fact, colonial practice in the late Georgian period varied. The Earl of Cornwallis entered into his government of Bengal in 1786 without ceremony, stepping ashore at Calcutta from a small boat to be greeted by two members of the council. On this occasion, Bengal was under the control of an interim governor who as a long-serving East India Company official resented being replaced by a political appointee. The situation was very different in 1805 when Cornwallis arrived for a second term as governor. He was embarrassed by the ostentatious welcome arranged by his immediate predecessor, the Marquis of Wellesley, a senior army officer with a liking for regimental show. When Cornwallis had arrived in Dublin in 1798 to become the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the ceremonial was more restrained and in keeping with the unsettled state of the country. He was met by two members of the Irish Privy Council and escorted to Dublin Castle down streets lined with troops.128 By contrast, his army colleague Sir George Nugent landed at Jamaica in 1801 to a very elaborate welcome. He was saluted by the guns of naval vessels in the harbour, escorted into Spanish Town by a body of Light Dragoons, met at Government House by the garrison under arms and welcomed by the outgoing governor and members of his staff. There was another round of ceremonies, feasting and parties when he assumed office a few days later.129 Apart from Waldegrave, none of the war-time governors complained of a lack of ceremonial attention but by the same token none of them referred in their correspondence to any ceremonials except those marking the anniversary of the King’s coronation. Cheering seamen manned the yards of the squadron when Keats’ left the Island in 1814 but that is a distinctly naval tribute and may have reflected Keats’ popularity as a fighting officer.130 By 1809 arrival ceremonies were formalised in Standing Orders but it is unclear how governors were received in the decade following Waldegrave’s mortifying experiences.131 Vice Admiral Holloway

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was the first naval governor who would have enjoyed the benefit of the new requirements.132 They specified a nineteen-gun salute from the artillery battery on the harbour’s edge, the reading of the governor’s commission at the courthouse, a review of the garrison and a rifle salute from the troops. Leading civilians and officials were to greet the governor as he stepped ashore from his barge, accompany him to the courthouse and the fort and join senior officers in a reception held at Government House. Although these standing orders were among Duckworth’s papers, it is curious that his report to the secretary of state in 1810 merely noted that his commission was read out when he went ashore and that he was sworn in as governor.133 Given that Duckworth invariably reported fulsomely to his superiors and that he had a strong sense of his own worth and dignity, it would be surprising if he allowed ceremonial flourishes marking the advent of his government to pass unnoticed. Cornwallis’ experience in Dublin and on his return to Calcutta, and Nugent’s in Spanish Town, may well have relied on initiatives of outgoing governors implemented by their military and civil officials and in the latter case were paid for by the local Assembly. These conditions did not apply at St John’s and with yearly returns local enthusiasm may in any case have worn thin. There was no outgoing governor in residence to authorise or pay for welcoming ceremonies although someone, perhaps Chief Justice D’Ewes Coke, had assumed that responsibility on Waldegrave’s arrival. If that was so, Waldegrave’s deteriorating relationship with his successor probably put an end to a practice that does not seem to have been revived until Holloway’s time. At that stage, its management was likely to have been affected by his antagonism towards Chief Justice Tremlett. That the documentation from Holloway’s governorship includes detailed time-specific instructions to senior naval officers on the station, suggests that the ceremonials framed by him in 1809 were put into effect the following day. What happened in subsequent years remains unclear.

Conclusion Although the wartime naval governors had to deal with two serious breakdowns in naval discipline, it cannot be said that this was a persistent concern for them. One of these incidents had originated in the large-scale mutinies that had occurred in English waters, and the second appeared to be one of those occasions when senior officers’ stock assumptions about the influence of ‘ringleaders’ were well founded. Both Waldegrave’s and Duckworth’s responses to these challenges to their authority followed approaches which were common when flag officers became directly involved in responding to mutinous outbreaks. The disturbances on the Latona were on a far larger scale than the outbreak on the Pomone and raised concerns that the sailors’ mutinous tendencies would spill over into the garrison and threaten the internal security of the settlement. In the event, the most serious breakdown in the discipline of the garrison was caused by the army’s handling of its own men, not through any influences arising from the naval squadron. It is hard

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to account for an absence of something, but it seems possible that the generally good state of naval discipline maintained by the naval governors may have been due to the relatively short cruises and the availability of shore leave on the station. It seems remarkable that the troublesome topmen of the Latona were allowed to go on shore, but this may have been due to an assessment that St John’s, and probably also the outports, were relatively low-risk environments as far as opportunities for desertion were concerned. Issues of public disorder seemed of more concern to the naval governors than the discipline of their naval personnel. These concerns reflected their views on the origin and character of local population, and their related reservations about the reliability of the garrison troops in the event of serious civil disturbances. The diffusion of the working population of the Island, the absence of anything resembling a police force, the admirals’ professional reliance on the tools of naval discipline, and their experience of, and confidence in, maintaining their authority at sea may well have contributed to their perceptions of the volatility of the civilian population for which they were responsible. In some cases, however, naval governors’ view on this issue seemed calmer than those of their officials. It is significant that when Keats reported in the summer of 1815 on the settled state of the ordinary members of the population following the disturbances over winter, he was able to distinguish this challenge to his authority from that implied by the orderly but far more corrosive proceedings of political enemies of naval government in the St John’s’ elites. As we have seen, Waldegrave had attributed seditious motivations to some of his adversaries in the settlement, but concerns on this score had not troubled his immediate successors. Towards the end of the wars, however, they resurfaced in a virulent form and were a cause of serious concern to both Duckworth and Keats. Their responses to these challenges to their authority and to the very idea of naval government will be discussed in the concluding chapter of this book.

Notes 1 James Dugan, The Great Mutiny (London: Andre Deutsch, 1966) passim, for an account of these mutinies and John Morrow, British Flag Officers in the French Wars, 1793-1815. Admirals’ Lives (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), 107–26, for consideration of a range of admirals’ responses to these challenges. 2 Jerry Bannister, The Rule of the Admirals: Law, Custom and Naval Government in Newfoundland 1699-1832 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 180. 3 There are accounts of Waldegrave’s handling of the Latonians in Martin Hubley and Thomas Malcolmson, ‘“The People Being Tyrannically Treated, Would Rejoice in Being Captured by the Americans”’, in The Apathetic and the Defiant: Case Studies of Canadian Mutiny and Disobedience, 1812, ed. Craig Lantle (Toronto: Dundurn, 2007), 36–51 and Morrow, British Flag Officers, 118–20. 4 NA ADM 1/473, f396, 14/8/1797. 5 N. A. M. Rodger, The Command of the Ocean. A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1815 (London: Allan Lane, 2004), 451–2. 6 Jerry Bannister, ‘Canada in an Atlantic World?’ Acadiensis, 43, no. 2 (2014): 15, 28–9; Morrow, British Flag Officers, 107–8, 122.

126 7 8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

Notes to pp. 103–125 NA CO 194/39, ff86–8, 14/8/1797. NA ADM 1/473, f395–6, 9/8/1797. Morrow, British Flag Officers, 117. NA CO 194/39, ff91–2, 6/8/1797, ff94–5, 8/8/1797, f108, 10/8/1797; PAN D’Alberti Papers, 6: 83–4, 7/8/1797; Keith Mercer, Rough Justice: Policing, Crime, and the Origin of the Newfoundland Constabulary 1729-1871(St. John’s: Breakwater Press, 2021), Chapter 5, 32; the e-version of this book available to the author lacks pagination, so references are identified by chapter as well as page sequence. There is no indication in these reports that the garrison and volunteers were used to ‘suppress’ the mutineers; cf. Sean Cadigan, Newfoundland & Labrador. A History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 83. NA CO 194/39, ff86–8, 14/8/1797. PAN D’Alberti Papers, 6: 120, 11/8/1797. NA ADM 1/473, f 432, 5/9/1797, ff435–6, 28/11/1797; CO 194/40, f95, 10/7/1798. John D. Byrn, Crime and Punishment in the Royal Navy: Navy Discipline on the Leeward Islands Station, 1784-1812 (Cambridge: Scholars Press, 1989), 10. Hardin Craig, ‘Letters of Lord St Vincent to Thomas Grenville 11806-7’, in Naval Miscellany, ed. Christopher Lloyd (London: Navy Records Society, 1952), IV: 482, 16/11/1806. Blackwood was an outstanding frigate captain; see Tom Wareham, The Star Captains. Frigate Command in the Napoleonic Wars (London: Chatham Publishing, 2001), 113, 120. NA ADM 1/474, f149, 6/10/1798; ff150–2, 29/10/1798. See Morrow, British Flag Officers, 107–26, for admirals’ handling of serious disciplinary challenges from the lower deck. On St Vincent see Morrow, British Flag Officers, 103–5, and on Pringle see John McAleer, ‘Periphery, Asian Gateway: The Royal Navy at the Cape of Good Hope, 1785-1815’, in The Royal Navy and the British Atlantic World c. 1750-1820, ed. John McAleer and Christer Petley (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 185–7. Rodger, Command of the Ocean, 444. NMM XDUC/38, ff119–23, 1/11/1812; DUC/42, Duckworth’s Journal 1812, rough draft, 8–9 October 1812. Morrow, British Flag Officers, 114. NMM DUC/42, 8–9 October 1812; NMM XDUC/43, Duckworth’s Journals, final, 1810-1812, 9/10/ 1812. It was later discovered that Geydon’s real name was Thomas Wait; NA ADM 1/477, ff502–4. Byrn, Crime and Punishment, 10. See Morrow, British Flag Officers, 18–20, 95–6. NA CO 194/39, f300, 26/2/1796. David Mackay, ‘Far-Flung Empire: A Neglected Imperial Outpost at Botany Bay 1788-1801’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 9, no. 2 (1981): 135–7. NMM WDG/4/6/2ii. NA CO 194/39, ff133–8, 147–53, 25/10/1797, 24/8/1797. J. S. Corbett, ed., Private Papers of George, 2nd Earl Spencer, 1794-1801, 4 vols (London: Navy Records Society, 1913, 1914, 1924), III: 5–6, 9/2/1798. Great Britain, House of Commons, ‘Second Report from the Committee on the State of the Trade to Newfoundland’, Reports from the Committees of the House of Commons: Miscellaneous Subjects, 1785-1801 (1803), 413. Corbett, Spencer Papers, I: 193–4, 31/10/1795; Morrow, British Flag Officers, 96–7.

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33 NA CO 194/39, f275, 8/12/1797, ff282–3, 16/12/1797. 34 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 8: 224, 29/9/1798. 35 See Helen Taft Manning, British Colonial Government After the American Revolution 1782-1820 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1933), 123–4. 36 NA CO 194/40, f82, 16/5/1798, CO 194/42, f55, 26/4/1799; NMM WDG/4/18/1, 16/12/1797. 37 Waldegrave’s letter to Melville is in the Liverpool papers, BL Add MS 38257, ff286–9, 17/5/1814; the earlier transactions concerning James Daly are reported in NA CO 194/39, ff110–12, 12/8/1797, ff192–9, 25/10/1797. 38 See herein, p. 110. 39 NA CO 194/44, f263v, 11/10/1804. 40 NA CO 194/44, ff180–1, 25/10/1805. 41 See herein, p. 206. 42 See Bannister, Rule of the Admirals, passim. For an account of aspects of the history and practice of Newfoundland courts and documents relating to decisions handed down in the Supreme Court by three of the early chief justices see Christopher P. Curran ed., Three Chief Justices. Richard Routh, Jonathan Ogden & Thomas Tremlett, 2 vols. (St John’s: The Law Society of Newfoundland and Labrador, 2021). 43 Ibid., 146–7, 151. 44 Mercer, Rough Justice, Chapter 5, 11. The St John’s tavern keepers numbered 33 by 1807, Chapter 5, 1. 45 Ibid., 40–1; NA CO, ff106v–7v, 194/52, 1/11/1812. The approval of these measures was signalled in Keats’s Instructions: NA CO 194/54, f45v, 7/4/1813. 46 NA CO 194/40, f140, 8/11/1798, ff178–9, 15/6/1798. 47 DCB, V. 48 NA CO 194/42, ff65–6, 20/10/1799. 49 NA CO 194/48, f12, 13/5/1809. 50 Despatches from the Governors of Newfound to the Secretary of State, 6 vols (St John’s: Memorial University, DAI typescript, nd), 1: 486, 10/11/1813. 51 NA CO 194/43, ff 173–8, 179–80, 12/12/1803, 17/10/1803. 52 NA CO 194/44, ff106–v, 21/3/1807; CO 194/45, f164, 9/11/1806; CO 194/46, f75, 25/11/1807; CO 194/47, f79v, 10/6/1808. 53 NA CO 194/39, f233, 25/10/1797. 54 NA CO 194/43, f179, 17/10/1803. 55 NA CO 194/44, ff130–2, 18/7/1805; see also Ian M. Bates, Champion of the Quarterdeck. Sir Erasmus Gower (1742-1814) (Pomona: Sage Old Books, 2017), 268–9. 56 Mercer, Rough Justice, Chapter 5, 17–18. 57 NA CO 194/54, f45, 7/4/1813; CO 194/56, f112, 10/11/1815. 58 NA CO 194/43, f187, 17/6/1800, f185, 26/8/1801. 59 NA CO 194/46, f176, 20/6/1807. 60 NA CO 194/48, f17, 25/5/1809, f145, 20/8/1809, PAN D’Alberti Papers, 24: 26, 10/4/1814. 61 NMM DUC/30, 18/2/1812, 9/4/1812, 27/4/1812. 62 NA CO 194/48, ff79–80, 25/11/1809. 63 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 10: 135, 5/10/1799. 64 Ibid., 19: 107–8, 15/8/1809; 112–13, 18/8/1809. 65 Castlereagh’s decision that an enquiry was necessary was announced in midDecember; see D’Alberti Papers, 19: 306, 12/12/1809, and for Holloway’s prejudgement of the case see 20: 1, 2/2/1810.

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66 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 20: 221, 4/10/1810; NA CO 194/49, f155v, 15/10/1810. 67 NA CO 194/49, f155, 15/10/1810, f165, 16/10/1810, f169, 20/10/1810, f143, 25/11/1810. 68 NA CO 194/50, f3, 18/1/1811. 69 NA CO 194/51, f85, 19/6/1811. 70 NA CO 194/50, ff196–v, 14/10/1811. The financial claim against Reeves may have arisen from garbled accounts of an arrangement which Routh reported to Portland when seeking a salary increase. He had apparently undertaken to pay £200 of his salary to his immediate predecessor who had retired due to ill-health; NA CO 194/43, f187, 17/6/1800. 71 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 21: 55, 14/8/1811. 72 Ibid., 164, 24/9/1811, 203–4, 1/10/1811, 249, 12/10/1811, 299, 21/10/1811, 321, 24/10/1811. 73 NA CO 194/50, ff190–2, 28/10/1811. 74 NA CO 194/52, ff33–33v, 13/6/1812; the Treasury Board’s confirmation that no payments had been made to Reeves is in CO 194/53, 23/6/1812. 75 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 20: 219, 4/10/1810. 76 NA CO 194/52, ff36–7, 13/6/1812; CO 194/52, ff76–8, 23/7/1812. 77 NA CO 194/54, f262, 23/9/1813. 78 NA CO 194/55, f332, 6/12/1814; CO 194/56, f286, 20/11/1815. 79 NA CO 194/56, ff156–9, 21/2/1815. 80 See DCB, VI and PAN D’Alberti Papers, 25: 140, 143, 4/9/1815, which includes a letter of support from his doctor, William Carson. 81 Great Britain, House of Commons, Further Estimates and Miscellaneous Service, 7/5/1816, 289. 82 John Mannion, ‘“Notoriously Disaffected to the Government ... .” British Allegations of Irish Disloyalty in Eighteenth-Century Newfoundland’, Newfoundland and Labrador Studies, 16, no. 1 (2000): 18–19. 83 House of Commons, ‘Second Report’, 416. 84 See English, ‘Collective Violence in Ferryland District, Newfoundland in 1788’, Dalhousie Law Journal, 22, no. 2 (1998): 487–8. 85 J. M. Blumstead, ‘1763-1783. Resettlement and Rebellion’, in The Atlantic Region to Confederation, ed. John G. Reid and Philip Buckner (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 161. Willem Keogh provides a comprehensive survey of official views and reactions; see The Slender Thread. Irish Women on the Southern Avalon, 1760-1860 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), Gutenberg e-version, Chapter 2, 1–20. 86 See Griffith Williams, An Account of the Island of Newfoundland (London: Thomas Cole, 1765), 9–10. Three hundred Irishmen were recruited into the detachment of Irish ‘White Boys’ who landed with the invading French force in 1762; see John Candow, ‘The British Army in Newfoundland, 1697-1824’, Newfoundland Quarterly, 79, no. 4 (1984): 24. 87 Willeen G. Keough, ‘Fenian Ghosts: The Spectre of Irish Republicanism in Ethnic Relations in Newfoundland’, in Reappraisals of British Colonisation in Atlantic Canada, 1700-1930, ed. Karly Kehoe and Michael Vance (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020), 134–5. 88 Siân Williams, ‘The Royal Navy and Caribbean Colonial Society during the Eighteenth Century’, in The Royal Navy and the British Atlantic World c. 1750-1820, ed. McAleer and Petley, 31–2.

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89 Keith Mercer, ‘The Murder of Lieutenant Lawry: A Case of British Naval Impressment in Newfoundland, 1794’, Newfoundland and Labrador Studies, 21, no. 2 (2006): 255–89, 272–3; Keith Mercer, ‘Northern Exposure: Resistance to Naval Impressment in British North America, 1775-1815’, Canadian Historical Review, 91, no. 2 (2010): 213–15. 90 NA ADM1/473, ff132–3, 27/11/1794. 91 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 5: 148, 28/10/1794. 92 Jean Murray, ed., The Newfoundland Journal of Aaron Thomas 1794 (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1968), 179; Mercer, ‘The Murder of Lieutenant Lawry’, 274–5. 93 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 5: 151–2, 29/10/1794. 94 See Mercer, Rough Justice, Chapter 5, 10–11. 95 NA CO 194/39, ff202–5, 25/10/1797. 96 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 14: 266, 14/9/1804, 371, 17/10/1804. 97 NMM XDUC/38 f20, 25/11/1810. 98 NMM, ADM 50/73, Duckworth’s Journal, 10/8/1811. 99 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 25: 210, 14/10/1815, 254, 28/10/1815. 100 Mercer, Rough Justice, Chapter 5, 36; this report proved inaccurate. 101 NA CO 194/40, f83, 11/6/1798, ff93–4, 19/6/1798. 102 Routh’s connections with the merchants are identified by Keith Matthews, DCB V; as noted earlier, a number of merchants supported Routh’s application for a waiver of the requirement that chief justices should be year-round residents of the settlement. 103 NA CO 194/42, ff134–6, 4/11/1799. 104 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 20: 2, 2/2/1810. 105 R. H. Bonnycastle, Newfoundland in 1842, 2 vols (London: Henry Colburn, 1842), I: 138–9. 106 NA CO 194/42, ff 116–19, 25/10/1799. 107 A. L. Beier, Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England 1560-1640 (London: Methuen, 1985), 80; see Kevin Major, As Near to Heaven by Sea. A History of Newfoundland and Labrador (Toronto: Penguin Viking, 2001), 168 for the deserters and Gordon W. Handcock, Soe Longe as there Are No Women: Origins of English Settlement in Newfoundland (St John’s: Breakwater Books, 1989), 87, for the winter unemployed in St John’s. 108 NA CO 194/39, f239, 28/7/1797. 109 Chief Justice Coke was asked to advise on the legality of the proposals but does not seem to have had a role in framing them; NA CO 194/39, f243, 5/9/1797. 110 See G. W. C. Nicholson, The Fighting Newfoundlanders: A History of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006), 43–4; Mannion, ‘“Notoriously Disaffected to the Government”’, 7–10. 111 Waldegrave received these details from a Newfoundland correspondent in the summer of 1800 after his term had finished; NA CO 194/42, ff167–9, 2/7/1800; on official views see Keogh, ‘Fenian Ghosts’, 134–5. 112 NA CO 195/15, 1/2/1800, ff 323–5. 113 NA CO 194/42, ff158–9, 2?/7/1800. 114 Morrow, British Flag Officers, 219; James Greig, ed., The Farington Diary By John Farington, 8 vols (London: Hutchinson, 1922–8), 2: 73, 13/1/1803. 115 NA CO 194/42, f169, 14/8/1800; CO 194/43, f229, 19/6/1802. 116 See Christopher English, ‘The Official Mind and Popular Protest in a Revolutionary Era: The Case of Newfoundland, 1789-1819’, in Canadian State Trials Volume 1. Law, Politics, and Security Measures, 1608-1837, ed. F. Murray Greenwood and Barry

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117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125

126 127 128 129 130 131 132

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Notes to pp. 103–125 Wright (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 313–14; Patrick O’Flaherty, ‘The Seeds of Reform: Newfoundland 1800-1818’, Journal of Canadian Studies, 23, no. 3 (1988): 52–3. O’Flaherty, ‘Seeds of Reform’, 52–4. NA ADM 1/478, f511, 7/9/1815. Murray, The Newfoundland Journal, 51–3. See Mark Trainor, ‘Mad Dogs and Irishmen’, Aspects, 11, no. 1 (2018): 41–2; this essay provides a full account of this incident and the background and is headed by a vivid illustration of St John’s dogs in full flight. NA CO 194/56, ff11–13, 7/2/1815; ff41–6, 14/6/1815. DCB, VI. English, ‘The Official Mind and Popular Protest’, 311, dubs Colclough the ‘hero of his own story’. Trainer, ‘Mad Dogs and Irishmen’, 43. See Paul E. W. Roberts, ‘Caravats and Shannavests: Whiteboys and Faction Fighting in East Munster 1802-1811’, in Irish Peasants: Violence and Political Unrest, 17801914, ed. Samuel Clark and James S. Donnelly Jr (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), 89–101. See John Mannion, ‘Irish Merchants Abroad’, Newfoundland and Labrador Studies, 2, no. 2 (1986): 127–90, for the connections between Wexford and Newfoundland. NA CO 194/56, f51, 12/8/1815. Cf English, ‘Collective Violence’, 487–8. Richard Middleton, Cornwallis. Soldier and Statesman in a Revolutionary World (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022), 140, 278, 341. Philip Wright, ed., Lady Nugent’s Journal of Her Residence in Jamaica from 1801-1805 (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2002), 10–11, 12–13. Michael Lewis, ed., A Narrative of My Professional Adventures (1790-1839) by William Henry Dillon, KCH., Vice-Admiral of the Red, 2 vols (London: Navy Records Society, 1953), 318. Bannister, The Rule of the Admirals, 182. PAN MG 204 Duckworth Papers, box 1, ff00935-6 nd. Bannister, The Rule of the Admirals, 354 n. 209 gives ‘c1808’ as the date of issue but as the document is in a sequence of order papers originating from HMS Antelope it may well date from 1809 as this vessel did not become Holloway’s flagship until the spring of that year (see above p. 62). The memo is in the Duckworth Papers at the PAN but appears among orders issued by Holloway. NA CO 194/49, ff24-5, 24/7/1810.

Chapter 5 PUBLIC WELFARE AND MEASURES OF CIVIC IMPROVEMENT

From the mid-1790s the naval governors of Newfoundland became acutely aware of the implications of the marked shift from a migratory to a sedentary fishery workforce. As noted earlier, Newfoundland increasingly acquired a demographic profile that resembled a nascent settler colony in generating demands for religious and educational facilities, poor relief, penal provision and medical services. As the war period progressed, the naval governors were very active in advancing measures to address the needs of the settled population and supporting those promoted by members of the local elite. Their interest in these measures arose from their sense of governors’ responsibilities in a changing environment rather than from promptings by the secretary of state in London. By contrast, the first two wartime governors’ attention to these matters was slight and reactive. In 1793 Sir Richard King raised concerns at the dilapidation of the principal Anglican church in St John’s, describing it as in a ‘state of ruin’. He prevailed upon the secretary of state to secure a grant of 200 guineas from King George III to augment local subscriptions for its repair or replacement.1 A year later, Sir James Wallace faced the challenge of providing shelter and material support for families from the outports who had been burnt out of their homes by a marauding French force. It was only from Waldegrave’s governorship onwards, however, that the admirals turned their energetic attention to a wide range of aspects of public welfare and made persistent attempts to bring them to the attention of the authorities in London. When doing so, they often appealed to prevailing assumptions about the connection between religion, popular welfare and social control and gave a distinctive edge to these appeals by warning of the dangers that an active Catholic Church posed to an inadequately supported Anglican establishment on the Island. In making their case to their political masters in London, naval governors appealed to conventional ideas of paternalistic responsibility but also drew attention to what they saw as the peculiar volatility of the population for which they were responsible. Doubts about the ‘loyalty’ of working-class Irish residents of St John’s were heightened by an awareness of the wretched living conditions that many of them faced.2 In pursuing initiatives in religious and educational provision, relief for the poor and aged and promoting the material well-being of the general population, the naval governors had to contend with the British government’s lingering commitment to an idea of Newfoundland which was increasingly out

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of touch with the realities of the situation on the other side of the Atlantic. The government’s habitual parsimony was exacerbated by the financial stress of longrunning wars with revolutionary and Napoleonic France and by its attention being absorbed by them.3 From time to time, governors’ reforming agendas clashed with the interests of leading merchants in the Newfoundland trade who were based in English seaport towns and, increasingly, in St John’s, but they also worked in tandem with them on a range of projects. Although much of the naval governors’ attention focused on St John’s, the most densely populated part of the Island, they did not neglect the spiritual, education, judicial and material needs of residents of the outports. As we shall see in a later chapter, Waldegrave and his successors became increasingly aware that the challenge of funding these initiatives raised fundamental questions about the legal framework of the British government of Newfoundland.

Upholding the Anglican faith The wartime naval governors of Newfoundland committed significant time, political capital and funding in attempting to provide support for the Anglican church in the settlement. In the past, Royal Navy personnel had been involved in ministering to the moral and spiritual needs of fishermen on the Island, but the changes in its demographic composition meant that governors’ efforts were increasingly directed towards a style and level of provision deemed appropriate for a settled population.4 These initiatives were part of a broader concern in British colonial policy to strengthen the link between established religion and the state.5 It was stated most forcefully by William Knox, a leading member of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts and a long-serving under-secretary of state for the colonies. Knox declared that ‘the Prevalence of the Church of England in those Colonies is the best Security that Great Britain can have for their Fidelity and attachment to her Constitution and Interests’.6 Efforts focused on the material fabric of the Church, its personnel and its rights in the key community ritual of solemnizing marriages. In common with governors elsewhere, those in Newfoundland pursued these objectives in the face of difficulties arising from the heterogeneous confessional composition of the communities they governed, the zeal of competitors, the apparent indifference of ambitious or hard-pressed members of settler societies with other priorities, and the absence of the material provisions which supported the Anglican church in England, Ireland and Wales. It is indicative of the priority given to church–state relations in London that secretaries of state were more willing to provide funding for these purposes in Newfoundland than for other community needs that naval governors brought to their attention. The confessional and ethnic diversity of the European populations in colonial territories was in many respects problematic for those promoting special claims for the Anglican church. Paradoxically, however, it gave impetus to official attempts to set the Church of England on a firm basis in British settlements because

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institutional Anglicanism was seen as a symbol of the English origin of the empire and as an important means of maintaining a sense of common imperial identity in the face of potentially divisive diversity.7 In some cases, the imperative force of these considerations was strengthened by naval governors’ personal religious commitments. Although the chaplain of Waldegrave’s flagship in 1796–7 was a noted evangelical, Waldegrave himself is not regarded as a leading figure among the ‘blue light’ officers who sought to bring evangelical Protestantism to the late Georgian navy. Nevertheless, his private correspondence was marked by a deeply religious tone, and his governorship demonstrated a strong interest in what he saw as the moral and religious needs of the ordinary population and a commitment to advancing ‘holy religion’ on the Island.8 He identified this cause with strengthening the influence of the Church of England and resisting encroachments on its domain by Roman Catholic and ‘dissenting’ protestant clergy. Waldegrave and a number of his successors saw the Anglican clergymen sent as ‘missionaries’ to Newfoundland by the London-based Society for the Propagation of the Gospel as critical to the development of a resilient offshoot of the Church of England on the Island. Waldegrave’s promotion of the church reflected prevailing High Tory ideas that England was a ‘church–state’, a system of spiritual and temporal authority in which a publicly endowed Anglican ‘national’ church provided religious comfort and guidance to the community and served also as a key agency of social control. These commonplaces of eighteenth-century Toryism assumed a new prominence as Anglican political theologists looked with extreme trepidation at the wilful destruction of the French church and traditional French society in the early 1790s.9 Waldegrave’s support for Anglicanism in Newfoundland and his related reservations about the loyalty of the large Catholic community on the Island were consistent with this way of thinking. He thus responded promptly to complaints from two Anglican clergymen at Conception Bay that Roman Catholic priests, dissenting ministers and, even more scandalously, lay people were performing marriage ceremonies in the area. This was a common challenge for Anglicans in colonial contexts.10 When the chief justice advised Waldegrave that British legislation against ‘clandestine’ marriages did not apply to Newfoundland, the governor promised that on his return to England he would take the matter up with the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishop of London and the secretary of state. He made it quite clear where his sympathies lay: it was, he told his correspondents, necessary to ‘quickly eradicate those seeds of Irreligion and Immorality which appear to have been too successfully implanted in the minds of the illiterate and unprincipled of this Island’. As an interim measure, Waldegrave issued a proclamation that applied only to Conception Bay, but he advised Portland that a general legislative response was necessary. In this matter, as in others, Waldegrave’s reforming zeal was frustrated by the legal complexities of, and lacunae in, the legislative basis of the government of Newfoundland.11 Barristers from Lincoln’s Inn advised Portland that the matter could be dealt with by the governor without parliamentary intervention. Shortly before Waldegrave left for his second season in residence, however, he was informed

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that the secretary of state had referred the matter to the Privy Council. It does not seem to have been resolved because one of Waldegrave’s successors was still posing questions on the issue more than a decade later.12 In 1812 Sir John Duckworth asked whether marriages conducted by magistrates or ‘mere laymen’ were legal. His enquiry was practical rather than spiritual or moral and was accompanied by a series of scenarios to determine which of a range of celebrants were capable of solemnizing marriages whose offspring could inherit real property under English law. A legal opinion obtained in London reiterated the earlier advice that the English Marriage Act did not apply in Newfoundland. Given that, and the lack of any capacity for local legislation, ‘Practice and Custom’ should prevail; unless this reserved the right to conduct marriages to clergy and magistrates, ‘mere laymen’ could not be prevented from doing so.13 The matter was only settled legally by an act of parliament of 1817 that virtually restricted the right to conduct marriages to Anglican and Roman Catholic clergy and ignored the distinctive needs of nonAnglican Protestants.14 Waldegrave realized that attempts to uphold the rights of the Anglican church were likely to be ineffectual if it did not establish a credible presence on the Island. He adopted two strategies to address this issue. In the first place, he put his weight behind moves to increase the number of Anglican clergy in Newfoundland and to ensure that they had adequate means of support. Earlier in the eighteenth century, chaplains of naval ships had sometimes ministered to remote fishing communities, and there had been occasional visitations by clergymen sent out to Newfoundland as ‘missionaries’ by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. As the settled population became more numerous, proponents of the Anglican church insisted that these transitory and diffused arrangements were no substitute for the services of a resident clergyman.15 In a comment which probably reflected his own impressions of life in Newfoundland, Waldegrave ruminated on the hardships faced by missionaries who wintered over on this ‘dreadful Island’ and called for better financial provisions for them.16 The biographies of early missionaries recount their struggles in the face of disappointed expectations, inadequate salaries, decaying churches and indifferent, and, in some cases, openly hostile, putative parishioners.17 In recognition of the material aspects of these hardships, Waldegrave and other naval governors collaborated with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and made direct appeals to the government in London for authority to provide additional financial support for Anglican clergy. Following his first season in residence, Waldegrave secured salary increases for missionaries at St John’s, Harbour Grace, Trinity and Placentia. Before he left for his last visit in early 1799 the British government agreed to contribute £50pa towards missionaries’ salaries, provided the Society paid them £100pa. Waldegrave reckoned that the total sum was just sufficient to permit clergymen to live respectably in a settlement where living costs were high.18 While seeking to enhance the influence and status of Anglican clergy on the Island, Waldegrave also supported measures that would give members of the established church an appropriate physical focus for their worship and mitigate indecent overcrowding in the main burial ground at St John’s. The climate of

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Newfoundland took a heavy toll on insubstantial buildings, and, as noted above, funds had been authorized to repair the principal Anglican church in St John’s in 1793 during Sir Richard King’s governorship. In 1795 Sir James Wallace ordered his supreme surrogate to press inhabitants to make a deduction of 2.5 per cent from the wages or shares of those in their employ to support church maintenance.19 These efforts were of only limited effect. When Waldegrave arrived on the Island two years later the church in St John’s was in a very poor state and proved beyond repair.20 The governor gave his personal and official support to a subscription among the inhabitants of the town to raise funds for a new church, pledged twenty guineas of his own money towards it and encouraged the ‘principal inhabitants’ of St John’s to form a committee to manage the project. He made a general declaration of assistance and forswore any interference with the new church’s location or design: ‘all I require is to see it commodious and sufficiently spacious to afford a comfortable accommodation to the Inhabitants, so that no person may have a pretext for absenting themselves from so necessary a duty.’21 On his return to England in late 1797 Waldegrave took these ecclesiastical matters up with the secretary of state and appealed for his support to secure a grant of £500 from the king towards the cost of rebuilding the church. Waldegrave was confident that George III would approve of his attentiveness to the ‘affairs of our holy religion’ and forwarded with his application a letter of commendation from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel of his efforts to increase the salaries of missionaries. When the king agreed to provide the grant, Waldegrave secured authorization for early payment to settle bills he had drawn to purchase materials at favourable prices in England.22 Waldegrave’s efforts on behalf of the Anglican dead focused on extending the burial ground at St John’s. He sought to achieve this by incorporating an adjacent piece of private land and in late 1797 asked Portland to have an enquiry made into legal means to force its acquisition. As was common with requests to the secretary of state, he heard nothing on the matter until just before he left England for the following season. At that stage Portland assured him that the mere threat of legislation should be enough to ease the acquisition of sufficient land.23 This prediction proved unduly sanguine, and, indeed, neither the church nor the burial ground projects ran smoothly. The former was not completed until just after Waldegrave’s term ended in the early spring of 1800, and the latter stalled entirely. In neither case were these outcomes due to a lack of effort on Waldegrave’s part, or to any reluctance to pursue them in the face of indifference and hostility from some members of the local elite. On the burial ground question, however, his lack of flexibility created difficulties that his successors managed to avoid. Despite the king’s generous support, the church project soon ran into serious financial difficulties. Waldegrave later claimed that he had always been aware that the original estimates were seriously understated, and for that reason he had increased the sum sought from the king from £200 to £500. Once construction began in the summer of 1798, however, it became clear that even this enhanced provision would be insufficient. When discussing the price overruns with Portland, Waldegrave told him that as he had not been consulted by the project

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committee he could not account for them. He was, nevertheless, willing to lay some of the blame on the leading merchants of St John’s. While acknowledging that the demand for building materials for the new church may have driven up the cost of locally sourced supplies, he also claimed that unbudgeted labour costs were a consequence of opportunistic retaliatory pricing by ‘artificers’ in reaction to the merchants’ systematic profiteering in the supply of provisions. In the present case, the need to roof the unfinished structure before winter set in provided skilled workers with an opportunity to demand very high wages for this part of the job.24 Although most Newfoundland subscribers had doubled their original £10 contributions by early 1799, the management committee approached Waldegrave to ask for further assistance from the king to meet an anticipated shortfall of more than £400. This request was rejected out of hand and countered by an elaborate statement of self-exculpation. Waldegrave noted he had supported the project by an increased personal subscription of thirty guineas, by securing money from the Crown and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and by arranging for the shipment of materials on his flagship to avoid freight charges of £60. In so doing, he had acted out of a sense of duty to ‘King, country and God’ and claimed no merit for that. Waldegrave refused, however, to make further appeals to the Crown or the Society on the grounds that it would be ‘highly reflecting on the morals and liberality of the Principal Merchants in the Country’. He urged them to avoid this fate by subscribing for the amount outstanding.25 Four merchants from Dartmouth contributed an additional £48, but those from Poole took almost a month before flatly refusing to make further payments. Their response incensed Waldegrave and spurred him to condemn them out of hand. He told Portland that ‘in all dealing [with the leading merchants] on account of Government I have ever found them the most illiberal and rapacious body of Men I ever before met with, and for this I fear there is no remedy’.26 Eventually, the secretary of state approved a further £200 for the project, and following another effort by subscribers in St John’s it came to a relatively timely conclusion. The church was not completed during Waldegrave’s governorship, but he had the satisfaction of knowing that it was ready to receive the Anglicans of St John’s in the early months of his successor’s.27 Waldegrave secured a final donation of £100 from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in the last weeks of his governorship to ensure the successful conclusion of the project. He noted triumphantly in a letter to the archbishop of Canterbury that the Society did not usually fund buildings and went on to recount the contributions he had secured from the secretary of state and the Crown and the subscriptions he had extracted from the merchants ‘after the greatest difficulty and exertions’. Waldegrave concluded this letter with a self-congratulatory flourish which he probably hoped would find an echo in the prelate’s conversations with the king and his ministers: ‘I do not believe there can be found another Admiral in the whole Navy besides myself whose influence, exertions and example can have accomplished this arduous undertaking.’28 Whatever the self-promotional purposes of this statement, it was a largely justified testament to Waldegrave’s commitment to the Anglican cause in Newfoundland as well as to the achievements of this particular project. As we shall

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see, however, his herculean labours did not mark the end of governors’ promotion of physical provisions for Anglican worship on the Island. To the contrary, this was an ongoing concern of all the naval governors during the war years, in part at least because once built, churches needed to be maintained in the face of the ravages of an unforgiving climate, and there were no mechanisms in place to ensure the funding for that. While the completion of the church in St John’s was held up by the parsimonious indifference of the merchants, Waldegrave’s efforts to secure a new burial ground were hindered by what he saw as deliberate obstruction orchestrated by his political opponents in St John’s. The governor had quickly learnt that vested interests in the town were not to be cowed (as his superior in London had thought) by the mere threat of legislation. To the contrary, they were emboldened to actively (and in his view deviously) resist attempts to secure the desired piece of land. In his last year as governor, Waldegrave was lulled into the prospect that its current holder, now resident at Newton Abbot in Devon, was willing to be accommodating. Just before he left for England, however, he was told that the land had been sold to a private buyer at twice its market value.29 Sir Charles Pole’s handling of the graveyard expansion in St John’s diffused the heat generated by Waldegrave’s inflexible and confrontational approach. Rather than going head to head with those able to exploit the advantage of holding land adjacent to the current graveyard, Pole commissioned a survey to identify alternative sites for a new one. The issue was finally settled by Sir James Gambier. He avoided the difficulties Waldegrave had encountered by the simple expedient of assigning land for a new graveyard a short distance from the church.30 In addition to resolving the burial ground issue, Gambier, a noted figure among the ‘blue light’ evangelical officers of the late Georgian navy, also took a close interest in the religious and moral welfare of the ordinary people of Newfoundland.31 In Gambier’s hands the link between spiritual leadership and social control was signalled by his suggestion that clergymen should be sent to the Island to preach the gospel and serve as magistrates in the outports. This combination of duties was common in rural parishes in England. Gambier also pursued measures of public education that focused on moral and religious, rather than cultural or vocational, needs. In the absence of public funding, Gambier facilitated subscriptions of ‘welldisposed people’ to provide a building for a school for the poor in St John’s and Sunday schools in Conception Bay, telling Lord Hobart that ‘such establishments must tend greatly to promote religion and good order’. For older members of the community who were beyond such wholesome influences, he urged the need for the ‘strictest police’ to keep the lower classes in decent order, and secure jails to restrain them when persuasion and deterrence failed.32 Gambier continued to support local efforts to secure suitable ministers for Anglican communities at Placentia and Conception Bay and ordered his surrogate at Fogo to encourage subscriptions for a church building on that island.33 Gambier’s evangelical commitments led him to place particular emphasis on the suppression of personal vice. Thus when he left the Island in late October 1802 at the end of his first season in residence, he sternly enjoined the magistrates to

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‘enforce with the utmost rigor the Laws made against Blasphemy, Profaneness, Adultery, Fornication, Profanation of the Lord’s Day, Swearing, Drunkenness and Immorality’. This injunction, which echoed Gambier’s instructions, was one of a set of bracing godly measures which left those who faced the rigours of a Newfoundland winter little choice but to be good. They included a proclamation drawing attention to the legal provision prohibiting the sale of liquor in ‘small quantities’, that is less than two gallons, and the offer of a reward to those who notified breaches to the authorities.34 Gambier was a staunch Anglican, but his use of state power in the fight against personal vice breathed the spirit of Calvin’s Geneva and followed the exclusionary practice of radical protestant sects in early New England. Before he boarded his flagship to return to England in late 1803 he ordered the magistrates of St John’s to separate the wife of the Government House gardener from her husband and children and send her back to Ireland. Gambier described her as ‘a Woman of most abandoned Character’ who was ‘teaching her young Children to fall into her vicious habits’. Her husband had declared her ‘totally incorrigible’ and desired to be separated from her.35 Gower and Holloway used provisions against single Irish women coming to Newfoundland to rid the Island of those they considered ‘persons of bad character’, but Gambier’s separation of the gardener’s wife from her family seems extraordinary, even if they were bound only by a common law marriage.36 Sir Erasmus Gower shared his predecessors’ concern with strengthening the Anglican church in Newfoundland but seemed largely free of the punitive impulses that directed some of their initiatives in that cause. He bid successfully for a Treasury contribution of £700 to support the construction of an Anglican clergy house at St John’s and £50 towards the repair of the Anglican clergy house and school at Harbour Grace. In his valedictory report to Lord Castlereagh in early 1807 Gower drew his attention to early representations going back to 1804 on the need for government to approve the use of income from rents to establish and provide ongoing support for protestant schools in the ‘principal out harbours’. The business model of the fishery left working people too poor to pay for their children’s education, and the merchants were uninterested in it. Gower told Castlereagh that in these circumstances, the lack of government support left the ‘inferior order in a lamentable state of ignorance and darkness in regard to moral and religious obligations’ and easy prey to Catholic proselytizing.37 While continuing his predecessors’ promotion of the personal and material infrastructure of Anglicanism, Gower was also, however, prepared to spread the net of state-sponsored religious influence more widely. In late 1804, acting on a petition from magistrates and merchants in Newfoundland, Gower wrote to Lord Camden, who was now the secretary of state, seeking his approval for an annual sum of £50 to be paid to the Reverend Doctor James O’Donel, a priest who was also, although Gower did not mention this, the Roman Catholic bishop of the Island. Since 1784 O’Donel had been carefully capitalizing on the toleration of Roman Catholicism on the Island that had been introduced by Rear Admiral Edwards in 1779 and maintained by his successors. Sean Cadigan treats O’Donel’s cooperative relationship with the civil government as poor form, perhaps even

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smacking of betrayal, but this line of criticism does not give sufficient weight to the broader context.38 In fact, the Roman Catholic bishop’s adherence to a vision of the Church as a conservative force and his active cooperation with a civil authority underwritten by traditionally anti-Catholic forms of Anglicanism were consistent with the stance of members of the Church hierarchy in Britain’s North American colonies, including Catholic Quebec. It also marked the practice of the Church in England and, indeed, Ireland itself. The perceived benefits of accommodation to the ongoing public practice of the Catholic religion were given a fresh impetus by the destruction of the French church at the hands of the revolutionaries.39 For their part, the naval governors’ constructive interactions with Dr O’Donel reflected a more widespread appreciation that careful attention to the relationship between the Catholic Church and the state was an important factor in the successful management of British colonies in the maritime region in the period.40 From time to time, O’Donel faced challenges from itinerant priests who sought to exploit provincially based clerical rivalries originating from Ireland by presenting themselves as popular champions of the Irish Catholic working classes of Newfoundland.41 O’Donel’s role in moderating the excesses of what he described as ‘the rabble of the place’ was appreciated by the ‘principal inhabitants’ and a succession of naval governors.42 When Gower told Camden that Dr O’Donel had rendered ‘important and patriotic service to His Majesty’ and that the government was ‘greatly indebted to his fidelity and piety for the constant preservation of peace and good order among the lower classes of society in this place’, the bishop’s efforts to limit the impact of a plot with United Irish overtones were probably uppermost in the governor’s mind.43 In 1805, when Dr O’Donel became too old and infirm to continue his ministry and wished to return to Ireland to be supported by members of his family, the governor successfully petitioned the British government to convert the stipend into a pension recognizing past service. Gower argued that the bishop’s merits and contributions justified such a reward. He also pointed out that it would encourage his successors’ loyalty to the Crown and their attention to the personal and political morals of their charges.44 In some cases, governors’ appeals for support for the Anglican church in the face of challenges from its Roman Catholic rival reflected their personal commitment to the ideology of the Anglican church–state. It may also, however, have been a rhetorical ploy to attract attention in London. Nevertheless, official patronage of Dr O’Donel suggests that governors thought that any form of organized Christian discipline was better than none. Catholic merchants who contributed funds to Anglican church maintenance in the outports and supported cross-denominational welfare measures in St John’s seemed to share this view.45 As noted in an earlier chapter, Vice Admiral John Holloway was a zealous reader of the Bible and during his term as governor demonstrated that he shared his predecessors’ views on the need to strengthen the position of the Church of England in the settlement. He reiterated Gower’s requests for government support to supplement local efforts to fund clerical and educational activities in the outports and repeated earlier warnings about the threat posed to Anglicanism on the Island by the relatively strong and active forces of Roman Catholicism.46 In

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this case the governor was a more zealous defender of the faith than the major missionary organization in England. Earlier in the year, a report on the Church in Upper and Lower Canada issued by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel opined that the provision of missions and schools on the Island was satisfactory.47 The naval governors’ appeals for government funds to support the fabric and personnel of the Anglican church were often framed in terms of its role as an agency of popular education and social control. When Sir John Duckworth arrived on the Island in the spring of 1810, however, he learnt to his dismay that the church in St John’s which had consumed so much of the official energy of one of his predecessors and been the beneficiary of significant ministerial and royal largesse was, almost literarily, treated as private property. All the pews were ‘owned’ by subscribers, troops from the garrison had to stand in the aisles, and there was no room inside the church for ordinary members of the community. Advertisements for pews for sale in the St John’s newspaper over the summer of 1810 lend credence to Duckworth’s claims.48 He remonstrated that the church ought to be considered ‘the property of the public’ and proposed expanding it to alleviate this unsatisfactory state of affairs. Duckworth asked the ministry to pay for this work since the beneficiaries would be the ‘poor’ who by the very nature of their position could not be expected to subscribe.49 He secured a grant of £250 from the secretary of state towards this project but was careful to stipulate to the management committee that it was conditional upon provision of seating for the governor, his servants, members of the garrison, naval officers and sixty inhabitants who could not afford to rent pews. To prevent any backsliding, Duckworth left a memorandum for his successor reiterating these conditions.50 Duckworth’s efforts on behalf of the Anglican church were not restricted to St John’s. During his visit to the southern outports in the summer of 1810 he raised the poor state of the church at Trinity with the magistrates, checked on the progress of a project for a new church at Greenspond and assured the promoters that he was confident of securing a grant of £100 to bring it to a speedy conclusion.51 On his return to England at the end of 1811, Duckworth reported triumphantly on initiatives that had been welcomed enthusiastically by the two major confessional populations on the Island. The authorization of Roman Catholic burials and the provision of an exclusive burial ground for them in St John’s had been ‘received with an expression of the warmest gratitude’.52 The Anglicans of St John’s were so appreciative of government support for the expansion of their church to accommodate poorer co-religionists that they subscribed £300 to the project. Anglican subscribers in Fortune Bay pledged £600 towards the cost of two places of worship in their area, and subscriptions for lesser sums were made for clerical purposes elsewhere on the Island. Duckworth had no doubt that Lord Liverpool would be pleased to see ‘a regard for Religion and good order prevails and continues to increase in Newfoundland’.53 The secretary of state responded by approving grants towards the costs of the church projects at Trinity and Greenspond.54 In mid-1811 Duckworth also secured Lord Liverpool’s approval of a proposal which seems to have originated from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to provide a pension of £100pa to missionaries who served at least ten

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years on the Island. The purpose of this provision was to assist the recruitment of Anglican clergymen and encourage them to stay.55 In common with his predecessors, Sir Richard Keats combined an ambition to strengthen the Anglican church in Newfoundland with the recognition that the confessional demographics of the Island made it necessary for governors to work effectively with the head of the Roman Catholic Church. He was thus prepared to support a pension of £75pa for the Reverend Dr Lambert who replaced Dr O’Donel as Roman Catholic Bishop in recognition that he was a ‘worthy man’ and also as a signal of goodwill to the Catholic population upon which the defence of the Island largely relied.56 Keats’s appreciation of Lambert’s merits and usefulness was no doubt sharpened by the counter example of another priest of ‘manners plausible and taking with the lower order’ who had fallen out with his superiors and was thought to be sowing sedition among the population.57 As had been the case with other naval governors, Keats’s support for a loyal figure in the Catholic church hierarchy was justified by doubts about the effectiveness of the Anglican church as an agency of social control. Nevertheless, Keats, the son of an Anglican clergyman, complained to Lord Bathurst of the ‘deplorable’ state of the Protestant religion outside the pale of St John’s. As a result of ‘want of encouragement to missions or Church Establishments’, some Protestants were ‘becoming a Prey to the Proselytizing Zeal of the Catholic Priests’ while others were ‘plunging into a state of Vice and ir-religion approaching to Heathenish’.58 Keats encouraged voluntary church building efforts at Burin, Carbonnar, Morton’s Harbour and Trinity but was painfully aware that the supply of clergy was still inadequate. At Trepassey, where there was neither church nor clergy, he ‘strongly recommended’ the chief magistrate to encourage the inhabitants to attend the local courthouse in Sunday dress to hear the appointed service read by him or some other ‘appropriate’ person.59 He commended a resident of Bay Roberts who had assumed this role, but a complaint from a clergyman that this person was also solemnizing marriages highlighted the implications of the shortage of Anglican missionaries on the Island. The exchange shows Keats treading a careful line between wishing to support Anglican worship and the naval governors’ more specific commitment to the conventional image of an Anglican church–state.60 It has been suggested that such official indicators of the vigour of Anglicanism in Newfoundland as consecrated buildings and beneficed clergymen ignored the role of ‘popular’ or ‘vernacular’ expressions which relied on the informal efforts of communities and lay leaders.61 But while these initiatives supported the practice of the Anglican faith in remote areas, they did not provide the sense of hierarchy and the mechanisms of social control that figured so prominently in Anglican political theology. Beneficed clergy were an essential part of this structure, and Keats’s encouragement of lay provision was a stopgap measure. He thought that salary levels affected clergy recruitment on the Island and noted that they were significantly lower than those of clergy in Nova Scotia and Canada. He encouraged Bathurst to make a ‘friendly interposition’ to the Society on this matter. This advice seems to have had some effect as the government in London later authorized a payment of £1,000 to support its work in Newfoundland. Keats, however,

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continued to complain about the lack of assistance given to the Anglican church in the Island. In a letter to the archbishop of Canterbury dating from the end of 1814, he attributed this neglect to the fact that Newfoundland was not a colony, pointed to the higher salaries and benefits paid to missionaries in Nova Scotia and repeated his earlier warnings that the failure to provide adequately for the Anglican church had given an opening for recruitment into the Roman Catholic and dissenting churches.62 In a rather defensive reply, the archbishop (who was a member of the Privy Council’s ‘Committee on Trade’) told Keats that recruitment efforts in England had been frustrated by the lack of ‘suitable’ applicants but undertook to ask Lord Bathurst if provision could be made to match the salaries and conditions of missionaries in Nova Scotia.63

Material welfare Sir James Wallace’s response to the pleas of destitute war victims from outports ravaged by the French, and his attempts to ensure that the establishment of the garrison did not exacerbate the shortage of provisions on the Island, were emergency measures rather than aspects of a concerted programme prompted by an overt sense of paternalistic responsibility for the ordinary people of Newfoundland. Although there had been alarmed reports by Royal Navy officers and missionaries on the dire plight of poorer sections of the community during the American Revolutionary War and this issue had been noted in 1793 by the Parliamentary Select Committee, the responsibility of governors for the population’s material welfare was not specified in their Instructions.64 Nevertheless, from Waldegrave’s governorship onwards, official efforts to relieve distress became increasingly sustained and systematic. On arriving at St John’s in the summer of 1797 Waldegrave was struck most forcibly by the ‘wretchedness and apparent misery’ of the ordinary people and appalled by the thought of their plight in winter when provisions were scare and prices particularly high. Although he was aware of instances of ‘liberality’ on the part of some of the ‘richer inhabitants’, he was surprised that there were no systematic provisions for relieving distress. He promoted the creation of a committee to organize subscriptions and offered £20 towards its work.65 Waldegrave wished to avoid reliance on the purely private charity of individuals and favoured collective systems of ‘general support’ reflecting people’s ‘humanity and compassion for themselves, and a feeling for their fellow creatures’.66 In common with other contemporaries who had been touched by evangelicalism, Waldegrave emphasized that all members of the community had individual responsibility for advancing the welfare of themselves and their fellows, noting Jesus’s commendation of the humble contributions made by the poorest people: ‘Let each of us keep in our remembrance the parable of the Widow’s mite.’ In order to facilitate this approach he issued a proclamation in early October 1797 encouraging employers throughout the Island to organize a ‘voluntary’ subscription to local charitable funds of a shilling of every £10 (0.5 percent) their servants earned and to withhold support

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from those who did not contribute to them. Subsequent correspondence suggests there was some uptake of this proposal.67​ As was the case among Tory paternalists in contemporary England, the government’s role in promoting measures of relief was justified by reference to the selfish conduct of local elites. Waldegrave’s reports to the secretary of state included sharp criticism of Newfoundland merchants for ruthlessly exploiting their control of the price of labour and supplies and riding rough-shod over the legitimate claims of the poorer sections of the population. In so doing, they endangered the security of the Island by causing hardship that provoked public disorder. Waldegrave also accused the merchants of maintaining a system of monopoly that reduced the fishermen to a ‘set of unfortunate beings working like Slaves, and ever hazarding their lives’ who were so indebted to them that their only escape was through illegal emigration.68 This position mirrored Waldegrave’s views of the ‘vile’ monopolistic conduct of English farmers when grain was in short supply and echoed the sharp criticism that John Reeves and Aaron Graham had levelled at the West Country merchants during the parliamentary enquiry of 1793.69 It exemplified a suspicion of merchants’ ‘anti-social . . . individual acquisitiveness’ that has been seen as widespread among the eighteenth-century naval governors of Newfoundland and treated the ethos of trade as inimical to ideas of imperial interest framed in terms of shifting understandings of the ‘good of the fishery’.70 Waldegrave took positive steps to weaken aspects of the merchants’ grip on the Newfoundland economy that he thought exacerbated the hardships faced by the poor. Thus early in his governorship he advised Portland on the need to establish regulations for a market in St John’s and to oblige sellers to bring agricultural products for sale there. Such a measure would discourage sheep stealing which was facilitated by private trading, but Waldegrave also saw it as being necessary for the ‘good of the inhabitants’.71 The same consideration applied to his views on arrangements for publicizing tenders for carrying supplies to the garrison. In this

Plate 5.1  Like other settlements in late Georgian Newfoundland, St John’s was cut off from the rest of the world by snow and ice in the winter. This romanticized image from the late 1830s conceals the icy squalor in which many inhabitants endured these months. (Detail from William Gosse, A South view of St John’s Harbour, during a Severe Frost (1838), Baldwin Collection of Canadiana JRR2258, courtesy Toronto Public Library.)

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case, questions of fairness coincided with public economy. In early September 1797 when the acting barrack master told Waldegrave that the responses to transport tenders were very limited because most of the ordinary people who had boats or horses for hire were illiterate and could not read the printed announcements of them, he responded by ordering that they should also be notified through the ‘town cryer’.72 Shortly thereafter, he drew the secretary of state’s attention to an important commercial matter that skewed trade towards the interests of the merchants and was a significant barrier to both general prosperity and the security of the Island. The common tendency for economic transactions in remote overseas settlements to be impeded by a shortage of circulating medium was exacerbated in Newfoundland by distinctive features of its economic structure and social composition.73 John Reeves had noted the lack of cash on the Island in his evidence before the parliamentary committee in 1793, and at the beginning of his governorship Waldegrave was made acutely aware of the risk this posed to the security of the Island when it delayed payment of the garrison and inclined some of the troops to be sympathetic towards the highly mutinous Latonians.74 He had responded promptly and effectively to this emergency by sending a vessel to Halifax to pick up silver coins to pay the troops and, incidentally, boost the circulating currency of the Island.75 By the end of his first season of residence, however, Waldegrave had come to see the issue as a more general threat to the wellbeing and safety of the community which needed to be addressed systematically. The troops suffered financially from the discounts imposed by the merchants and traders (some of whom were in open or surreptitious partnership with officers of the garrison76) when they used bills of exchange to purchase goods and services in St John’s. A shortage of cash probably also lay behind an otherwise unusual appeal that Waldegrave made to the principal inhabitants of St John’s in 1797. In early September the governor solicited them for money to pay overdue wages to the crews of two naval ships so they could buy ‘necessaries’ for their use during a pending cruise to protect the fisheries.77 Among the working poor, the lack of small change raised the cost of provisions by setting artificially high minimum prices. It also distorted the populace’s view of the real value of money since they tended to disregard sums less than those represented by the more readily available, relatively high-denomination, coins. For practical purposes, amounts of less than sixpence could not be expressed in legal tender and were either ignored or bartered away illegally for tots of overpriced rum or less harmful trifles. When a shortage of cash delayed the payment of the garrison it raised concerns about their ‘loyalty’. On Waldegrave’s return to London in the autumn of 1797, he wrote to Portland outlining his concerns and urging the government to address them. In March of the following year, he raised the matter again, noting encouragingly that Spanish silver dollars were currently available in London at a very favourable rate.78 Portland was responsive to these representations. At the beginning of the 1798 season he authorized Waldegrave to carry £1,000 of small-denomination copper coins to Newfoundland for general use and a shipment of silver with which to pay the troops.79 Waldegrave reported enthusiastically at the end of the season on the success of these initiatives. He had received warm letters of thanks from the

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members of the garrison and told the secretary of state that the copper coinage had been ‘receiv’d with a joy not easily to be expressed’. He was particularly delighted by its beneficial impact on the purchasing capacity of the poor. Previously, the shortage of currency meant that a loaf of bread could only be purchased with a six-penny coin. Now that very small-denomination copper coins were available, loaves cost only one or two pennies and there was a marked improvement in diet: ‘children now obtain a good breakfast who, perhaps, before the imposition of the Copper, scarce ever tasted bread in the whole twenty four hours.’80 In light of the success of this measure, Waldegrave urged Portland to supply further copper coins for the next season and encouraged the authorization of newly minted lowdenomination silver coins for Newfoundland. These coins would further ease circulation and thwart those who imported debased coins from England that caused difficulties in paying the garrison and unsettled the troops.81 The success of Waldegrave’s measures did not appear to have prompted the secretary of state’s office to set up permanent arrangements to provide a regular supply of small-denomination coins, and this matter never appeared in the instructions issued to his successors. Since the problem was systemic, it cropped up periodically during the years that followed. In 1800 Pole failed to get the merchants to accept a proposal that had originated with the garrison commander for an agreed rate of exchange for silver coins. When Gower questioned the magistrates on this matter in 1804, he was told that the poor were obliged to accept a discount of between 7 and 12 per cent when cashing small bills. Chief Justice Tremlett and his colleagues noted that the problem was exacerbated by increases in the population and trade and the limited scope for investment on the Island. In these circumstances, the more prosperous trades people tended to hoard cash and sometimes sought to get a return on it by discounting bills paid to those working for wages.82 Gower took these matters up with the secretary of state over the winter of 1804–5. He emphasized the deleterious impact of a shortage of species on the well-being of the poor and arranged for the shipment of a total of £14,500 in Spanish dollars and smaller-denomination silver and copper coins over the next two years. Holloway took out £7,000 in species in 1809.83 In the summer of 1810 the Ordnance Office in St John’s was compelled to advertise for cash in exchange for thirty-day bills, but in the following year arrangements were made to pay the troops in Bank of England notes.84 Duckworth took £3,000 with him in the spring of 1811 and in the following year wrote to prompt the Treasury to supply payments for the coming season. He also took the initiative in using silver dollars taken from American prizes to pay the garrison before he left Newfoundland in the autumn of 1812.85 Shortage of species remained a problem in the outports, however. In 1813 a naval visitor reported that the six pence per boat charged to support Greenwich Hospital could only be paid after the officers of his ship had made cash purchases in the area.86 While the regulations designed to realize the settlement’s joint objective as a lucrative British fishery and a nursery of seamen were very detailed and highly prescriptive, most of the legislation supporting civil society in Britain (including that which empowered local government to raise funds for specific purposes)

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did not apply to Newfoundland. As we have seen, Waldegrave’s desire to outlaw clandestine marriages fell afoul of the legislative vacuum. So too did his attempt to make other provisions for the spiritual and material welfare of those over whom he ruled. Thus the funding of churches or clergymen was reliant on uncertain local philanthropy, the Anglican fervour of George III and the discretionary largesse of the secretary of state. The fate of schemes of secular improvement was equally uncertain, and while Waldegrave was fully prepared to throw his weight behind charitable provision of secular objectives, he also thought they should be supported by revenue raised by government. In 1798 he encouraged the Duke of Portland to introduce legislation to authorize a tax of sixpence a gallon on imported rum to pay for the relief of the poor and elderly. In 1793 a Dartmouth merchant testifying before the parliamentary enquiry attacked a suggested tax of half that amount, so it is not surprising that Waldegrave’s plan also foundered on the politically and economically motivated self-interest of the merchants and their capacity to capitalize on Newfoundland’s increasingly anomalous legal structure when it suited them to do so.87 The merchants’ fears that Waldegrave’s proposal was favoured by the Duke of Portland precipitated a deputation from Poole to oppose it.88 In the event, nothing came of the scheme except potential embarrassment in his relationship with the secretary of state and open conflict with the chief justice, Richard Routh. Waldegrave had told Routh that the government in London would be pleased if merchants suggested a tax and asked him to try to determine what ‘his friends’ might ‘think in general on the subject’. Not surprisingly, Routh’s ‘friends’ were implacably hostile to the proposal, claiming that the tax would ‘interfere’ with the fisheries, presumably by increasing the cost of provisioning fishing boats. They also told the governor through his chief justice that the tax was not authorized by prevailing law and reminded him that the residents of Newfoundland lacked the rights recognized in colonies, including those of providing for poor relief out of local taxation. Their suggestion was that the poor might be relieved by being given land. This proposal, which was itself contrary to law and may have been advanced as a way of making land available for speculation, no doubt reinforced the governor’s jaundiced view of the humanity and public spirit of the merchants. Subsequent developments suggest that in addition to objecting to the impact of the tax on their financial interests, the merchants did not want governors to have access to funds that allowed them to determine priorities for expenditure on new projects.89 When Waldegrave was in England over the winter of 1797–8 he received reports of a particularly severe shortage of provisions throughout Newfoundland, including at St John’s. He responded immediately to this crisis by asking the secretary of state to authorize the importation of provisions from North America to boast supplies before the convoys from England arrived in the spring.90 Back in Newfoundland he lent his support to the Charitable Fund set up in St John’s and used his authority to extract ‘voluntary’ contributions levied on the wages paid to members of the garrison for off-duty employment.91 Waldegrave also reported that members of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment had each paid 6d a month to the fund. Since he wrote acknowledging the ‘liberality of

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this truly charitable act’ and ordered that the letter written by him be inserted as a memorial in the official records of the settlement, these contributions, like those made by naval officers on the station, were presumably a consequence of the governor’s example and encouragement rather than his authority.92 Over the course of the year beginning in November 1798, 626 people (about 15 per cent of the population) were relieved from this fund, mostly by being supplied with provisions. Seventeen thousand pounds of rice, flour and bread, 167 gallons of molasses and 5096 pounds of fish were distributed to residents, an average of approximately twenty-seven pounds of starch, eight pounds of protein and a quart of molasses per recipient. Waldegrave noted that without this assistance ‘many’ of the ‘necessitous poor . . . must have perished from absolute want’.93 The success of the drive for subscriptions was such that Waldegrave saw scope for addressing more than basic material needs. As he prepared to leave Newfoundland for the last time, he told the Committee of the Charitable Fund that he would like to see its activities expanded to include the establishment of a ‘School of Industry’ and referred it to English models of these institutions. He asked for a full accounting of its funds to pass on to his successor.94 Schemes for public relief appear to have lapsed when Waldegrave’s governorship ended. Pole’s only recorded contribution to the welfare of the Island’s inhabitants was to promote small pox inoculations in the face of resistance from the residents of Portugal Cove who were concerned that they would be infected by those who had received inoculations in St John’s.95 It fell to Pole’s successor, Sir James Gambier, another evangelically inclined flag officer, to revive Waldegrave’s attempts to stimulate self-help and capitalize on the philanthropic inclinations of wealthier citizens. He extended the reach of Waldegrave’s initiatives by urging magistrates in the outports to set up charity schools and to secure support for them through subscriptions. Gambier stressed the role that these schools should play in inculcating religious values and improving thereby ‘the morals of the poorer classes of the community’.96 They were usually managed by the local Anglican clergy and funded jointly by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and the government.97 Gambier adopted Waldegrave’s strategy of increasing the effectiveness of reforming measures by providing incentives for members of the population to police them. Thus when he issued a proclamation reiterating a long-standing legal prohibition against selling ‘small’ quantities of liquor, he imposed a hefty penalty of £10 for each offence and a reward of £5 to informants.98 The liquor targeted by this proclamation was rum, virtually a staple on the Island and the reputed cause of much fecklessness, immorality and disorder. As we have seen, Waldegrave was prepared to confront powerful merchant interests in proposing a tax on this commodity designed both to limit the demand for it and to raise funds for worthy civic and religious purposes. Gambier resurrected this scheme. He proposed a duty of a shilling a gallon on West Indian rum and urged the secretary of state (Lord Hobart) to commit some of the revenue to support Anglican clergy.99 He also raised the question posed by Waldegrave (and indeed in 1729 by the first civil governor) of extending to Newfoundland the English provisions for raising local rates to relieve the poor, maintain roads and build and maintain churches.100

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Gambier suggested changes to governors’ instructions to encompass these powers and asked Lord Hobart to secure a Crown Law opinion on the question.101 Neither the proposals for a rum tax nor that for a local rate met with approval in London. The tax was rejected on the grounds that it was contrary to an act that gave preference to West Indian products; the rating proposal foundered because (as the merchants had told Waldegrave) the English Poor Law did not apply to Newfoundland, so funds could not be raised to provide poor relief. Gambier was also informed that governors had no power to raise money to support churches on the Island.102 From time to time public measures in Newfoundland had been supported by what has been described as a system of ‘informal taxation’ agreed to by ad hoc committees of well-heeled members of the community, sometimes under the coordination of a local magistrate.103 These imposts were, however, at the subscription end of a fundraising spectrum that ran from private philanthropy to public taxation, and they gave local merchants and local officials entire discretion over whether they were to be raised and how they were to be spent. In the absence of a legislative assembly, local elites reacted sharply to suggestions that taxation should be instigated by governors and expended on their projects.104 Gower’s attention to the well-being of the growing residential population was at least as keen as that of Waldegrave and Gambier. On arriving back at Spithead after his first period of residence, Gower told Lord Camden of his ongoing support for the poor relief and charitable arrangements initiated by Waldegrave and revived by Gambier. But while praising their ‘humane exertions’ Gower urged the need for more wide-ranging and sustained measures. His sense of them echoed aspects of Waldegrave’s valedictory suggestions. He recommended the formation of a ‘complete and efficient establishment’ to provide poor relief and public education. Gower was particularly attracted to the idea of an education that would provide moral lessons and skills relevant to the local economy. He promoted ‘gratuitous instruction to the young of both sexes in morality, and . . . some resources of domestic industry of which they are at present wholly ignorant’. Gower was more open in his praise of the commitment of merchants and other local worthies to this cause than his predecessors, applauding their generosity in subscribing to a ‘Society for Improving the Condition of the Poor’ that had already built a school in St John’s to accommodate 400 pupils and appointed its first teacher. In a generous congratulatory letter to the Society, Gower praised its efforts in establishing and securing subscriptions to support a non-denominational institution underwritten by ‘the pure principals of Christian love and universal benevolence’. It would stand as a ‘Monument of the disinterested humanity of the higher classes of this Community, as well as a source of future happiness and improvement to the lower’.105 Gower presented a gift of £10 on behalf of his immediate predecessor, made a series of significant subscriptions of £20 and £25 on his own account, and secured a gift of £40 worth of educational and religious books from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.106 His efforts in encouraging and supporting local initiatives were commended by the secretary of state, who expressed ‘cordial approbation of the attention which you have shewn to the consideration of the Poor and the Education of their children at Newfoundland’.107

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In a later report which promoted the need for local sources of revenue to fund services on the Island, Gower provided an upbeat account of the success of the ‘Schools of Industry’ in delivering basic education and moral instruction and training in skills such as netmaking, spinning and knitting. These schools ‘have produced such happy effects, by inculcating religious principles and industrious habits into the children who have attended them, that they merit, in an eminent degree the countenance and support’ of government. The skills learnt by the pupils were related directly to the good of the fishery and were not widely known on the Island. Although these schools received funding from local subscribers to the Society for Improving the Condition of the Poor, and from the Societies for the Propagation of the Gospel and Christian Knowledge in London, the costs of their buildings, accommodation, running expenses and ongoing contributions to relieving the poor outstripped these resources. Gower told Lord Castlereagh, the new secretary of state, that his predecessor had favoured these initiatives and hoped that he would approve an expenditure of £60pa from lease revenue to pay the salary of a schoolmaster. As we have seen, Gower took a liberal view on providing the Catholic bishop with a stipend and pension for his role in promoting morality and good order among his flock. In this instance, however, he thought it expedient to play the Protestant card, reminding Lord Castlereagh that the ‘Schools of Industry’ were attracting Protestant children who would otherwise have been forced to go to Catholic schools because no alternative was available.108 Castlereagh approved the sum requested out of lease revenue from Crown property on the Island and the ministry subsequently provided another £20 for the salary of the master’s female assistant. As Gower’s term was coming to an end he urged the secretary of state to allow his successor to continue to draw on these funds for educational purposes.109 By the first year of Duckworth’s governorship, the government and residents supported a range of schools in both St John’s and the outports. In addition to the non-denominational ‘industrial school’ in St John’s, there were four Anglican and three Roman Catholic schools in the town, eight Anglican schools in outports (two each in Harbour Grace and Trinity, three in Conception Bay and one in Fortune Bay) a Roman Catholic School on Bonavista and a Methodist school in Twillingate.110 In 1806, Gower hesitated before approving the constitution of a Benevolent Irish Society in St John’s. His remarks to Castlereagh notwithstanding, however, Gower was, by the standards of the day, relatively understated in his protestant identity, and his views on this application were framed in social and political, rather than sectarian, terms. While Gower approved the benevolent intentions of the Society’s promoters, he thought that all ‘national and religious distinction should be carefully avoided as tending to prevent the union of heart and general cooperation among His Majesty’s subjects from different parts of the Empire’.111 This comment echoes Waldegrave’s earlier remark on the symbolic significance of collaborative initiatives to relieve distress and promote popular education. It suggests the growth of an official sense of the need to foster ideas of community and shared identity among those resident on the Island. Neither governor saw their support for the Church of England as inconsistent with these aspirations.

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Here, as elsewhere in the empire, the Anglican church was seen to represent the English roots of a diverse British enterprise. Gower’s attention to the interests of the Island’s resident working-class population extended beyond a concern for the education of its children. He also reported to the secretary of state on the lack of adequate housing for ‘labouring fishermen’ and artificers and drew his attention to the impact of the high price of provisions on the cost of labour and the well-being of labourers. Gower undertook a range of measures to address these problems and to mitigate aspects of popular hardship that were a consequence of sharp, exploitative business practices. He thus sought permission to lease land currently reserved for unused ‘ships’ rooms’ and to make other land available for cultivation.112 As he neared the end of his first year of residence, Gower issued a proclamation requiring houses and shops to be built away from the harbour, thus allowing for more and better dwellings, while leaving land on the waterside to accommodate fisheries-related activities that had to be located there. He gave effect to these objectives by relocating the main street of St John’s 200 yards from the crowded and insanitary huddle of waterfront buildings that currently housed the commercial centre of the town.113 These measures to improve the quality of the built environment of St John’s were accompanied by attempts to eliminate unacceptably exploitative business practices. Gower thus prohibited merchants from providing stores to fishermen in the outports without declaring their price and was highly critical of ‘truck’ arrangements which, by paying wages in the form of credit notes, allowed employers and retailers to benefit unfairly at the cost of wage earners. He also introduced a standard set of weights and measures in place of those that provided short measure to retail customers.114 Gower, who was no doubt well aware of the role that merchant credit paid in the economics of the fishery, would have had no objection of principle to it and was willing to help the merchants if he thought it compatible with his wider obligations. He was thus fully prepared to back what he thought were their reasonable claims for special consideration in finding alternative markets in the British West Indies when many of those in Europe were closed to them. In common with Waldegrave, however, he would not countenance merchants’ abuse of their position in the domestic market for credit, supplies and fish purchasing.115 Gower’s interest in identifying sources of regular income to fund public services was not shared by his immediate successor, Vice Admiral Holloway. He aimed to promote ‘the most perfect understanding between the naval and commercial interests’, kept the Society of Merchants informed about opportunities in new markets in the West Indies and South America, and assured them of protection for their vessels.116 Holloway made it clear, however, that his commitment to fostering the trade of the Island did not extend to supporting the merchants’ bid to secure a monopoly in the distribution of ships’ supplies imported from continental North America. When the Society of Merchants suggested this concession as a quid pro quo for extending the range of goods imported under licence he sent a sharply worded response that he could not approve such an arrangement as it was inconsistent with his duty to advance the good of the fisheries.117 Like his

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fellow naval governors, Holloway needed to work with local elites and relied on their collaboration to fund public services. While there was a symbiotic aspect to this relationship, even the governor who was most favourably disposed to the merchants of St John’s was careful to define his responsibilities in a way that aligned his attention to their interests with those of the rest of the community. Thus his instructions to ships deployed beyond St John’s enjoined commanders to prevent ‘monopolising’ and ‘engrossing’ of provisions necessary for the fishery.118 Holloway continued to play an active role in promoting the work of the Society for Improving the Condition of the Poor, but in other respects his government marked a partial retreat from the active stance on public welfare taken by his predecessors.119 This challenge was taken up with great vigour by Sir John Duckworth, who saw discretion over land grant revenues as a means of funding a range of public services including hospitals, a debtors’ prison in St John’s and supporting churches and gaols in remote settlements. The proposal for a public hospital originated from the Society for Improving the Condition of the Poor and Duckworth became a strong supporter of it.120 He and his predecessors also supported the St John’s Fire Society. Gambier had arranged for the Phoenix Fire Office, an insurance company, to donate a fire engine to St John’s and, after a lucky escape from a major conflagration in 1808, Holloway encouraged the Grand Jury to consider ways of mitigating the fire risk in the town by prohibiting the storage of highly inflammable goods in particularly vulnerable areas. Duckworth applied himself to this aspect of public safety by promoting a request from the Grand Jury (which had first surfaced in Gower’s time) to permit the governor to pay fire-related fines to the town’s voluntary fire service. He also continued his predecessors’ efforts to provide adequate burial grounds by proposing a separate cemetery for Roman Catholics so they could be buried with the rites of their own faith.121 Duckworth’s representations to the second Lord Liverpool on these matters received an unusually favourable hearing. The governor was authorized to make allotments of land for public purposes (including a Catholic burial ground) pending amendments to the legislation to take account of changed circumstances on the Island. Lord Liverpool also agreed that fire-related fines should be paid to the ‘Fire Society’. Liverpool’s successor, Lord Bathurst, endorsed Duckworth’s suggestion that Anglican clergy be granted glebe lands for their support.122 Funds from rents, and an allotment of government land, allowed a start to be made on building a public hospital in St John’s which was completed during the first year of Sir Richard Keats’ governorship.123 Lord Liverpool, however, baulked at the idea of making provision for a debtors’ prison and offered the implausible suggestion that a facility might be established by local subscriptions with the prospect of support from lease revenues when these became more significant.124 While charitable provision might do something to alleviate extreme distress among the poorer sections of the residents of St John’s, they and the working classes in the outports faced persistent hardship arising from the generally high price of provisions on the Island and from a positive dearth at certain times of the year. This issue challenged the wartime governors in both their naval and civil

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roles. Thus in 1795 Sir James Wallace advised the Admiralty Board to send vessels on to the station fully provisioned for the season to avoid putting pressure on local resources and driving up the price of ships’ stores.125 Every year before they left England, governors were provided with a licence signed under the sovereign’s ‘sign manual’ authorizing them to permit the importation of named supplies if early season provisions on the Island made that necessary. Over the course of the war, they increasingly saw this mechanism as a way of smoothing the flow of supplies to the Island so as to mitigate popular hardship and reduce the risk of unrest that often followed in its train. As flag officers were used to overseeing complex victualling exercises to ensure their fleets were properly provisioned, the naval governors no doubt found it easy to apply their attention to a roughly similar situation where only fish was plentiful and they were far removed from sanctioned sources of regular supply. As far as the civilian population was concerned, the scarcity and price of provisions had implications for popular welfare and public order, but since reliance on supplies from Britain was enshrined in legislation, these problems were tied up with more general questions about the legal framework of Newfoundland. Moreover, since several governors emphasized the merchants’ exploitative role as purveyors of essential commodities and purchasers of fish, it also impinged on their attitudes towards local elites. Although wages rose significantly during the war, several flag officers thought the ordinary people were very hard-pressed for necessaries, including housing. At the end of his first season on the Island when Gower reported on the adverse impact of the high costs of provisions on the price of labour and the lives of the ordinary people, he urged the secretary of state to allow governors to make land available for cultivation to supplement imported supplies and lower their retail price. He also extended the practice of allowing the importation of provisions from the United States so as to provide supplies into the new season and included salted meat and molasses in the list of goods covered by his licence. He took these steps on his own initiative and ran the risk of having to seek retrospective approval for them.126 Holloway was aware that the importation of supplies from continental America kept prices down but seemed more concerned about its harmful effects in encouraging smuggling and discouraging proper economy than its beneficial impact on popular welfare and public order. On reporting that the high cost of provisions over the particularly severe winter of 1808–9 had been felt by the whole population, he told Lord Castlereagh that these experiences have a ‘happy Effect by making them more careful in future’.127 Holloway’s uncompromisingly high and dry position on these issues was not endorsed by his successors. Indeed, the outbreak of war with the United States in mid-1812 made provisioning particularly challenging aspects of their government. Duckworth reported a good shipment of foodstuffs from Quebec at the beginning of the war but warned the secretary of state that hostilities would put pressure on Canadian supplies in the future and sought authorization to allow importation from ‘any Ports whatever, and almost under any circumstances’.128 If anything, the situation became even more difficult

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than Duckworth had envisaged. The start of the war corresponded with a sharp increase in migration from Ireland as the fishery expanded. These developments exacerbated the provisioning problems that faced Sir Richard Keats, Duckworth’s successor. Keats began his first period of residence at the end of an unusually long and severe winter. The persistence of ice close inshore meant that the start of the fishing season was delayed, the arrival of supplies from Britain was disrupted and the population was suffering great hardship as a result of short supplies and high prices. Some of the poor were forced to subsist on seed potatoes, and that meant that crops for the next growing season would be affected adversely. Shortages continued well into the summer and were prolonged by the advanced consumption of stores in the spring and early summer. The high cost of provisions pushed up fishermen’s wages and increased the cost of fitting out fishing vessels. Although the season was well advanced, Keats raised the possibility of using food importation licences granted to Duckworth to cover late winter and early spring shortages and widening the range of shipping options to include all vessels other than those belonging to France or the United States. By this time Newfoundland was part of an enlarged North American station under the command of Sir John Warren. He sent Keats rounds of beef from Halifax ‘to do him good’, but he also sought to augment the settlement’s provisions by sending prizes with cargoes of supplies to St John’s so they could be condemned by the Vice Admiralty Court there and made available for local purchase.129 Bread was so short in the summer of 1813 that Keats sent a ship to Halifax to purchase a supply for the winter and had to explain this unauthorized mission to the Board. When Keats returned to England at the end of the year he was relieved to find that provisions for the winter were to be augmented by extensive exports from Britain and Ireland.130 While contending with shortages of supplies, Keats also faced the challenge of supporting a significant number of men, women and children who had been passengers on American ships captured during Duckworth’s time. These people were effectively refugees, but the government of Newfoundland had no guidance on how to treat them and lacked resources for their support. Keats adopted his own solution, offering passages on home-bound vessels but also giving the option of emigration to Prince Edward Island. He had, however, already incurred expenses of more than £400, noting that they could not by law be paid out of the proceeds of cargoes from enemy ships since these were the prize property of those who had captured them. He suggested instead that the cost might be charged against Droits to the Crown arising from the seizure of US property on the Island.131 Keats’s concern to protect the poor from exploitation extended to the conditions under which they were carried to Newfoundland from Ireland. Ships in the Newfoundland trade were excluded from the requirements of the Passenger Act of 1803, and working-class passengers were thus at the mercy of unscrupulous agents and ships’ captains.132 In 1813 a visiting naval officer observed that Irish passengers were drawn into highly unfavourable credit arrangements to pay for their passage.133 Once at sea, they were entirely dependent on the decency of

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the master of their vessel for the provision of victuals and water and were not infrequently in a dire state when they arrived on the Island. Keats proposed that those carrying passengers to Newfoundland should be regulated, and he provided the secretary of state with a draft ‘Scheme of Proper Regulation’ to form the basis of such a system. These regulations were designed to guard against dangerous overcrowding, specified allowances of water and provisions, and authorized heavy fines for breaches of them.134 These matters were addressed in legislation passed in 1816, and their application was vigorously policed by officials at St John’s.135

Conclusion Energetic attention to the emerging educational, material and spiritual needs of the growing settled population of Newfoundland was a hallmark of naval government during the French Wars.136 Successive governors were aware of the efforts of their predecessors and in most cases sought to emulate and outstrip their achievements. Although their instructions enjoined attention to the needs of the fishery, they gave this very general imperative a distinctive focus which reflected their understanding of the changing demographic of the Island. Lord Bathurst congratulated Gower on his initiatives, but for the most part naval governors received precious little advice or support on issues of public welfare from their superiors in London. They were very reluctant to give official recognition to the implications of changes taking place in Newfoundland, miserly with resources, failed to provide authoritative continuity to the government of the Island and tended to focus their energies on the strategic and financial challenges of global warfare to the exclusion of all else. With the exception of Vice Admiral Holloway, all the wartime governors who succeeded Sir James Wallace showed a marked commitment to advancing the welfare of the ordinary population of the Island. Waldegrave’s high Tory sensibilities and aversion to the language of natural rights did not prevent him pursuing a range of changes that would enhance the quality of life in the settlement. It is true that Duckworth reacted strongly against the criticism of those who later campaigned successfully for ‘reform’, that is, the end of naval government and the establishment of a colonial government with a legislative assembly.137 That did not necessarily mean, however, that his approach to the government of Newfoundland was conservative. On the contrary, he and his colleagues were committed to a programme of administrative innovation that established some of the institutions and practices of civil society in advance of constitutional change. Governors’ concern at the high price of provisions in Newfoundland reflected a wish to keep down labour costs in the fisheries, but this feature of the Newfoundland economy affected the population throughout the year, not just during the restricted fishing season. Governors’ comments on working-class hardship in the face of high prices, and their consistent attention to what they saw as the moral, religious and material welfare of the general population, suggest something other than a simple alignment with the propertied interests on the Island.138 With the possible exception of Holloway, the naval governors thought

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that the merchants benefitted unfairly from the high cost of provisions and were otherwise sceptical of their willingness to put the public interest ahead of, or even alongside, their own. Any governor who had read John Reeves’s History or his evidence to the House of Commons Committee in 1793 would have been well primed with examples of the merchants’ rapacious pursuit of their own interests and their resistance to measures which they saw as trenching on them. In his History Reeves claimed that the merchants believed that ‘Newfoundland was theirs, and that all the planters and inhabitants were to be spoiled and devoured at their pleasure’. Some of their evidence before the Committee lent credence to a less colourful version of this assessment.139 At least some of the merchants resisted governors’ attempts to impose taxes or rates in the settlement and, as we shall see in a later chapter, to utilize revenue from rents and leases. In the absence of a representative assembly with the power to raise funds for local purposes, governors played an encouraging and facilitating role. They saw themselves as providing leadership to the St John’s elite and to officials and residents in the outports, supporting their efforts to relieve and educate the poor and provide some of the physical infrastructure of civil society. Thus in 1795 Wallace had pressed fishermen and residents to contribute to church maintenance, and Waldegrave appears to have proposed that the principal residents of St John’s form a committee to manage the church rebuilding project.140 Gambier and Gower were active in similar ways, and in 1811 Duckworth issued a permissive proclamation that authorized employers to withhold a penny in the pound of their workers’ wages to contribute to the cost of building a public hospital in St John’s.141 Some governors’ commitments to Anglican evangelicalism and churchstate Tory paternalism affected the way they viewed the challenges of their civil responsibilities and the language they adopted in responding to them. In substance, however, their approach did not differ significantly from that of their less ideologically self-conscious colleagues because they were all influenced strongly by a shared professional ethos, by a spirit of emulation that was a part of it and by similar assumptions about the purpose of government. Waldegrave’s government was critical because he pursued a range of concerns which provided the basis for his successors’ administrations and also set the agenda for them. Despite the shortness of their terms and their limited periods of residence, the practice of naval government in this period was marked by concerted attempts to identify the needs of an emerging colonial society and to respond to them.

Notes 1 NA CO 195/15, f249, 27/7/1793. 2 See John Mannion, ‘“Notoriously Disaffected to the Government … .” British Allegations of Irish Disloyalty in Eighteenth-Century Newfoundland’, Newfoundland and Labrador Studies, 16, no. 1 (2000): 5–6. 3 See Roger Knight, Britain Against Napoleon: The Organisation of Victor (London: Penguin Press, 2014), 386–414 on the financial implications of the wars, and Merete

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5 6 7 8

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10 11 12 13 14

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16 17 18 19 20

Notes to pp. 131–155 Falck Borch, Conciliation—Compulsion—Conversion. British Attitudes Towards Indigenous Peoples, 1763-1814 (Amsterdam and New York: Ropoldi, 2004), 22, for the impact on colonial administration. A navy chaplain had first come out with a convoy in 1669; see Waldo E. L. Smith, The Navy and Its Chaplains in the Days of Sail (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1961), 163 and 160–89, for the navy’s role as ‘moral guardian’ and eighteenth-century efforts at support for the Church of England. Andrew Porter and William Rodger Louis, The Oxford History of the British Empire Volume III: The Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 221–6. Quoted ibid., 223. See Natalie Zacek, Settler Society in The English Leeward Island, 1670-1776 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 132. See Robert Blake, Evangelicals in the Royal Navy 1775-1815: Blue Light and Psalm Singers (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008), 108, for Waldegrave’s chaplain, Rev. Edward Ward. Waldegrave’s career advice to his son and a nephew was couched in pious language: ‘“Eschew evil and do good” – Be patient and God will reward you.’ In later life he composed prayers that were read to poor cottagers and presented them with copies of the New Testament; NMM WDG/11/1/4, 11/7/1796; Balliol College Archives, Letters to the Morier family, I 1.7, 9/11/1809; J 1.3.8, 29/9/105. Cottage visiting and providing religious literature were key evangelical strategies. See J. C. D. Clark, English Society 1688-1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 985), 233–4; J. A. W. Gunn, Beyond Liberty and Property. The Process of Self-Recognition in Eighteenth-Century Political Thought (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1983), 49. Trudim Johnson, ‘“A Matter of Custom and Convenience”: Marriage Law in Nineteenth-Century Newfoundland’, Newfoundland Studies, 19, no. 2 (2003): 284–5. See Chapter 7 below. NA CO 194/39, ff 173–6, 25/10/1797, f181, 26/8/1797, f292, 27/12/1797; CO 194/40, ff75–82, 16/5/1798. NA CO 194/52, ff13–15, 14/4/1812, 194/53, ff79–80, 11/5/1812. J. S. S. Armour, ‘Religious Dissent in St John’s, 1775-1815’ (MA thesis, Memorial University, St John’s, 1988), 82–3. Duckworth’s framing of the issue may explain why the British government singled it out for legislative attention; cf. Christopher English, ‘From Fishing Schooner to Colony: The Legal Development of Newfoundland, 1791-1832’, in Law, Society, and the State: Essays in Modern Legal History, ed. Louis A. Knafla and Susan W. W. Binnie (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 81–2, who puzzles why the Ministry gave priority to an issue of ‘personal relationships’. See Jerry Bannister, The Rule of the Admirals: Law, Custom and Naval Government in Newfoundland 1699-1832 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 114 on naval chaplains and H. P. Thompson, Into All Lands: The History of the Society For the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (London: Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, 1951), 118–20, for the early role of the Society. PAN D’Alberti Papers, 7: 374–5, 15/12/1797. DCB biographies of ‘Henry James’, III, ‘Robert Kilpatrick’, III, Edward Langman’, IV and ‘James Balfour’, V cover experiences running from the 1720s to the 1790s. NA CO 194/42, f51, 15/3/1799. PAN D’Alberti Papers, 5: 178, 10/8/1795. NA WO 1/15, f19, 9/12/1792, f21, 18/9/1792, f23, 1/4/1793, f37, 7/7/1793.

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21 NA CO 194/42, f25, 24/7/1797. 22 NA CO 194/39, f271, 26/11/1797; CO 194/40, f45, 7/2/1798, f47, 7/2/1798, f73, 24/3/1798. 23 NA CO 194/40, ff75–82, 16/5/1798. 24 NA CO 194/42, f37–8, 25/2/1799. Sean Cadigan suggests that Waldegrave’s anger at the merchants on this occasion was fuelled by their ‘ongoing opposition to his property policies’ (‘Artisans in a Merchant Town: St John’s Newfoundland, 17751816’, Journal of the Canadian Historical Society, 4, no. 1 (1993): 101; while this claim is plausible, the example to which it is attached postdated the account of the difficulties over the church roof. The suggestion that Waldegrave thought the merchants’ profiteering caused a strike by the workmen (102) is not supported by the document. He reports that the carpenters and labourers took advantage of the situation to demand high wages but makes no reference to a strike or ‘combination’. 25 NA CO 194/42, f21, 19/12/1799, f22, 19/1/1799. 26 NA CO 194/42, f39, 29/8/1799, f37–8, 25/2/1799. 27 NA CO 194/42, f150, 10/2/1800, f152, 29/12/1799. 28 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 11: 18–19, 6/3/1800. 29 NA CO 194/42, f119, 25/10/1799. 30 NA CO 194/43, f75, 21/11/1802. 31 See Blake, Evangelicals in the Royal Navy, 114–24. 32 NA CO 194/43, ff173–5, 12/12/1804. 33 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 13: 138–41, 26/9/1803. 34 NA CO 194/43, ff92–92v, 21/10/1802; CO 195/16, f50v 27/5/1802 for the Instruction. There is an earlier reference to five gallons as the minimum (PAN D’Alberti Papers, 6: 55, 3/9/1797 which in turn refers back to 1794, D’Alberti 5: 141–3, 23/10/1794), but the text of the proclamation reads ‘two’ and states that this is specified by law. In 1794 Wallace said he lacked the power to change the amount specified by law which probably means that Gambier was not setting a new and lower limit; there was no reaction suggesting that he was doing so, even though the difference between the two- and five-gallon limits would have been commercially significant. 35 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 13: 211, 21/10/1803. 36 Willeen G. Keogh, ‘Unpicking the Discursive Irish Woman Immigration in Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Newfoundland’, Irish Studies Review, 21, no. 1 (2013): 60 and Keogh, The Slender Thread. Irish Women on the Southern Avalon, 1760-1860 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 29–31. 37 NA CO 194/45, ff163–4, 9/11/1806; CO 194/46, f16-v, 11/4/1807. 38 See Sean Cadigan, Newfoundland & Labrador. A History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 78–80. Cadigan’s account of O’Donel is far less sympathetic than that of Lahey, James Louis O’Donel (see n. 41). 39 Luca Codignola, ‘Roman Catholic Conservatism in the New North Atlantic World, 1760-1829’, William and Mary Quarterly, 64, no. 4 (2007): 720–1, 722–5, 734, 737–8, 745–6. 40 See S. Karly Kehoe, ‘Catholic Relief and the Political Awakening of Irish Catholics in Nova Scotia, 1780-1830’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 46, no. 1 (2018): 5–6. 41 See Raymond J. Lahey, James Louis O’Donel in Newfoundland 1784-1807. Newfoundland Historical Society Pamphlet Number 8 (St Johns: Harry Cuff Publications, 1984), 6–16.

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42 Ibid., 21. 43 See G. W. C. Nicholson, The Fighting Newfoundlanders: A History of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006), 44–5. 44 NA CO 194/44, ff201–2, 28/11/1805. 45 John Mannion, ‘Irish Merchants Abroad’, Newfoundland and Labrador Studies, 2, no. 2 (1986): 181; MacKinnon, ‘Religious Dissent’, 110–11. 46 NA CO 194/46, ff74–7, 97–8, 25/11/1807. 47 NA CO 194/46, f170, 16/6/1807. 48 Royal Gazette and Newfoundland Advertiser, 21/6/1810, 28/10/1810. 49 NA CO 194/49, f41, 25/11/1810. 50 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 21: 298, 21/10/1811; 22: 508, 22/10/1812. 51 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 20: 135, 12/8/1810, 138–9, 13/8/1810. 52 NA CO 194/51, f12 2/11/1811. 53 NA CO 194/51, ff25–6, 4/11/1811. 54 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 21: 28–30, 9/8/1811. 55 NMM DUC/17, 28/6/1811. 56 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 23: 419–20, nd but November 1813; 24: 188, 7/12/1814. 57 NA CO 194/54, f172, 18/12/1813. 58 NA CO 194/54, ff171–3, 18/12/1813. 59 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 23: 104–5, 9/6/1813. 60 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 23: 134–5, 25/6/1813; 24: 174, 2/12/1814. 61 See Joseph Hardwick, ‘The Church of England, Print Networks and the Book of Common Prayer in North-Eastern Atlantic Colonies, c. 1750-c. 1850’, in Reappraisals of British Colonisation in Atlantic Canada, 1700-1930, ed. Karly Kehoe and Michael Vance (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020), 93–4, 101–2; cf Thompson, Into All Lands, 121. 62 NA CO, 194/55, ff113–14, 29/12/1814; CO 194/56, f 295, 19/12/1815. 63 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 24: 197–8, 29/12/1814, 25: 12, 11/1/1815. 64 See Ann Gormon Condon, ‘1783-1800. Loyalist Arrival, Acadian Return, Imperial Reform’s’, in The Atlantic Region to Confederation, ed. John G. Reid and Philip Buckner (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 188. 65 PAN Di Alberti Papers, 6: 267–9, 31/8/1797. 66 Ibid., 7: 116, 11/10/1797. 67 Ibid., 115–16, 11/10/1797; 9: 139, 18/10/1798. 68 NA CO 194/42, ff112–14, 22/10/1799. 69 NMM WDG/11/2/15, 23/7/1801. See also John Reeves, History of the Government of Newfoundland &c (London: J. Sewell, J. Debrett and J. Downes, 1793), 135–7, 142–3, 148–9, 154–5, 164–5 and for Graham the entry on him in DCB, V. 70 John E. Crowley, ‘Empire versus Truck: The Official Interpretation of Debt and Labour in the Eighteenth-Century Newfoundland Fishery’, Canadian Historical Review, 70, no. 3 (1989): 311. 71 NA CO 194/39, f132, 25/10/1797. 72 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 6: 316–18, 5/9/1797, 320, 6/9/1797. 73 This was an issue in Great Britain’s West Indian colonies in the early nineteenth century (Morrow, British Flag Officers, 66) and New South Wales (David Mackay, ‘Far-Flung Empire: A Neglected Imperial Outpost at Botany Bay, 1788-1801’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 9, no. 2 (1981): 140). The challenges of providing species to meet consumer and trade requirements were set in a context

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88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106

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where the needs of war and diplomacy created huge demands for it and for shipping arrangements to satisfy them; see Roger Knight, Convoys. The British Struggle Against Napoleonic Europe and America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022), 196–7. John Reeves, Mr Reeves’ Evidence before a Committee of the House of Commons on the Trade of Newfoundland (London: J. Sewell, J. Debrett and J. Downes, 1793), 54, and see herein, pp. 103–7. Sean Cadigan notes that money paid to the troops of the garrison quickly found its way into the wider economy; Cadigan, ‘Artisans in a Merchant Town’, 116. NMM WDG/4/20, c. May 1800. PAN D’Alberti Papers, 6: 310, 4/9/1797. NA CO 194/39, ff267–70, 23/11/1797; CO 194/40, f57, 1/3/1798. NA CO 194/40, ff75–80, 16/5/1798. NA CO 194/40, f105, 18/10/1798. Ibid. PAN D’Alberti Papers, 11: 69, 16/8/1800, 71, 18/8/1800, 83, 23/8/1800; 14: 256, 12/9/1804, 260–1, 14/9/1804. NA CO 195/14, ff24, 14/2/1805, f44, 19/4/1806; NA ADM 1/476, f374, 19/3/1809. Royal Gazette and Newfoundland Advertiser, 21/6/1810, 5/7/1810. NMM XDUC/38, f46, 31/5/1811, f75, 1/3/1812; NA ADM 1/477, f478, 4/12/1812. Edward Chappell, A Voyage … to Newfoundland (London: J. Maw, 1818), 87–8, 245. Great Britain, House of Commons, ‘Second Report’, ‘Reports from the Committee on the State of the Trade to Newfoundland’, 1793, Reports from Committees of the House of Commons: Miscellaneous Subjects 1785-1801, X: 13; NA CO 194/39, f233, 25/10/1797; CO 194/42, f15, 12/12/1798, ff9, 17–18, 2/2/1799. Benjamin Lester Diaries, Dorset County Records Office, Dorchester, copy and transcript, Memorial University of Newfoundland Library, Archives, 13/5/1798, 17/5/1798. See herein, p. 208. NA ADM 1/474, f42, 45, 17/1/1798. See Nicholson, The Fighting Newfoundlanders, 37–8. PAN D’Alberti Papers, 9: 212, 24/10/1799; 10: 151, 14/10/1799, 163, 16/10/1799. NMM WDG/4/16, 5/10/1799. PAN D’Alberti Papers, 10: 217–18, 25/10/1799. PAN D’Alberti Papers, 11: 154, 3/10/1800. NA CO 194/43, f75, 21/11/1802. See Frederick W. Rowe, The Development of Education in Newfoundland (Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1964), 26–30. NA CO 194/43, f92, 21/10/1802. NA CO 194/43, ff124–6, 24/1/1803. Reeves, History, 100–1. NA CO 194/43, f132, 3/2/1803, f155, 31/5/1803. NA CO 194/43, ff297–300, 27/5/1803; f301, 3/6/1803. Bannister, Rule of the Admirals, 128–9. See herein, pp. 208, 211; Gambier’s and Waldegrave’s schemes to raise revenue through a duty on imported rum finally came to fruition during Duckworth’s governorship. PAN D’Alberti Papers, 14: 382, 20/10/1804. PAN D’Alberti Papers, 15: 37–8, 24/6/1805; 16: 56–7, 2/8/1806; 17: 60, 6/8/1807. These subscriptions amounted to between a week and a week and a half of Gower’s net pay as a vice admiral.

160 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114

115

116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135

Notes to pp. 131–155 NA CO 194/44, ff28–9, 19/11/1804; CO 195/16, f12v, 30/11/1804. NA CO 194/45, ff5–9, 31/1/1806. NA CO 194/46, ff15–16, 11/4/1807. NA CO 194/49, f20v, late 1810. PAN D’Alberti Papers, 16: 17, 1/6/1806. NA CO 194/44, f32, 19/11/1804. Ibid., f38, 19/11/1804. PAN D’Alberti Papers, 14: 172–5, 21/8/1804, 190, 27/8/1804;15: 153, 13/9/1805; see also Ian M. Bates, Champion of the Quarterdeck. Admiral Sir Erasmus Gower, 1742-1814 (Pomana: Sage Old Books, 2017), 271; D. W. Prowse, History of Newfoundland from English, Colonial and Foreign Records (London: Macmillan, 1895), 379–80. There had been an agreement in 1799 that the price of provisions should be stabilized, but this does not seem to have persisted. As in the present case, representatives of the merchants were not prepared to set a price for fish ahead of the market. Gower twice made representations to the secretary of state in support of giving preference to Newfoundland salt fish over that from the United States and welcomed the bounty offered from late 1806; NA CO 194/44, f221, 28/11/1805; 194/45 f15, 13/2/1806, ff155–6, 9/11/1806. See Rosemary E. Ommer, ed., Merchant Credit and Labour Strategies in Historical Perspective (Frederickton: Acadiensis, 1990), passim, for a range of views on the working of the credit system in maritime economies. NMM XDUC/16, 26/8/1807; PAN D’Alberti Papers, 17: 126, 4/9/1807; 127, 5/9/180; 263, 6/12/1807; 18: 36, 19/7/1808. PAN D’Alberti Papers, 17: 203–4, 8/10/1807. PAN Duckworth Papers, MG 20, box 1, f00264, 1809; cf. Bannister, Rule of the Admirals, 23 and see Crowley, ‘Empire versus Truck’. PAN D’Alberti Papers, 19: 243, 19/10/1809; 284–5, 21/10/1809. PAN D’Alberti Papers, 20: 73, 4/8/1810. NA CO 194/49, f42–4, 25/11/1810; 194/51, f37, 6/11/1811 NA CO 194/50, ff138–9, 22/6/1811; 194/54, f45, 7/4/1813. The decision on glebe land grants was not made until just after Duckworth had resigned his commission as governor. NA CO 194/54, f139, 10/11/1813. NA CO 194/52, f25, 6/6/1812. NA ADM 1/473, f174, 11/4/1795. NA CO 194/44, ff50–8, 24/12/1804. NA CO 194/46, f76, 83–4, 86, 25/11/1897; CO 194/48, f39, 16/9/1809. NA CO 194/52, ff98–9, 1/11/1812. NMM KEA/14, 28/9?/1813; WAR/22, 28/8/1813, 17/9/1813; not foliated. NA CO 194/54, ff61–2, 23/6/1813, ff69, 70–1, 20/7/1813; ff159–60, 18/12/1813; NA ADM 1/478, f186, 29/9/1813. NA CO 194/54, ff81–2, 30/7/1813. See Sean Cadigan, Hope and Deception in Conception Bay (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 24; Keogh, The Slender Thread, Gutenberg e-version, Chapter 2, 35. Chappell, A Voyage … to Newfoundland, 219–20. NA CO 194/56, f63, 68–70, 1/10/1815. Keogh, The Slender Thread, 20.

Notes to pp. 131–155

161

136 Healey’s claim (James Healey, ‘An Educational History of the Society for the Propogation of the Gospel’ (M.Ed. thesis, Memorial University, St John’s 1994), 53–4) that governors ‘knew little or nothing about ministering to the needs of a civilian population’ is extraordinarily ill-informed. 137 See herein, pp. 207–12. 138 Cf Bannister, Rule of the Admirals, 143, 187, 198–200; this judgement is not consistent with Bannister’s convincing account of the naval governors’ attention to the judicial structure of the settlement or to the contemporary appreciation of their measures. 139 Reeves, History, 165. 140 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 5: 178, 10/8/1795; 6: 15–16, 24/7/1797. 141 Royal Gazette and Newfoundland Advertiser, 16/1/1812; the proclamation was dated 30 September 1811.

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Chapter 6 NAVAL GOVERNMENT, THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE AND THE FAILURE OF ‘CONCILIATION’

In the latter half of the eighteenth century the instructions given to governors of British overseas territories commonly reminded them of their superiors’ expectations of how Indigenous peoples were to be treated. In some cases their instructions reflected a determination to constrain settlers’ access to land that still remained in the hands of original occupants. Thus in 1763 a royal proclamation applying to North America prohibited the purchase of native American Indians’ lands and threatened sanctions against those who violated their rights. Similar resolutions were included in a proclamation applying to the new colonies of Quebec and East and West Florida established at the conclusion of the Seven Years’ War. Just prior to the formalization of the Treaty of Paris, Lord Egremont, the secretary of state, informed the commander-in-chief in North America that the king had it ‘very much at heart to conciliate the Affection of the Indian nations, by every Act of strict Justice’.1 This injunction was applied specifically to land which had not been granted by the Crown to settlers and was seen as being ‘reserved’ as the ‘hunting grounds’ of the Indigenous peoples. ‘Strict justice’ was applied only after the British had claimed sovereignty over the territories in question and in any case the proclamation of 1763 was applied haphazardly and ineffectually.2 Nevertheless, as Merete Borch has pointed out, proclamations of this kind expressed the official British view of how Indigenous populations were to be treated.3 This approach persisted into the late Georgian period. Thus while the British did not think that Aboriginal peoples held customary title over the land of Australia, early governors were nevertheless directed to protect them and issued instructions that echoed Egremont’s communications. Captain Arthur Phillip RN, the first governor of the convict settlement of New South Wales, was required to ‘conciliate’ the ‘natives’ affections’ and to encourage ‘all Our Subjects . . . to live in amity and kindness with them’. Those who ‘shall wantonly destroy them or give them any unnecessary Interruption in the exercise of their several occupations’ should be ‘brought to punishment according to the degree of their Offence’.4 Very similar language appeared in instructions issued to the naval governors of Newfoundland, and, like Phillip, they sought to give effect to them. Their efforts focused on the Beothuk, the Indigenous people of the Island.5

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The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars

The context of conciliation The Beothuk seem to have emerged as a distinct people by about 1000 CE but were never particularly numerous and occupied a territory that was visited by other Indigenous people from the mainland. Modern estimates suggest that the Beothuk population may only have numbered 500 people at its height and is unlikely to have exceeded 1,500. By the late eighteenth century, their numbers had probably shrunk to 100 or so, but the estimates available to the naval governors ranged up to 500. In their reports to the secretary of state they referred to the Beothuk as ‘poor savages’ lacking the ‘civilizing’ benefits of Christianity, subject to the wanton cruelty of Europeans in remote parts of the Island and suffering from violence and competition for subsistence at the hands of Indigenous visitors from Labrador and Nova Scotia. It is unclear if there was any official appreciation of the impact of expanding European activity on Beothuk access to traditional resources, but a proposal to delineate a reservation for them which included small offshore islands and estuaries may indicate that.6 The naval governors acted on the assumption that the Beothuk people were in a state of dangerous decline and their policy demonstrated a commitment to arresting it. As we shall see, their efforts were no more successful than those of Commodore Sir Hugh Palliser, who had made a number of attempts to contact the Beothuk in the late 1760s.7 Some of the very earliest contacts between European explorers, fishermen and hunters and the Beothuk may have involved the peaceful exchange of goods, but others were marked by violence.8 The last friendly trade contact seems to have taken place in 1612.9 ‘Arms-length’ trade exchanges where furs were left by the Beothuk and replaced with trade goods by Europeans may have survived well into the eighteenth century but appear to have come to an end by about 1770.10 Even this practice pointed to a lack of trust on the part of the Beothuk and was part of an environment where unpredictable behaviour inhibited mutual understanding and settled patterns of interaction. After a series of clashes in the late sixteenth century, the Beothuk largely and deliberately avoided contact with the British and other Europeans. This approach did not, however, mean that they were unaffected by the incursions of outsiders. It seems likely that over the course of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries European activity began to impinge first on the Beothuk’s utilization of the outer coasts of Newfoundland and then the inner coastal areas. The Beothuk relied on access to these areas to carry on the salmon fishing, shell-fishing and bird gathering that was essential to maintaining a sustainable mode of subsistence. These resources were augmented by caribou hunted in the interior of the island. As European activity placed pressure on the Beothuk’s access to the coastal areas, however, they were forced to rely increasingly on caribou. This resource, traditionally only a supplementary one, was not itself an environmentally sustainable basis of subsistence.11​ Although the Beothuk adopted a general strategy of avoiding contact with Europeans, they sometimes responded to pressures on their resources and reacted to casual violence by pilfering from settlers, fishermen and furriers, damaging their gear and occasionally making apparently random attacks on isolated individuals.12

6. Naval Government, the Indigenous People and the Failure of ‘Conciliation’ 165

Plate 6.1  When Lieutenant John Cartwright RN visited the Exploits River in 1763, he recorded this image of Beothuk in one of their settlements deep in the interior of the Island. Cartwright was one of a number of junior naval officers who prepared the way for the wartime governors’ sympathetic but fruitless responses to the plight of the Indigenous people of the Island. (Courtesy Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador. PAN MG 100.1.)

Pilfering may have provided the Beothuk with access to useful iron objects and thus made the establishment of trading relationships seem unnecessary to them.13 Some British observers thought that the Beothuk’s acts of resistance threatened the sense of security of those in remote settlements and that European reactions to the Beothuk may have owed something to the inadequacy of law enforcement in remote parts of the Island.14 The wartime governors were unsympathetic to these claims, seeing them as mere pretexts for disproportionate counter retaliation by some fishery workers and furriers that was sometimes conducted in a spirit of extermination. As George Cartwright, an English trader who had visited Newfoundland in the 1770s, told the House of Commons’ Committee in 1793, ‘our Fishermen and Furriers murder and plunder them whenever an opportunity offers.’15 It was assumed that such ill-treatment fed the Beothuk’s well-grounded fears of Europeans and strengthened their determination to avoid interaction with them.16 Since this strategy precluded face-to-face trade, it also prevented the development of relationships of reciprocity that emerged in some cross-cultural exchanges elsewhere in North America. In addition to suffering from the direct and indirect effects of Europeans’ increasingly numerous presence on the Island, it is very likely that the Beothuk population was reduced over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by diseases originating from Europeans and passed to them by members of Indigenous groups from the mainland.17 British official accounts suggested that

166

The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars

the ‘Micmacs’, an Indigenous people now known as ‘Mi’kmaq’, who visited the Island from Labrador, may have put further pressure on the resources available to the Beothuk and also engaged in armed conflict with them.18 In these exchanges the Beothuk would have been significantly disadvantaged by the Mi’kmaq’s early adoption of European weapons. In their case, as in that of other Indigenous peoples of North America, access to firearms and ammunition was secured by trade with Europeans. The Beothuk, however, choose not to adopt this approach. They obtained metals through pilfering at remote European settlements and salvaging from wrecked boats rather than by trade and sought to maintain their security and their independent way of life by relying entirely on their highly developed expertise with bows and arrows.19 But while these weapons allowed the Beothuk to harass isolated groups of fishermen and trappers to deadly effect, the lack of firearms left them dangerously exposed to organized aggression by Europeans and vulnerable in conflicts with other native peoples. The Beothuk may have suffered a heavy defeat at the hands of the Mi’kmaq in around 1750, after which they retreated into a remote inland area. In any case, their resource base became increasingly precarious and their numbers declined to the margins of sustainability.20 Directives on the treatment of ‘native Indians’ in Newfoundland (paralleling Captain Phillip’s instructions for New South Wales) were a standing item in Governors’ Instructions from the king. They were enjoined to ‘use your best endeavours to encourage a friendly intercourse with the Indians residing in our Island of Newfoundland . . . conciliate their affections so as to induce them to trade with our subjects, and in Order to prevent any improper conduct towards them’. All magistrates and officers were ordered to use their ‘utmost endeavour to bring those who commit any murder or outrage upon them’ to justice. These requirements were to be the subject of proclamations issued by governors on first visiting the seat of their government.21 Although governors’ instructions did not distinguish between different groups of ‘Indians’, the wartime governors were almost exclusively concerned with the Beothuk.22 Their interest in other Indigenous groups, particularly the Mi’kmaq, was tied closely to perceptions of their adverse impact on the physical safety and increasingly precarious resource base of the Beothuk.23 Governors invariably regarded other Indigenous people as dangerous interlopers without any of the Beothuk’s claims to consideration and care.24 Their understanding of the plight of the Beothuk, and how reconciliation would ease it, was framed by British observers’ reports that emphasized high levels of mutual antipathy between the Beothuk, Innu and Mi’kmaq and the reckless cruelty of Europeans. Modern scholars who are sharply divided on what might be termed the second-order causes of the decline of the Beothuk share common ground in identifying imperialism, colonization and the forceful disruption of Indigenous peoples’ ways of life as firstorder causes.25 Although agents of these processes, the naval governors seemed unaware of their practical and moral implications. Rather, they and their political masters in London focused on trying to identify and counter the destructive forces released by them.

6. Naval Government, the Indigenous People and the Failure of ‘Conciliation’ 167

Conciliation in the agendas of naval governors Governors were instructed to submit end-of-season returns of the numbers of ‘Indians’ in Newfoundland and report on their interactions with them. These data were dwarfed by very extensive and detailed information on the state of the fisheries, the classes and numbers of soldiers and artificers attached to the garrison and the state of the Island’s infrastructure and fortifications. In any case, the decline in the numbers of Beothuk and their determined reluctance to engage with the British made these returns purely notional. Commodore John Elliot reported that sixty ‘Indians’ had come to the Island in 1786 but gave no numbers for the Beothuk, merely noting that there had been ‘no truck’, that is, trade, with them. His commentary emphasized their extreme unwillingness to engage with ‘our planters’, their practice of descending on remote settlements at night to pilfer and destroy, and their reputation for ambushing settlers.26 Although he issued a proclamation warning that those who killed Beothuk would be sent to England to face capital charges, he did not submit returns for subsequent years, merely noting in 1788, ‘Nothing heard of the Native Indians’.27 Elliot’s laconic language signalled an issue that was to be a cause of ongoing concern to successors who took a more active interest in Beothuk well-being. Time and again they found their attempts to assist and ‘conciliate’ the Beothuk hindered by the long history of antagonistic contacts with them. Ongoing violence reinforced the Beothuk’s intense suspicion of the British and undermined any prospect of the authorities demonstrating their good intentions. The antagonisms arising from two centuries of injurious exchanges were compounded by the lack of official or unofficial efforts to learn anything of the Beothuk’s ways or language, or indeed, of any apparent realization that such knowledge was an essential preliminary to more productive engagement. The first steps in this direction were not taken until the early 1790s, and then they seem to have been the result of initiatives by individual junior naval officers.28 Some of Waldegrave’s predecessors had shown sympathetic interest in the Beothuk but others were either inactive or unsympathetic. Sir Hugh Palliser had sent Lieutenant John Cartwright to the Exploits River to try to establish contact in 1768, but he just missed them. He also offered a reward for ‘friendly’ capture which resulted in the seizure of a small boy and the murder of his mother.29 Elliot emphasized Beothuk aggression against fisherman and furriers – their ‘hostile savage intentions’ – but allowed that their refusal to engage ‘proceeds perhaps from remembrance of former wrongs’.30 Later naval governors did not see the Beothuk as a threat and concentrated on the severe impact of settler activity upon them. Although some modern scholarly discussions question the role that deliberate settler violence played in the Beothuk decline, the attitudes of the wartime governors were influenced strongly by those who stressed the damaging impact of wanton European aggression.31 As we shall see, this was a major theme in reports they received from missionaries.32 The naval governors’ approach was also informed by the initiatives of a few junior sea officers who documented British encounters with the Beothuk and

168

The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars

produced the only transcription of examples of their language.33 These reports were utilized by John Reeves, the first chief justice of Newfoundland, when he drew official attention to the plight of the Beothuk in the parliamentary enquiry into the fishery which took place in 1793. Reeves contrasted the government’s concern to protect the inhabitants of African countries with its entire neglect of a vulnerable people to whom it owed ‘the duties of a sovereign’. These duties extended beyond protection against violence: ‘Separated as they are from all the world but us, is it not incumbent upon us to use the means in our power to impart to them the rights of religion and civil society?’ Although Reeves attributed failures to protect the Beothuk to a general weakness of British government on the Island, he did not think it would be difficult to ‘conciliate the confidence of these people, and to open a friendly intercourse’. He contrasted the failure to protect the Beothuk with the successes achieved on the Labrador coast with far more ‘intractable’ groups of ‘Indians’.34 In addition to providing information about Beothuk numbers and their location, Reeves’s naval informants also suggested strategies that set the scene for initiatives by Waldegrave and his successors’ attempts to ‘conciliate’ them.35​ Naval governors’ instructions enjoined them to protect the ‘native Indians’ and to encourage productive relationships with them, but they do not wholly account for the attention they gave to these responsibilities. As noted earlier, the 1763 Proclamation was not universally or effectively applied by the governors of North American colonies. In the case of Newfoundland, governors’ instructions were numerous, seasons of residence short and judging by their practice, there appears to have been an unstated degree of discretion in how they were addressed.

Plate 6.2  A detail from Lieutenant John Cartwright’s map of the Exploits River, the site of Lieutenant David Buchan’s ill-fated expedition to make benign contact with the Beothuk in the winter of 1810–11. (Courtesy Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador. PAN MG 100.1.)

6. Naval Government, the Indigenous People and the Failure of ‘Conciliation’ 169

For example, while Sir James Gambier’s directions on suppressing personal vice were drawn from his instructions, other governors of the period did not place the same degree of emphasis on these matters.36 It is probably also significant that in the new colonies established after the Seven Years’ War, injunctions to conciliate Indigenous peoples reflected concerns about the general security of settlements located amidst numerous and potentially formidable and well-armed tribes. Newfoundland, however, never witnessed what John Reid and Elizabeth Mencke have termed the dominant ‘Aboriginal power or influence’ that has been discerned elsewhere in areas where Europeans were seeking to gain a foothold in what later became ‘British North America’.37 In these cases, and in the uncertainties about the number and disposition of the Indigenous peoples of Botany Bay reflected in Governor Phillip’s instructions, conciliation and general security went hand in hand. Governors of that settlement were actively engaged in countering resistance to settler incursion from 1790.38 This was not the case in Newfoundland. Thus while fear of Beothuk aggression may have been a cause of anxiety in remote fishing and trapping camps, there was never a suggestion that they posed a significant military threat to the fisheries as a whole or even to the most isolated outports. If there ever had been an Indigenous threat to the settlement it had occurred earlier in the eighteenth century when the Mi’kmaq were fighting alongside French Canadians.39 Nor were relationships with the Beothuk subject to the complexities over the occupation and use of land which applied elsewhere in British settlements. European incursions had already driven the Beothuk from much of their traditional subsistence base, and no rural land was granted to Europeans until the very last years of the war. In short, almost all of the considerations that underwrote late-eighteenth-century British official views on the treatment of Indigenous people did not apply in Newfoundland. Elliot’s responses to the instruction to protect the Beothuk were cursory, and another pre-war governor, Vice Admiral Edwards, told the parliamentary enquiry launched by Reeves that in two terms spanning thirty years he knew of only one instance of ‘cruel treatment’ of the ‘Indians’.40 By contrast, the admirals who governed Newfoundland during the war years acted on the belief that the Beothuk were the ongoing victims of settler violence and responded energetically to the instruction to protect and ‘conciliate’ them. There is nothing in the surviving official papers to explain why this was so but it is possible that the evidence of ‘plunder, outrage and murder’ that Reeves marshalled before the parliament committee gave the issue a salience it had previously lacked.41 It is also significant that three governors (Waldegrave, Pole and Holloway) were the targets of correspondence from John Bland, a clergyman and magistrate at Bonavista, who had a sustained interest in alleviating the plight of the Beothuk. Waldegrave also received information on the Beothuk from the Rev. Jenner, an Anglican missionary.42 It appears that once the subject was taken up by one governor and included in his reports to the secretary of state, his successors continued to focus on it, at least in part out of a sense of professional duty and a wish to succeed where others had failed. In addition, however, at least two of the admiral-governors were attached to evangelical religious ideas that may have influenced their views on the proper treatment of Indigenous peoples.

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The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars

Conciliation and Tory paternalism: Waldegrave Waldegrave’s humanitarian concern for the Beothuk was consistent with the strong sense of paternalistic Christian responsibility which prompted his interest in the well-being of the general population. It was sharpened, however, by his evangelically motivated sense of the need to bring the Beothuk within the pale of Christian ‘civilization’ and may also have been influenced by disgust at the moral depravity demonstrated by those who mistreated them. It is unclear whether Waldegrave was aware of Reeves’s report, but he had been ashore in England when the enquiry was being held, and in his correspondence he assumed that the secretary of state (the Duke of Portland) was interested in protecting the Beothuk.43 Flag officers were used to responding to the instructions and to the perceived wishes of their superiors, and Waldegrave’s correspondence shows he was particularly anxious to please the secretary of state. However, the language he used in his official efforts on behalf of the Beothuk, and the tenacity of his pursuit of this objective in the face of inaction from London, suggest some more deep-seated motivation derived from his Christian convictions. In a proclamation issued on 20 July 1797 Waldegrave referred to the ‘cruel’ and ‘inhumane’ treatment the Beothuk had received at the hands of hunters and fishermen and ordered them to ‘forbear from such barbarous proceedings’, to ‘shew every act of kindness to the aforesaid Indians, in order to endeavour to conciliate their affections and teach them that they are no longer to regard us as their most cruel enemy, but as friends, with whom it will be in their interest, to form an amicable and steady intercourse’. Magistrates and other officials were enjoined to apply the ‘utmost severity of the law’ to those within their jurisdiction who mistreated the ‘Indians’.44 John Bland, a clergyman and magistrate resident in one of the outports, wrote to the governor’s secretary to welcome Waldegrave’s proclamation and offer him two pieces of cautionary advice. The first concerned the need for the full authority of the governor to support magistrates’ efforts to identify and punish those who mistreated the Beothuk; the second raised the larger and more difficult question of the need for government to take a systematic and sustained approach to improving relations with the Indigenous people. Bland informed the governor that some of the hunters and fishermen in the northern part of the settlement treated the Beothuk as game to be hunted and recounted an incident during Admiral Milbanke’s government which resulted in the murder of ‘several Indians’ in circumstances of ‘singular barbarity’. Bland had reported this incident to Milbanke and advised him that if action was taken promptly the murderers could very likely be identified and arrested. Unfortunately, neither the Governor nor his staff responded to Bland’s letter. In his communication with Waldegrave’s secretary, Bland criticized Milbanke for losing an opportunity to punish the murderers and to provide thereby an example of the severity necessary to restrain those ‘who are not to be affected by considerations of humanity’.45 Bland believed that in addition to the governor taking an active lead in punishing transgressions against the Beothuk, it would also be necessary for him to develop a plan for ‘conciliating’

6. Naval Government, the Indigenous People and the Failure of ‘Conciliation’ 171

them and to ensure that it was officially endorsed and funded by the government in London. ‘The seed of rancour rooted in the mind of the poor Indian, by a long and relentless persecution, can only be eradicated by perseverance in measures which must require time and some expense.’46 Bland’s letter received a favourable reception from the governor, and he was asked to provide further information on measures that would contribute to the ‘protection and civilization of these poor unhappy creatures’. Waldegrave undertook to lay this information before the secretary of state and asked whether Bland would consider managing the implementation of any plan that was received favourably in London.47 In response to this request, Bland outlined a scheme (which was similar to Palliser’s and to aspects of Phillip’s practice at Botany Bay)48 for ‘taking possession’ of a few Indians, treating them kindly and giving them presents which they could take back to their people. The aim was for the British to demonstrate goodwill towards the Beothuk and thus begin to break the cycle of unwarranted violence and retaliation that had long characterized their relationship. Bland thought this operation should utilize soldiers from the garrison since they were already an expense to government and were not tainted by hunters’ and fishermen’s record of violence against the Beothuk. Given the history of intercommunal violence, however, it would be necessary to minimize the risk of casualties arising from attempts at what Bland conceived as benign capture of the Beothuk. He suggested that soldiers should not carry firearms but wear armour as protection against arrows. The language barrier could be overcome by recruiting Inuit people from Labrador who, it was thought, could communicate with the Beothuk. Whatever the linguistic merits of this idea, it was advanced in ignorance of the Beothuk’s attitude towards the Inuit. One of the Beothuk women who lived with settlers slightly later was deeply contemptuous of a people whom she characterized as untrustworthy and unclean.49 Bland enclosed a version of Lieutenant Pullin’s ‘Preliminary Report’ with the plan he sent to Waldegrave. This document, written by a junior naval officer, was one of the few attempts by the British to gather information that would aid their understanding of the language and culture of the Beothuk; it included the first written list of Beothuk words. Pullin also provided a series of sobering accounts of clashes between fishermen and furriers and the Indigenous people.50 When he returned to England in the autumn of 1797 Waldegrave forwarded this material to Portland, framing it in terms of his ‘humane design’ to ‘save from destruction the sad remains of this unhappy persecuted race of People’.51 Following a report from Captain Ambrose Crofton who recommended that a boat be stationed all year round in the Bay of Exploits and combine survey work with the protection of the Beothuk, Waldegrave suggested to Portland that a certain part of the coast be reserved for their use and that those who harassed them should be punished severely.52 George Cartwright had made a similar proposal two decades before, but it had fallen on deaf official ears.53 The Duke of Portland was apparently sympathetic to the suggestion but not prepared to give it priority over the other wartime demands facing the government.54 If put into effect it may have resulted in the introduction of two features which usually characterized

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The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars

colonial governments’ policy towards Indigenous peoples: officials with special responsibility for them and an emphasis upon the work of church missionaries.55 A comment by Waldegrave’s successor in his first year as governor suggests that an attempt had been made to give effect to some version of Bland’s plan but that no progress had been made. Waldegrave’s government was significant in giving prominence to governors’ responsibilities towards the Beothuk and identifying them as an important aspect of their professional duties. As we have seen, Vice Admiral Pole’s attentions to the affairs of Newfoundland were of short duration, but they included a report on the outcome of Waldegrave’s initiative and an assessment of similarly fruitless attempts by his predecessors to ‘get possession’ of two or three Beothuk. He endorsed the general approach but had his own ideas on how it should be executed. Soldiers had been used in the most recent exercise (as suggested by Bland), but Pole told Portland that a better plan would be to offer a reward to fur trappers who engaged successfully with the Beothuk and to combine these monetary enticements with unequivocal assurances that Europeans who mistreated them would be punished severely.56 Such warnings were a common feature of governors’ proclamations on the treatment of the ‘Indians’, but up to this point there is no reported instance of any legal steps being taken against those who harmed the Beothuk. Indeed, as we have seen, Bland thought Milbanke had missed a prime opportunity to make an effective deterrent example of particularly egregious offenders. Pole’s advice, which marked the extent of his official interest in protecting the Beothuk, did not change this woeful history. Pole had approached Bland for advice and received a long letter in reply.57 Bland reiterated the information he had provided in his correspondence with Waldegrave and was clearly keen to capitalize on the new governor’s interest in addressing the challenges of ‘conciliation’. In considering why the wartime governors showed such interest in coming to grips with these challenges, it is interesting that Bland appealed to Pole’s sense of the intrinsic and reputational benefits of engaging with the Beothuk and the prospect of succeeding where others had failed. The mind of man naturally leads to where his interest points. It is a principle too self- evident to be denied. But to abstract, Sir, from all motive of interest from which you can have no share and enlarge our view, how gratifying to your Excellency the reflection that you have been chiefly instrumental to a reconciliation which put an end to practices disgraceful to civilized people, meliorated the condition of an unfortunate race of human beings and finally removed the cause of mischief and distrust both in their part, and in ours.58

Conciliation and evangelicalism: Gambier Vice Admiral Sir James Gambier, who succeeded Pole in the spring of 1802, was far more actively engaged in Aboriginal protection than his immediate predecessor. This matter, which was even more of a concern for him than it had been for

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Waldegrave, was linked explicitly with Gambier’s sense of evangelical mission. His position was signalled very clearly in the language of a proclamation issued towards the end of his first season in Newfoundland. Gambier condemned the ‘many acts of outrage, violence and cruelty’ which had been visited ‘by some of the Inhabitants, Furriers and others, upon the Indians inhabiting the interior of this Island’ as ‘contrary to every principle of religion and humanity, as well as the King’s Instructions to the Governors and His Majesty’s mild and gracious disposition towards this poor defenceless tribe’. He threatened the full force of the law against anyone harming the property or person of members of the tribe and enjoined those who came into contact with them to ‘live in kindness and friendship . . . that they may be conciliated and brought to be useful subjects to His Majesty, and that the public, as well as themselves may be benefitted by their being brought to a state of civilization, social order and the blessed knowledge of the Gospel’.59 When Gambier arrived back at Spithead after his first season of residence, he reported to Lord Hobart, the secretary of state, on the ‘enormities’ committed by some of the British inhabitants of the Island and told him that the terror produced by this mistreatment made previous plans of benign capture hard to put into effect, and likely to produce further violence and alienation. He suggested a revised strategy relying on the creation of depots that would be manned year-round and from which goods could be regularly distributed to the Beothuk. These gifts would serve as tokens of goodwill and alert them to the potential advantages of trading with the British. Gambier urged Lord Hobart to authorize the establishment of these depots, the purchase of goods for gifting and the cost of necessary transportation. The officers and other members of the depots would work to gain the confidence of those with whom they made contact, and, in line with Gambier’s penchant for surveillance, gather intelligence on any ill-treatment of them. He told Hobart that the project aimed to ‘civilize poor savages’ and make them fit for work in fishing and fur trapping.60 Although Gambier’s motivation in seeking to protect the Beothuk appears to have been primarily religious and humanitarian, the rationale presented to Hobart on this occasion echoed other more narrowly utilitarian concerns. As his successor Sir Erasmus Gower explained to Lord Castlereagh, for some people on the Island, the ‘civilization of the Indians’ meant that they would be willing to sell their furs to the British and buy clothing from them rather than making garments in the traditional way.61 Be that as it may, the secretary of state did not take the governor’s advice, and Gambier’s only practical contribution to the process of ‘conciliation’ was to risk the displeasure of the British Treasury by making an unauthorized payment of £50 to a fisherman who brought a Beothuk woman into a European settlement.62 The woman became an object of attention among the elite of St John’s and was showered with gifts during her stay in the town. However, neither Gambier nor his advisors seem to have used this occasion to add to their meagre store of ideas about the culture or interests of the Island’s Indigenous people. This episode may also have made the Beothuk woman a pariah. Although she occasionally visited European settlements after her release, she did so on her own and may not have been accepted back among her own people.63 This fruitless and

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perhaps inadvertently cruel episode had a banal coda that was familiar to British naval officers. Given their experience of the British Treasury’s suspicion of unusual expenditure, neither Gambier nor Sir Erasmus Gower, his successor, would have been surprised that attempts to secure the authorization of the payment to the fisherman dragged on for several years.64

Conciliation and the ‘rights of the king’s subjects’: Holloway As will have become apparent elsewhere in this study, Gower was one of the most active and engaged of the naval governors of Newfoundland in the war period. He does not, however, seem to have taken any particular initiatives to protect the Beothuk. He commented on the very favourable impression the woman who was taken to St John’s made on Europeans there but has been criticized for not being active in managing her repatriation.65 His report on this matter may, however, have prompted his immediate successor’s far more active interest in conciliating the Beothuk.66 As in the cases of Waldegrave and Pole, letters from Rev. John Bland played a role in stimulating Vice Admiral John Holloway’s interest in this matter.67 Bland’s communications reinforced the view that settler aggression had played a significant role in the Beothuk’s present plight. He told Holloway that he believed that the extent of Beothuk deaths at the hands of ‘our Savages’ had been understated.68 In his first season in Newfoundland Holloway followed the common practice of issuing a proclamation enjoining kind treatment of the Beothuk and included in it references to the religious implications of conciliation. Settlers should act towards the Beothuk so as to ensure ‘that they may be conciliated and induced to come among us as Brethren when the public as well as themselves will be benefitted by their being brought to a State of civilization, Social order and a blessed Knowledge of the Christian Religion’. Holloway’s proclamation threatened the full sanctions of the law against those who interfered with the Beothuk or their property ‘as if it had been committed against myself or any other of His Majesty’s Subjects’.69 This statement suggests that Holloway regarded the Beothuk as having the same rights to legal protection as other inhabitants of the Island. The fact that his proclamation avoided references to ‘taking possession’ of the Beothuk was consistent with a perception of them as rights-bearing subjects and marked a departure from the practice of supposedly benign capture that pushed paternalistic rationalization to an extreme, counterproductive point. Holloway thus announced a reward of £50 (with expenses) to anyone who ‘induced’ or ‘persuaded’ a male member of the tribe to come into St John’s with them and to anyone who provided information under oath on those who had murdered Beothuk. Holloway told the secretary of state that the best way to overcome their suspicion of settlers was to send a vessel freighted with appropriate gifts to the parts of the coast they were known to frequent.70 Within two months of the issue of his proclamation, Holloway received notice of its violation. Bland reported that an ‘Indian’ canoe had been stolen ‘with some violence’ by the master and crew of a schooner and taken to St John’s. Shortly

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thereafter, Holloway responded to Bland with the news that the offenders ‘are discovered’ and that they would be sent to St John’s to face trial ‘and dealt with according to law’.71 In the second year of his governorship Holloway promoted an extraordinary innovation that sought to address what he and his predecessors regarded as the main challenge of their policy towards the Beothuk. That is, how to convince them that contrary to all experience, the British wished to be their friends and protectors. As with Bland’s suggestion about relying on body armour rather than firearms, Holloway’s approach was both rational and fantastic. The process of conciliation was to be advanced by leaving a large picture showing Indians and Europeans trading peacefully above a cache of gifts at a spot where the Beothuk were known to go. This approach won the support of John Reeves, who promoted it among officials in London and commissioned a painting which the governor took out to the Island when he returned for the 1808 season.72 Holloway acknowledged that given the history of cruel treatment the Beothuk had suffered, they were not likely to be immediately won over by this roseate illustration of conciliation. It ‘may perhaps take some time to wean their Minds from the strong Impressions of Mistrust, which they have imbibed from suffering repeated cruelties’.73 Unfortunately, the attempt to give effect to this ‘conciliatory overture’ failed through yet another instance of the lack of contact that made such gestures appear necessary. In a later report written from Spithead, Holloway told Lord Castlereagh that the scheme had not worked because the Beothuk did not visit the area where the image was displayed. He also reported an initiative that reflected official views of the Mi’kmaq threat to the survival of the Beothuk. When Sir Hugh Palliser had sought to prevent Mi’kmaq migration in the 1760s he had been concerned about their relationship with the French and their threat to English fishermen.74 Holloway, however, was concerned primarily with the detrimental impact of Mi’kmaq on the Beothuk’s already depleted resource base. Having received advice on this matter from one of his officers, Holloway told the secretary of state that the ‘Micmac’ were ‘the enemies of the indigenous Indians’ who come ‘only for plunder and to hunt animals to extinction’ and reported that he had instructed his officials to prevent them landing on Newfoundland.75 In the last stages of his governorship, Holloway seems to have been responsible for another effort to make contact which was more nearly successful. There is no reference to this initiative in Holloway’s official correspondence, perhaps because he already had funds in hand from an earlier similar attempt and did not see the need to seek a further approval from the secretary of state.76 Details of the initiative were provided by Sir John Duckworth at the end of his first season in Newfoundland. On the first day of 1810 William Cull, who had been responsible for taking a Beothuk woman to St John’s in Gambier’s time and also had some murderous earlier dealings with her people, led an expedition into the northern interior to set up a depot of trade goods – yarn stockings, cotton handkerchiefs, clasp knives, hatchets, printed cotton pieces, needles, pins and threads – on which the Beothuk could draw. As with earlier initiatives, the hope was that this largesse would begin to change their views on interaction with the British and lay the basis

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The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars

for the realization of the elusive goal of a general and lasting ‘conciliation’. Cull reported that he saw two ‘Indians’ approach the store but that when members of his party were sighted by them, they retired into the bush and no further contact was made. Cull’s earlier acts of violent aggression, and the fact that he had two Mi’kmaq guides in his party, did not seem likely to reassure the Beothuk.77

Conciliation and collective rapprochement: Duckworth Sir John Duckworth was a particularly active governor whose energy was focused to a greater extent than any of his predecessors on protecting and conciliating the Beothuk.78 His interest may have been spurred initially by the failure through lack of witnesses of the legal action taken against the men brought to St John’s to stand trial for stealing a canoe.79 The importance he placed on advancing the cause of conciliation was signalled in his very first dispatch to the incoming secretary of state in late 1810. Duckworth stressed the importance of establishing ‘communication’ with the Beothuk and sought Lord Liverpool’s approval of a reward for those who materially advanced that objective. He was prepared to risk a rebuke for unauthorized expenditure since, on the same day as he wrote to Liverpool, he issued a proclamation offering both a reward of £100 and the additional incentive of an ‘honourable mention’ to the king for contributions to ‘the cause of humanity’. Duckworth’s proclamation focused particularly on the role that ‘ill-treatment . . . received from mischievous and wicked persons’ had played in deterring the Beothuk from contact with those who wished to establish ‘a friendly intercourse’ with them. The reward was offered to ‘any Person who shall so zealously and meritoriously exert himself as to bring about and establish on a firm and settled footing an intercourse so much to be desired’. A lesser reward would be paid to anyone who contributed significantly to securing communication between the governor and a ‘single Indian’.80 Duckworth’s initial approach was characterized by attempts to engage with the Beothuk as a collective entity by going out to meet them in their villages, rather than seeking to demonstrate goodwill to individuals ‘brought into’ settler society and relying on them to spread the word among their fellows. In common with earlier governors, however, he was also determined to protect the Beothuk from perceived threats from other Indigenous peoples. A month after his first proclamation to settlers and fishermen, Duckworth addressed one to ‘the Micmacs, the Esquimaux, and other American Indians frequenting the . . . Island’, assuring them of the king’s friendliness towards them and that they would receive the same protection as his subjects. They were advised, however, that the ‘native Indians’ of Newfoundland were ‘equally with ourselves under the protection of the King’ and that ‘the safety of these Indians is so precious to His Majesty who is always the support of the feeble, that if one of ourselves were to do them wrong he would be punished as certainly and as severely as if this injury had been done to the greatest among His own people’. The proclamation concluded with an unequivocal warning: ‘Do you not therefore deprive any one of our Friends the

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Native Indians of his life, or it will be answered with the life of him who has been guilty of the Murder.’81 When Duckworth returned from Newfoundland at the end of 1810 he furnished the secretary of state with a 10-page report, along with more than 100 pages of ‘Observations on Instructions’ and appendices. These documents included references to the failures of previous attempts at friendly contact and conciliation and reiterated Duckworth’s predecessors’ strictures on the need to exclude ‘Micmac Indians’ from the Island.82 As in the matter of the offer of a reward, the governor was sufficiently confident in his own judgement to report on a venture rather than seek the secretary of states’ approval to embark on it. Duckworth told Lord Liverpool that efforts at conciliation needed to be put in the hands of a persevering, intelligent man who was committed to the cause and advised that Lieutenant David Buchan possessed these qualities.83 This choice may have reflected Duckworth’s view (which ran contrary to those of some other governors) that the management of interaction with the Beothuk could not be left to those who acted on ‘pecuniary motives’ and came from sections of the population that had mistreated them in the recent past. He informed Liverpool that he would use his interest to secure Buchan’s promotion to commander if his initiatives were successful and clearly intended that the secretary of state would take this hint.84 Over the winter of 1810–11 Buchan was to command the schooner Adonis and moor it off the northern coast to serve as a base from which he would lead a party of seamen and two local guides into the interior to contact the Beothuk in their winter quarters. Buchan, who had been supplied with trade goods – ‘articles as may be most useful and tempting to the Indians’ – was warned not to scare the Beothuk by gunshot and reminded that the ‘great object’ was to treat ‘amicably with them’. For the most part, however, he was to act on his own judgement as circumstances dictated.85 Buchan’s responsibility for pursuing the governor’s conciliation agenda was to extend into the summer season of 1811. Thus while his instructions for the spring of 1811 charged him with managing the relationship with American fishermen off the coasts of Newfoundland and investigating fishing activities in the northern ports, Duckworth directed the lieutenant to disregard these orders if he managed to ‘engage with’ the ‘Native Indians’. ‘You are above all things to give your attention to this important object . . . to pursue it with your utmost ardour and ability, and may you obtain success.’86 When Duckworth returned to England at the end of his second year’s residence he reported to Liverpool at great length on how the expedition had fared over the winter of 1810–11. He noted that Buchan had exhibited the zeal and commitment which had been foreshadowed in the notice of his appointment, and to that extent Duckworth’s judgement on the lieutenant’s leadership qualities was justified fully. Despite that, however, the governor reported that the initiative ended in tragic failure. Unusually, Europeans, rather than the Beothuk, were the immediate victims of a scheme which had initially shown signs of easing the deadlock of mistrust and alienation.87 Buchan’s Adonis was left icebound at the mouth of Exploits River while he led a party of twenty crew members and three guides into the frozen interior. The party marched 130 miles inland before establishing a depot of trade goods and then

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locating a Beothuk village. Having managed to overcome what Buchan described as the ‘extreme terror’ of the inhabitants, the party seemed well on the way to establishing a good understanding with them. When Buchan proposed going back to the depot to recover the goods, four Beothuk, including the chief, came with him and two of his men asked to remain behind in the village. The chief and a companion returned to their village after accompanying the party for six miles, but the other two Beothuk continued towards the depot with no apparent signs of alarm or distrust. Just before they arrived there, however, one of these men became ‘panic struck’ and ran away. When Buchan’s party and the remaining Beothuk arrived back at the village they found it deserted and the decapitated bodies of their two crew members lying nearby. In his report to Duckworth, Buchan surmised that the man who had left his party before it reached the depot made up a story of treacherous aggression to explain his conduct and that on hearing it the Chief ordered retaliation against the two crew members. He implied that this turn of events was utterly surprising to him and stressed the ‘ease’ and ‘confidence’ of the Beothuk who had remained with his party. This man only became ‘nervous’ when they arrived at the deserted village and ran off in ‘terror’ when the dead bodies were discovered.88 The testimony of a Beothuk woman who lived among the settlers in the 1820s provided a very different account of this episode, one which reflected the Beothuk’s recent experience of settler interactions with them. She reported that the Beothuk were initially captured by Buchan and his party and then managed to negotiate an exchange of hostages. When Buchan left their camp to go back to the depot they feared he would return with a larger force to secure their capture and take then into a European settlement.89 The discrepancies between these narratives throw light on the failure of Buchan’s expedition and Duckworth’s response to it. The outcome was almost certainly due to the Beothuk’s ingrained and well-grounded fear of Europeans and Buchan’s lack of knowledge of, and failure to communicate effectively with, them. Duckworth would have been aware of the first of these barriers but showed no sign of appreciating the significance of the second. In his report, Duckworth noted the physical and leadership challenges faced by Buchan, whose health broke down on his return to the Adonis but made a potentially critical reflection on his practice of consulting other members of the party. This comment may have referred to the decision to leave two men with the Beothuk while the rest of the party returned to the depot. Duckworth nevertheless acknowledged that ‘it is incumbent upon me to avow frankly my approbation of [Buchan’s] conduct in general terms’ and approved his plan for returning to the Exploits River in the following summer. It was proposed that members of his crew should remain concealed in hides ashore to wait for the best opportunity to contact Beothuk visiting the coast.90 In mid-May 1812 as he waited for the ice to clear, Buchan wrote to Duckworth stressing his enthusiastic commitment and assured him that ‘no exertions shall be wanting to bring it to a favourable termination’.91 Six weeks later, however, he reported in very different terms. Exposure to the blood-thirsty flying insects which infest the northern bush in summer, and the ‘unnatural’ restraints faced by seamen who were used to ‘the prompt measures of Naval undertakings’, subjected

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Buchan’s crew to ‘hardships in a much greater degree than the endeavouring to take or harass an Enemy’ that he doubted whether seamen were well suited to operations of this kind.92 Be that as it may, the crew’s sufferings were completely in vain. The British came across signs of recent Beothuk activity but seemed to have arrived too late in the summer to meet with them. Reservations on the use of naval personnel notwithstanding, Buchan secured permission to winter over so that he and his men could land on the coast as soon as the ice cleared.93 Duckworth continued to give Buchan strong backing, praising his ‘perseverance and ability’ and anticipating that his efforts would soon be ‘crowned with . . . success’.94 These hopes proved overly sanguine and neither this initiative, nor another journey into the interior in the winter of 1811– 12, succeeded in re-establishing contact with the Beothuk.95 In the summer of 1812 when Britain was at war with the United States, Buchan’s main focus was on reconnaissance, but he did not give up his pursuit of the Beothuk. His men found a deserted camp with hot embers and the remains of roasted venison, and he reported seeing a band of fifty ‘Canadian Indians’, a people whom he described as ‘a scourge to the Natives on whom they breath eternal enmity’. Buchan also compiled detailed information on routes used by the Beothuk when they travelled to and from the coast, presumably with a view to planning future attempts to establish contact with them.96 Sir Richard Keats reported on Buchan’s last attempt to establish a basis for conciliation with the Beothuk, issued a proclamation and advised the secretary of state of the danger posed to the Beothuk by the ‘incursions’ of other native peoples into the Island.97 In the Observations on Instructions which Keats presented to Lord Bathurst as his term came to an end, he reiterated his earlier warnings about the threat posed to these ‘poor people’ by other Indigenous people and acknowledged that his ‘strenuous endeavours to encourage a friendly intercourse’ with the Beothuk had been ineffectual. Keats told the secretary of state that he thought ‘accidental’ and ‘occasional’ communications would not serve the purpose and suggested a far more sustained approach. He recommended that a party commanded by a ‘discrete understanding person’ should be based for several years in a place the Beothuk were known to visit and seek ‘by invaried kindness, and an equitable traffic . . . to obtain their confidence, and establish a permanent intercourse’.98 Given Keats’s commitment to the religious and moral needs of the settlers, it is perhaps surprising that he was not more active in pursuing the humanitarian approach to the Indigenous people of the Island that had been a marked feature of the government of his predecessors. One explanation is that he was distracted by the demands of governing the Island when Britain was at war with the United States and then dealing with the local ramifications of the peace treaties that ended that war and the long-running conflict with Napoleonic France. It may also have been the case that the failures of Buchan’s initiatives demonstrated the futility of the approaches sponsored by his predecessors and that no significant alternatives surfaced during his governorship. Keats’s valedictory suggestion to Bathurst indicates that he had given some thought to that question, however, and his approach reflected aspects of schemes canvassed by Gambier and Holloway.

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Conclusion The naval governors’ efforts to ‘conciliate’ the Beothuk all ended in total failure. Even when they seemed to show signs of initial success, Beothuk interactions with the British very likely reinforced their suspicion of them. Of all the schemes the naval governors promoted, Waldegrave’s proposal to create a reserve for the Beothuk might have had the best chance of succeeding, but, as we have seen, the British government deferred any consideration of it while the country was at war. Within fifteen years of the end of Keats’s governorship, and after a final experiment in bringing Beothuk women into a settlement, all contact with their tribe ceased. After the death of the last member of this group, an obituary in the London Times mourned her passing and the apparent extinction of her people.99 The naval governors have been criticized for acting on the basis of naïve assumptions that the Beothuk could be persuaded, as opposed to being counterproductively coerced, into placing themselves at the mercy of Europeans. As we have seen, those who were ‘brought in’ to European settlements suffered grievously and neither Gambier nor Gower took decisive steps to help them.100 But while it is true that the governors were ineffectual on these occasions, and that they and their colleagues singularly failed to ‘conciliate’, far less save, the Indigenous people of Newfoundland, these outcomes were a consequence of the flawed approaches to which they lent their support rather than failures of personal commitment. From Waldegrave’s response to John Bland’s suggestions through to Keats’s relative inaction in the face of the failures of Buchan’s expeditions, the naval governors’ ideas on how they might give effect to their instructions to protect the ‘native Indians’ relied heavily on schemes recommended to them by those with more experience of local conditions than they. As we have seen, Bland advised Waldegrave and told him of other officials’ interest in the Beothuk.101 He also engaged with Pole and Holloway on the subject, and the latter was also influenced by promoters of an approach that had been deployed elsewhere. The fact that Waldegrave queried Bland’s plan to use Inuit intermediaries suggests that he was in a position to calibrate this advice against that provided by other local informants.102 The particular genesis of the schemes of Buchan and Duckworth are unknown, but the fact that William Cull accompanied Buchan’s first expedition may indicate that he played a role in framing them. Early in his governorship, Duckworth consulted Chief Justice Tremlett and the Reverend Anaspach, who was also a magistrate, on how to address an issue which had confounded the efforts of his predecessors. He also received accounts from one of his officers which stressed the dangers that other Indigenous people posed to the Beothuk.103 Duckworth’s schemes were, in any case, entirely consistent with the general approach to showing goodwill to the Beothuk that relied initially on giving them items they were assumed to value. Thus, in dealing with a challenge that lay outside the range of their leadership experience, the naval governors were active conduits of local experience, rather than prime movers. When John Reeves drew an unfavourable contrast between the apparently successful conciliation of the Indigenous population of Labrador and the

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murderous antagonism which prevailed in Newfoundland, he alluded to the beneficial role Monrovian missionaries had played on the mainland. Although Brand and Jenner were clergymen, however, there is no indication that the forces of organized religion applied themselves in any systematic way to try to alleviate the plight of the Beothuk. There was some mention of the Beothuk in correspondence between Methodist missionaries in Newfoundland and their society in England, but these exchanges did not give rise to a programme of intervention, nor is there any evidence of a groundswell of religious opinion on this question on the Island during the war years.104 Members of the St John’s elite were intrigued by the Beothuk women who resided briefly among them, but their attention and gifts do not appear to presage sustained interest in their people. For these reasons, there seems to be no basis for the suggestion that the failure of the naval governors’ policies towards the Beothuk discredited them in the eyes of the local elite.105 Any widespread regret at the fate of the Beothuk from this quarter seems to date from the 1840s, long after the naval governors had passed from the scene.106 It is significant that when some members of the local civilian community made an organized attempt in the 1820s to address the plight of the Indigenous people through the work of the Beothuk Institute, their efforts were no more successful than those of the wartime naval governors. William Cormack, one of the Institute’s co-founders and the author of the Times obituary, crossed the Island in search of the Beothuk but failed to make any contact with them.107 Cormack’s expedition was part of a developing and genuine interest in the Beothuk’s fate among the settler community, but he has been criticized for combining it with an exploration of the Island’s mineral resources with a view to determining their potential for large-scale exploitation. Such a development would have had serious ill-consequences for those living in the interior of the Island.108 It also seems highly unlikely that a fledgling colonial administration would have performed any better than the authoritarian naval officers who preceded it in the government of the Island. Early settler-led governments did little to mitigate the injustices inflicted on Indigenous people through the seizure of their homelands and the violent disruption of their ways of life, and they often resisted the efforts of pro-Aboriginal protection officials in the Colonial Office. Indeed, to the extent that the origins of humanitarian policy can be discerned in colonial settings in early-nineteenth-century Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, the wartime naval governors of Newfoundland might be seen as early exponents of an idea of colonial governance which included the protection of Indigenous peoples among its core responsibilities.109

Notes 1 ‘By the King, A Proclamation’, Peace and Friendship Treaties, Nova Scotia Archives, RG 1, vol. 346, no. 2; ‘Royal Proclamation’, Adam Shortt and Arthur G. Doughty, eds, Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada, 1759-1791, 2nd edn (Ottawa: J de Taché, 1918), Part 1: 166; NA CO 5/214, f308, 27/1/1763; Merete Falck

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12 13 14

15 16 17 18

Notes to pp. 163–181 Borch, Conciliation—Compulsion—Conversion. British Attitudes Towards Indigenous Peoples, 1763-1814 (Amsterdam and New York: Ropoldi, 2004), 40. John G. Rettler, ‘Colonialism in Northeastern America, 1450-1850’, in The Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonisation, ed. Edward Cavanagh and Lorenzo Veracini (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), 90. Borch, Conciliation, 71–2. https://www​.foundingdocs​.gov​.au​/resources​/transcripts​/nsw2​_doc​_1787​.pdf, 6. The major modern book-length study of the Beothuk is Ingeborg C. L. Marshall, A History and Ethnography of the Beothuk (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996); as indicated herein, aspects of her work, including the use of historical sources and her views on the Beothuk’s relationship with other Indigenous people, have been challenged in some later works. Nevertheless, Marshall’s views on the harmful impact of Europeans and other Indigenous peoples on the Beothuk accurately reflect the assumptions upon which the naval governors operated. See herein, pp. 171–2. See L. F. S. Upton, ‘The Extermination of the Beothuks of Newfoundland’, Canadian Historical Review, 58, no. 2 (1977): 140–1 for Palliser’s initiatives. Donald H. Holly Jr et al., ‘The Ties that Bind: Encounters with the Beothuk in Southeastern Newfoundland’, Journal of the North Atlantic, 3, no. 1 (2010): 31–44. Upton, ‘The Extermination’, 137–8. Captain George Cartwright’s testimony to the Parliamentary Enquiry in 1793 referred to these exchanges as remote; Great Britain, House of Commons, ‘Reports from the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the State of the Trade of Newfoundland’, Reports from the Committees of the House of Commons: Miscellaneous Reports (1803), X: 37–8. R. Pastore, ‘The Collapse of the Beothuk World’, Acadiensis, 19, no. 1 (1989): 54–5, 67–8; Todd J. Krestensen and Donald H. Holly Jr, ‘Birds, Burials and Sacred Cosmology of the Indigenous Beothuk of Newfoundland, Canada’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 23, no. 1 (2012): 41–53. Holly, ‘The Beothuk on the Eve of their Extinction’, 79–95, sees these reactions as indicative of Beothuk agency in the face of threats to their resources. Pastore, ‘The Collapse of the Beothuk World’, 56–7; significant collections of nails have been found on sites of Beothuk occupation. See the references to Governor Elliot herein, p. 167; Lieutenant Edward Chappell took a similar position after visiting settlements in the far north of the Island in 1813; Edward Chappell, A Voyage … to Newfoundland (London: J. Maw, 1818), 186–7. See also Holly, ‘The Beothuk on the Eve of Extinction’, 88–9. See Shannon Ryan, A History of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic to1818 (St. John’s: Flanker Press Ltd, 2012), 111–12, on the lack of law enforcement. John Reeves viewed such lawlessness as emblematic of the government’s failure to fulfil its responsibilities to the Beothuk. Great Britain, House of Commons, ‘Reports from the Committee’, 38. Marshall, The Beothuk, 95–112. Ibid., 443. Ibid., 49–51; Marshall’s account of the relationships between the Beothuk and other Indigenous peoples has been questioned by Charles Martijn, ‘Review Article: A History and Ethnography of the Beothuk’, Newfoundland and Labrador Studies, 12, no. 2 (1996): 108–17, and more recently by contributors to Fiona Polack, ed., Tracing Ochre: Changing Perspective on the Boethuk (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018). Three contributors to this collection also question the way that ideas

Notes to pp. 163–181

19 20 21 22 23

24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37 38

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about ‘extinction’ are used in this context; see Fiona Polack, ‘Introduction’, 7; Bonita Lawrence, ‘Unrecognised Peoples and Concepts of Extinction’, 297–320 and Edward J. Chamberlain, ‘Coda’, 345–62. Marshall’s position is, however, consistent with contemporary assumptions upon which the naval governors’ conciliation policy was based. See Borch, Conciliation, 6–7, for the role of weapons as a major medium of exchange that created a reliance on European trading partners for resources necessary to ward off threats from Europeans and other Indigenous peoples. Marshall, The Beothuk, 42–51. NA CO 194/49, ff86–7, 5/6/1810, quoting from Duckworth’s instructions of 1810 which are identical to those issued to Elliot in 1786, CO 195/11, ff5–6. Duckworth’s instructions from the Admiralty Board directed him to assist efforts to ‘civilize’ and ‘convert’ ‘savages in northern parts of the coast of Labrador’ and made no reference to the Beothuk; NMM, DUC/16. Modern scholars are divided on this question. Pastore and Marshall place considerable weight on the adverse impact of the Mi’kmaq on the Beothuk, but Upton was sceptical; see Marshall, The Beothuk, 49–51; Pastore, ‘The Collapse of the Beothuk World’, 69 and cf. Upton, ‘The Extermination’, 150. See Leddy, ‘Historical Sources and the Beothuk’, 211–12 and Hanrahan, ‘Good and Bad Indians’, in Tracing Ochre, ed. Polock, 33–53, for discussions of the implications of the denial of the indigeneity of the Mi’kmaq. Compare Marshall, The Beothuk, 442–3, 445 and Hanrahan, ‘Good and Bad Indians’, 37. NA CO 194/36, ff203–4, 25/11/1786; Ian M. Bates, Champion of the Quarter Deck. Admiral Sir Erasmus Gower (1742-1814) (Pomona: Sage Old Books, 2017), 158. NA CO 194/38, f54, October 1788. Marshall, The Beothuk, 84–91; Ingeborg C. L. Marshall, ed., Reports and Letters by Christopher Pulling Relating to the Beothuk Indians of Newfoundland (St John’s: Breakwater Books, 1989), 19–20, 31, n. 4. D. A. Prowse, A History of Newfoundland from English, Colonial and Foreign Records (London: Macmillan, 1895), 234–5; Marshall, Pulling, 14. NA CO 194/36, f204, 25/11/1786. Upton, ‘The Extermination’, 135–7, 153–5. H. P. Thompson, Into All Lands: The History of the Society For the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (London: Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, 1951), 120–1, notes that Anglican clergy tended to emphasize the cruelty of settlers (and other Indigenous groups) towards the Beothuk. See Marshall, Pulling, 31, n. 4. Chief Justice Reeves’s evidence, printed in James P. Howley, The Beothuks or the Red Indians. The Aboriginal Inhabitants of Newfoundland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915), 55. Ibid., 15–19. See Chapter 5. John G. Reid and Elizabeth Mancke, ‘From Global Processes to Continental Strategies: The Emergence of British North America to 1783’, in Canada and the British Empire, ed. Phillip Buckner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 27. Borch, Conciliation, 78–9; Penelope Edmonds and Jane Carey, ‘Australia over the Nineteenth Century’, in The Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonisation, ed. Cavanagh and Veracini, 372–4.

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Notes to pp. 163–181

39 See James Candow, ‘The British Army in Newfoundland, 1674-1824’, Newfoundland Quarterly, 79, no. 4 (1984): 21–2. 40 Evidence of Vice-Admiral Edwards, Howley, The Beothuks, 54. 41 Chief Justice Reeves’s evidence, Howley, The Beothuks, 54; see also Marshall, The Beothuk, 117–19. Waldegrave knew of Reeves’s History and asked the secretary of state to make copies of it available to captains in his squadron; NA CO 194/40, f13, 3/2/1798. 42 Howley, The Beothuks, 60; Marshall, Pulling, 21–2. 43 Borch reports that twentieth-century assessments of Portland do not indicate that he had an interest in Indigenous people; see Conciliation, 113; as noted herein, however, he did respond positively, although with extreme caution, to one of Waldegrave’s suggestions on how to protect the Beothuk. See Marshall, The Beothuk, 119–21, for an account of Waldegrave’s approach. 44 NA CO 194/39, f216, 20/7/1797. 45 NA CO 194/39, f217v, 16/8/1797 46 Ibid. 47 NA CO 194/39, f218, 18/8/1797. 48 Marshall, Pulling, 14–15; see Borch, Conciliation, 105 and Tim Flannery, ed., Watkins Trench 1788 (Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, 1996), 94–102, for a first-hand contemporary account of one of Governor Phillip’s unsuccessful initiatives at Botany Bay. 49 See Marshall, The Beothuk, 54–5, for information on this point from a Beothuk woman who was later taken to St John’s. 50 NA CO 194/39, ff218v–229, 1/9/1797; the extract from Pulling is in ff222v–229. Waldegrave received another version of Pulling’s Report from Rev. Jenner on 29 September; Marshall, Pulling, 21–2, suggests that Waldegrave first knew of Pulling’s report from Jenner, but that does not appear to be the case. 51 NA CO 194/39, f214, 25/10/1797. 52 Marshall, The Beothuk, 121 and 491, n. 42–8. Crofton’s report is in NA CO 194/40 f17. 53 Great Britain, House of Commons, ‘Reports from the Committee’, 402; the area delineated by Cartwright included coastline and offshore islands which may have reflected a concern to ensure they had a sustainable resource base. 54 See Marshall, The Beothuk, 121 for Waldegrave’s pursuit of the matter and Portland’s prioritization. Waldegrave’s account of the latter occurred in the course of a statement of his achievements as governor that he sent to Lord Melville, the first lord of the admiralty, in 1814 in support of his claim for a pension; BL Add MS 38257, ff286–9, 17/5/1814. 55 See Pastore, ‘The Collapse of the Beothuk World’, 57–8. Reid and Peace refer to the role that intermediaries such as priests, military officers and officials played in settler relations with Indigenous people in New France; John G. Reid and Thomas Peace, ‘Colonies of Settlement and Settler Colonialism in Northeaster America, 1450-1850’, in The Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonisation, ed. Cavanagh and Veracini, 85. 56 NA CO 194/42, f215, 25/10/1800. 57 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 11: 65–6, 16/8/1800. 58 Ibid., 90–1, 25/8/1800. 59 NA CO 194/43, ff95–7, 11/9/1802. 60 NA CO 194/43, ff94–5v, 21/11/1802.

Notes to pp. 163–181 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

76 77 78 79

80 81 82 83

84 85 86

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NA CO 194/44, f172, 25/10/1805. NA CO 194/43, f319, 9/12/1803. Marshall, The Beothuk, 129–32. NA CO 194/44, f170, 22/8/1805; f316, 29/10/1805. Marshall, The Beothuk, 130–1. Bates, Champion of the Quarterdeck, 276–7. See Marshall, Pulling, 60 and Howley, The Beothuks, 55–66. Cited Howley, The Beothuk, 66, 22/9/1807. The proclamation was issued at St John’s on 30 July 1807; PAN D’Alberti Papers, 17: 35–6, 30/7/1807. NA CO 194/46, ff100–100v, 94v, 25/11/1807. PAN D’Alberti Papers, 17: 161, 22/9/1807; 193, 5/10/1807. See Marshall, The Beothuk, 132. NA CO 194/47, ff33–4, 20/5/1808. See Olaf Janzen, ‘The Royal Navy and the Interdiction of Aboriginal Migration’, International Journal of Naval History, 7, no. 2 (2008); e-journal, not paginated. NA CO 194/47, f65v, 18/11/1808. Upton (‘The Extermination’, 150) is sceptical of claims about the adverse impact of other native peoples on the Beothuk; more recently both Leddy (‘Historical Sources and the Beothuk’) and Hanrahan (‘Good and Bad Indians’) draw on current Mi’kmaq oral tradition to question the accuracy of the accounts of Beothuk-Mi’kmaq antagonism reported by contemporary European observers and utilized by Marshall. NA CO 194/49, f10-v, 14/4/1810; Holloway wrote to Lord Liverpool asking how he should dispose of the balance of money approved for buying presents for the Beothuk in 1808. NA CO 194/49, ff116–17, 25/11/1810. See Marshall, The Beothuk, 129–31 for Cull’s earlier interaction with the Beothuk. The fullest account of this aspect of Duckworth’s governorship is in W. H. Whiteley, Duckworth’s Newfoundland (St John’s: Harry Cuff Publications, 1985), 34–8. William Wilson, Newfoundland and Its Missionaries (Cambridge: Dakin and Metcalf, 1866), 309. Wilson dates this incident to 1810 and says the men were to be charged with murder as well as theft, so his account is not necessarily to be relied upon. His treatment of Buchan’s expedition is garbled. NA CO 194/49, ff26–7, 24/7/1810. PAN D’Alberti Papers, 20: 145–8, 31/8/1810. NA ADM 1/477, ff103–4, 18/2/1811. David Buchan (1780–1838) was born in Scotland and from 1808 enjoyed a long career as a commissioned naval officer and civil official in Newfoundland. He had an ongoing interest in the welfare of the Beothuk, and his actions on their behalf and his subsequent naval career vindicated Duckworth’s confidence in him. Buchan later showed great resilience, determination and superior seamanship when he commanded the vessel that accompanied Commander John Franklin’s ship on his first expedition to the Artic in 1818. He was lost at sea in an East Indian Company vessel, having joined the Company’s service when his active career in the Royal Navy ended; DCB, VII. NA CO 194/49, ff88–9, 25/11/1810. NA CO 194/49, f115, 25/11/1810. NMM DUC/16, 25/10/1810.

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87 Upton (‘The Extermination’, 152–3) notes that all the Beothuk women ‘brought in’ to St John’s over the next decade died of tuberculosis and suggests that members of their tribe may have contracted the disease from men in Buchan’s party. 88 NA CO 194/50, ff149–51, 27/10/1811. Sean Cadigan, Newfoundland & Labrador. A History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 86–7, suggests that the Beothuk’s reaction to Buchan’s party might have been coloured by his use of a guide (William Cull) who had clashed with them previously. Given the outcome, this may well have been the case, but there is no indication of it in Buchan’s report; to the contrary, he stressed the lack of tension between the two groups after the initial period of extreme apprehension by the Beothuk. 89 Marshall, The Beothuk, 143. 90 NA CO 194/50, f151, 27/10/1811. 91 NMM DUC/18, 14/5/1812. 92 NMM DUC/18, 27/6/1812. Contrary to Duckworth’s expectations about the value of disinterest in trying to conciliate the Beothuk, Buchan thought the duty on which his men were currently employed was better suited to the ‘wary caution of men to reward or guided by interested motives’. 93 NA CO 194/50, f152, 27/10/1811. 94 NA CO 194/52, ff22–3, 6/6/1812. 95 NA CO 194/54, f47, 8/4/1813. 96 NMM DUC/18, 17/7/1812, 23/8/1812, 25/8/1812. This report is entirely consistent with information Duckworth received from another naval officer, Captain William Parker, in 1810; see Marshall, The Beothuk, 155. Buchan was involved in another large-scale attempt to contact the Beothuk in 1820; ibid., 173–9. 97 NA CO 194/56, f110, 10/11/1815. 98 NA CO 194/57, ff34v–5v, 15/4/1816. 99 Times, 14/9/1829. 100 Marshall, The Beothuk, 130–2. 101 NA CO 194/39, f217v, 16/8/1797. 102 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 6: 394–5, 20/9/1797. 103 See Whiteley, Duckworth’s Newfoundland, 35; Marshall, The Beothuk, 501, n. 8. 104 See Philip E. L. Smith, ‘Beothuks and Methodists’, Acadiensis, 16, no. 1 (1986): 118– 35. Wilson, Newfoundland and Its Missionaries, 312, dates the Wesleyans’ interest in the Beothuk to 1820. 105 Cadigan, Newfoundland & Labrador, 95. Cadigan’s critical judgement of the admirals on this point is not supported by any evidence from the later years of wartime naval government when they were most active. Upton (‘The Extermination’, 143) dates the growth of general feelings of ‘humanity’ (as opposed to those of a few ‘officials’) towards the Beothuk to 1819. 106 Smith, ‘Beothuks and Methodists’, 134–5. 107 Cadigan, Newfoundland & Labrador, 94. This organization was led by a Newfoundland-born scientist, W. E. Cormack, and supported by a committee of citizens of St John’s. Cormack’s account of his trek across the widest point of the Island in the summer of 1822 recorded his wish to gain a view of ‘Red Indians’ and included information on the Beothuk; W. E. Cormack, Narrative of a Journey Across Newfoundland (St John’s: Morning Post and Commerce Journal, 1856), 30, 31, 38–9. 108 Leddy, ‘Historical Sources and the Beothuk’, 205–6. 109 See Alan Lester and Fae Dussart, Colonization and the Origins of Humanitarian Governance. Protecting Aborigines across the Nineteenth-Century British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), passim.

Chapter 7 REFORMING THE FRAMEWORK OF NAVAL GOVERNMENT

Contemporary critics of naval government complained of the governors’ wilful ignorance of their charge, making much of their short periods of residence on the Island and their failure to comply with the clause in their instructions that they should visit the more remote parts of their government if other duties permitted.1 But while it was true that only Sir John Duckworth ventured beyond St John’s, a succession of wartime governors understood that the Island was undergoing a rapid transformation, and, by sending vessels on long summer cruises around the coast, were reasonably well informed of developments beyond the seat of their government. Thus in 1798, for example, Captain Ambrose Croft sailed round most of the coast and reported to Vice Admiral Waldegrave that the increasing range of settlement on the Island and the tendency for the population to winter over gave Newfoundland ‘more the appearance of a Colony than a Fishery’.2 A few years later Sir James Gambier sent the chief justice on a tour of the outports to gather information on the administration of justice.3 As noted earlier, Sir Erasmus Gower gathered information on the current state of the settlement and assiduously transmitted his views on its implications to the secretary of state. Throughout the war years governors received reports from surrogates and magistrates in the outports and less disinterested communications from merchants and other residents. Their initiatives to provide for the educational, religious and material needs of the population showed quite clearly that they understood the changing nature of the settlement, and, as we shall see, they justified their proposed measures by reference to it.

Governing in Palliser’s shadow While these developments occurred in spite of Palliser’s Act, they posed serious challenges to naval governors who were obliged to act within a legislative framework that was increasingly misaligned with the demography and economy of the Island. This matter had been raised in 1793 by John Reeves, the first chief justice, when he pointed to the weakness of a system of government which in many areas left governors with ‘nothing for their guide but the rectitude of their intentions and a very honourable disposition’.4 Property rights in land were a cause

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of tension with members of the local elite during the later war years, partly at least because of the unsatisfactory basis of landholding on the Island.5 In evidence he gave before the parliamentary committee, Reeves identified three forms of ‘property’ that were recognized in Newfoundland. Holdings were derived from grants made by governors for fixed terms; from ‘occupancy’ which was akin to squatting; or from acts of parliament such as that which recognized ‘occupancy’ predating 1685. Regardless of the basis of a holding, however, real property was commonly sold, leased or mortgaged, and some crown grants gave ‘fee simple’ possession, even though that was not permitted by English law.6 In 1786 the West Country merchants had failed in an attempt to secure an act of parliament that would give them full property rights in their holdings on the Island.7 One consequence of the confused legal situation was that naval governors found themselves bound to enforce regulations on the ownership and control of land and other assets that were incompatible with the needs of a growing population of settled residents and had, for that reason, been practically, but only partially, compromised by decisions of their predecessors. For much of the period, the government in London seemed in denial about these developments. Thus when Sir James Wallace reported on the significant increase in residents on the Island he was instructed to pay particular attention to enforcing the laws controlling wintering over.8 As late as 1809, Vice Admiral Holloway’s instructions to those commanding vessels on the station charged them with enforcing the now entirely redundant requirement that seamen and fishermen return to Britain and Ireland at the end of the season.9 It was a sign of the times, however, that when Waldegrave acted firmly on this question in 1799, remonstrances by local interests quickly made him realize that the premise of this policy no longer applied.10 As discussed in chapter 5, Waldegrave’s attentions to the needs of the settled population involved an at least tacit acceptance of the civil implications of the changes that had taken place on the Island and in that respect marked a shift from the position attributed to earlier naval governors. They have been seen as being wedded to the idea of a migratory fishery because of its perceived advantages for manning the Royal Navy.11 This assumption underwrote Palliser’s Act and its implications formed the basis of ongoing policy pronouncements. Thus when the first Lord Liverpool provided a position paper to inform the secretary of state’s responses to Sir James Gambier’s proposals, he acknowledged that Newfoundland was taking on the appearance of a colony, but nevertheless insisted that these tendencies should be resisted and should not provide the basis for a significant shift in British policy. Liverpool’s role as the parliamentary architect of Palliser’s Act did not disqualify him from giving a time-in-memorial cast to a doctrine that was only thirty years old and was preceded by decades of partisan speculation on whether Newfoundland should or should not be a colony.12 Governors were thus hindered in responding to the needs of a growing and diverse society because the existence of such a society was either ignored by, or actively discouraged in, the legislation and instructions that framed its government. They were routinely required to act in ways which lacked any clear legal authority. For example, while governors were expected to ensure that marriages were

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conducted according to the ‘established cannons of the Church of England’ it turned out that there was no legal basis for this requirement.13 When Duckworth followed his predecessors in insisting on the governor’s right to approve the erection of buildings he faced the mortification of being challenged successfully when the matter was referred to the secretary of state.14 Governors were also wrong-footed over their power to license newspapers in the settlement. In 1806, at the instigation of the ‘magistrates, merchants and other principal inhabitants’, Gower had issued a licence to John Ryan, an Empire loyalist from Nova Scotia, to publish the Royal Gazette and Newfoundland Advertiser. Ryan was required to give a surety of £200 and not to print matter that would disturb the peace and good order of the settlement.15 When John’s son Michael proposed a second newspaper in 1810, The Commercial Register, to appeal to what he described as the ‘liberal part of the community’ (which he took to include the merchants of St John’s) Duckworth declined to authorize it, claiming that The Royal Gazette was able to cater to the ‘mercantile’ needs of the settlement.16 Three years later Keats also refused to authorize a second newspaper. He noted that permission for the first paper had been granted on the legal grounds that it served the needs of the fishery and presumably thought he and Duckworth were justified in declining subsequent applications on the same basis. Keats acknowledged, however, that the legal position was unclear, as was the extent to which English law against libel applied in Newfoundland.17 He later learnt from the Crown lawyers in London that he did not have the power to license newspapers and that both Gower and Duckworth had exceeded their authority in their handling of earlier requests.18 Keats subsequently complained to the secretary of state that law opinions were ‘abridging the ancient authority of the Governor’.19 In most British colonies, governors were able to work with assemblies to pass local ordinances that modified the operation of English law in their seat of government. These measures were, however, subject to scrutiny by the Colonial Office and could be revised or set aside for both legal and political reasons, including the preservation of imperial interests, the avoidance of duplication, or if they conflicted with imperial statutes and humanitarian policies.20 Colonial assemblies were also able to authorize taxes to provide funding for public purposes.21 Neither of these options were available to the naval governors of Newfoundland. In many respects they were like the governor of a castle or other military facility rather than ruler of a distinct, albeit subordinate, political entity. It has been rightly observed that Newfoundland was essentially governed through royal prerogative like early New South Wales, and, as noted earlier, its government was seen as a model for that settlement.22 Whatever the formal parallels, however, the relatively rapid communications between Newfoundland and London and the fact that Newfoundland interests played a role in British politics meant that the practice differed significantly. Pro-colonial critics who accused naval governors in St John’s of acting tyrannically by proclamation ignored the fact that the actions to which they referred were intended to give effect to their instructions from the Secretary of State. Although these actions irritated some sections of local elite opinion by cutting across its interests, it did not follow that governors had extensive scope

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The Naval Government of Newfoundland in the French Wars

for discretionary action or that they exercised sweeping unfettered powers. To the contrary, an important consequence of the framework of naval government was that there was no legislative basis for authorizing or supporting most of the agencies of civil society that were found in late Georgian Britain. The provision of resources in support of public religious observance, education, hospital care and poor relief was left to voluntary effort, supplemented by discretionary payments proposed by governors and authorized by the secretary of state in London. Secretaries of state permitted early governors of New South Wales to raise taxes for local purposes, perhaps in recognition of the delays in communications. This indulgence, which was later found to be illegal, had never been extended to the naval governors of Newfoundland.23 Nor did they adopt the cavalier attitude towards civil list constraints and unauthorized expenditure that was a feature of New South Wales government in the period.24 This state of affairs, which was a cause of great concern to the Treasury, contrasted sharply with tight financial management in Newfoundland, even though the estimates approved for the settlement were modest compared with New South Wales: of the order of £3,500pa in 1813 compared to £20,000.25 The single, but very partial, exception to British governments’ reluctance to spend money in Newfoundland was the local system of judicial administration paid for through estimates approved by the British Parliament. This structure was necessary to maintain order and settle disputes arising in the course of trade and employment. Even in these matters, however, some causes still required recourse to English courts.

The ‘contradictory tendencies’ of naval government: Waldegrave Waldegrave’s frustrations in pursuing important aspects of his reform programme do not seem to have prompted deep reflection on the structure of Newfoundland government. Even before he left England for his first season in the settlement, however, he had already identified some of the difficulties he might face. In early May 1797 he urged the secretary of state to clarify what struck him as being ‘contradictory tendencies’ in the government of the Island. This comment was prompted by noting the tension between governors’ directions to pull down houses to prevent illegal habitation while being empowered to make land grants to those with Newfoundland interests.26 As he was about to embark for the return passage in the last year of his governorship, Waldegrave was confronted by another ‘contradictory tendency’ which he attributed to skulduggery by local merchants. Having approved a request at the end of the previous season for a ‘poor Irish hairdresser’ (actually a barber surgeon) to make a modest extension to the house in which he lived and worked, Waldegrave received a certificate signed by Chief Justice Routh and other magistrates authorizing the construction of a substantial house on a large piece of land designated as ‘ships’ rooms’. ‘Ships’ rooms’ were sections of harbour-front land set aside to provide shore-based facilities for vessels coming from Britain as part of the annual migration to the fisheries. Waldegrave told Portland that this transaction was contrary to the act of parliament which

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prohibited ships’ rooms from being taken for the use of those who lived ashore. He suspected collusion to frustrate the purpose of the Act by the ‘hairdresser’, the chief justice and what he contemptuously referred to as ‘other notables’. Sean Cadigan suggests that this was not an isolated incident and that similar attempts to ‘trick’ governors were common.27 As we will see, the use and misuse of ships’ rooms exercised the minds of a number of Waldegrave’s successors, but this was just one of a range of issues that demonstrated the increasingly manifest inadequacies of the legal framework within which naval governors worked. Towards the end of the war, John Reeves returned to this question and gave advice to the Committee of Council for Trade and Foreign Plantations that accorded with Waldegrave’s concerns. Reeves’s advice was tendered in the context of a close analysis of the legal improprieties alleged to have been committed by Chief Justice Tremlett during Vice Admiral Holloway’s governorship. As noted in an earlier chapter, Reeves cleared Tremlett of the charges made against him. In doing so, however, he indicated to the Committee that while the chief justice had acted within the law, it was in some sense understandable that his decisions had been questioned by the Society of Merchants because in the changed circumstances of the settlement they seemed inimical to the legitimate interests of the community. The Committee accepted the general thrust of Reeves’s arguments and, in its final decision on the Tremlett case, ordered the governor to consult with magistrates and merchants on this question.28

Legislative structure and public benefit: Gambier Vice Admiral Pole does not seem to have been sufficiently engaged with the internal affairs of Newfoundland to have become concerned with its legal framework, but this matter again became an issue for his far more active successor, Sir James Gambier. In his first term of residence, Gambier’s proclamations on unauthorized buildings, the demolition of dwellings provided for incoming ‘dieters’ and against ships’ masters who carried illegal passengers were all consistent with the conception of the settlement reflected in Palliser’s Act.29 However, Gambier’s promotion of public welfare measures and his (unsuccessful) attempt to encourage the secretary of state (Lord Hobart) to amend his instructions to include English provisions for raising rates in support of them pointed in another direction by recognizing the enlarged governmental responsibilities arising from a sharp increase in the settled population of the Island.30 At the end of his last year of government, Gambier observed to Lord Hobart that governors’ incapacity to make regulations for the internal government of Newfoundland and to raise money to fund it limited severely their scope for having a beneficial impact on the quality of the population’s moral, religious and material life. Gambier clearly believed that these matters were governmental responsibilities. He also pointed to prohibitions against leasing ‘fishing ships’ rooms’ as indicative of tensions between regulations designed to serve a migratory fishery and the needs of a growing settled population. Since the

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flood of incoming fishing ships had dwindled to a mere trickle, the land currently committed to ships’ rooms would be put to better use if it was leased and the returns applied to address the needs of the people of St John’s.31 When the crown law officers’ responded unfavourably to Gambier’s question about raising rates in Newfoundland, he suggested (with equal lack of success) that consideration be given to ‘the establishment of a legislative power . . . similar to that which has been found necessary to the prosperity and good government of other parts of His Majesty’s foreign dominions’.32 This proposal was highly significant because it implied a clear rejection of the premises of Palliser’s Act and of the prevailing policy of official resistance to Newfoundland becoming a colony. Gambier’s reference to other ‘foreign dominions’ indicates that he was thinking of an approach to representation which linked its key institutions to the prevailing imperial hierarchy while treating them as a means of expressing local needs and preferences. This model, which applied in Canadian colonies, has been contrasted with pre-revolutionary New England where representation was a product of autonomous agencies of local self-government located in villages and settlements.33 In Gambier’s view, the emergence of Newfoundland as a sedentary fishery also raised questions about the machinery of government. Thus he noted that the system of migratory government was likely to prove inadequate for a permanently settled population. While Gambier did not think it necessary for the governor to winter over, he thought that the appointment of the senior army officer in the garrison as lieutenant governor during the winter months would be beneficial for the tranquillity and security of the Island. He also thought it was time to review prevailing practice whereby the admiral’s secretary came ashore with him and acted as de facto secretary to the Newfoundland government. Gambier proposed a return to an arrangement that had been in place in the 1780s. That is, in order to ensure continuity of expertise that extended beyond the usual three-year term of naval governors, he proposed that financial provision should be made in the annual estimates for a dedicated permanent secretary who would be a year-round resident of St John’s. Gambier also recommended additional support for Anglican clergy and an increase in the number of surrogates.34 Before Lord Hobart responded to Gambier’s proposals he sought advice from Lord Liverpool at the Board of Trade on the issues of fundamental principle raised by them. Liverpool’s response came in a lofty memorandum written in early 1804. This document presented the dictum on the status of Newfoundland relative to other parts of Britain’s overseas dominions referred to earlier. Liverpool opened his memorandum by telling Hobart that Gambier’s papers ‘are written upon the same Topics, and contain nearly the same opinions, that have been brought forward by every former Governor of that Island; at least since I have known anything of this business’.35 Consistent representations over a long period of time would not usually be seen as a reason for ignoring advice, and even with the qualifying ‘nearly’, Liverpool’s statement grossly underplayed the increasing awareness of the anomalies of the situation which is apparent in Waldegrave’s official papers. After affirming the desirability of impeding colonizing tendencies in Newfoundland for as long as possible, Liverpool reluctantly acknowledged the growth of the settled

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population and gave a condescending endorsement of Gambier’s suggestions with regard to naval surrogates, missionaries, the appointment of a lieutenant governor and ‘perhaps’ of a permanent secretary. It was clear, however, that he regarded any thought of a legislature as premature. Having scouted the possibility that laws might be created under the king’s prerogative power to address the needs of the Island, Liverpool declined to offer an opinion on whether this could or should be done, referring Hobart to his own judgement and that of the Crown law officers. Finally, he allowed that if legal authority for it could be established, leasehold property might be made available for agricultural purposes but declared that he was adamantly opposed to putting ships’ rooms into private hands on the grounds that it was contrary to law and inimical to the fundamental rationale of the fishery.36

Legislative implications of a sedentary fishery: Gower Although Lord Liverpool’s views on ships’ rooms were in opposition to Gambier’s attempt to secure retrospective authorization of leases granted on land reserved for them, his predecessor’s practice was advanced as a precedent by Sir Erasmus Gower. Gower was not the most professionally distinguished of the wartime naval governors, but he was among the most thoughtful and systematic when it came to considering the structure of the government they exercised. His governorship is regarded as a turning point in the treatment of vestiges of the migratory fishery, but his views on that matter were not, however, in Gower’s mind at least, part of a colonizing agenda.37 Rather, as noted in an earlier chapter, he believed that in the circumstances prevailing in early-nineteenth-century Newfoundland, governors’ duty to improve the fishery extended to embrace a concern with the material, moral and educational condition of members of the resident working class upon whose labour it now relied.38 Having visited Newfoundland earlier in his career when he was a midshipman and then as flag captain to Sir John Elliot, Gower was struck most forcefully by the changes that had taken place there, noting that merchants’ premises had displaced wharfs and other structures dedicated to landing, drying and salting fish.39 Following his first season of residence in St John’s, and drawing no doubt on that experience as well as his reading of at least some of his predecessors’ reports, Gower began to take a systematic approach to the structural problems facing governors who were alive to the developments that had taken place in Newfoundland since the 1780s. In so doing, he challenged some of the thinking that guided the responses of successive secretaries of state to their initiatives. Over the winter of 1804–5 Gower raised questions with the new secretary of state (Lord Camden) about the restrictions on trade which applied to Newfoundland. His starting point was a general instruction that governors were responsible for ensuring the prosperity of the trade and fisheries of Newfoundland. This requirement justified strict enforcement of rules against migration from Newfoundland to mainland North America and led Gower to resist moves by

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regiments based there to recruitment of men from the Island on the grounds that it depleted the workforce available for the fisheries and provided army recruits with a backdoor route to migrate to the mainland.40 By the same token, however, current prohibitions against the importation of supplies from continental America were counterproductive. Gower told Camden that he had continued Gambier’s practice of extending this trade from the spring to the winter in recognition that the shortage of maritime labour in wartime England meant that an increasingly large proportion of those employed in the fisheries were residents. The high price of provisions gave rise to severe hardship among the ordinary population, increased the cost of labour in the fisheries and threatened the viability of the fledgling seal hunting industry. In addition, Gower and the other naval governors were, like ministers in Britain, acutely aware of the risks a hungry population posed to public order.41 Gower was alert to the advantages of importing competitively priced maritime supplies from the mainland, noting that when Newfoundland could trade freely with North America prior to 1775 the settlement was in a very flourishing state. He used a similar argument to promote the relaxation of measures which only allowed molasses (a staple among the poor of Newfoundland) to be imported from Britain’s West Indian colonies. As the price of West Indian molasses was very high, allowing the importation of cheaper supplies from the United States would lower costs in Newfoundland without damaging the West Indies. Gower stressed that, as with all his proposals, these were prompted by the overriding imperative that governors ‘point out every measure which may . . . promote the fishery’.42 Gower’s hope that Gambier’s attempt to widen the window for importing supplies from continental America would become entrenched was frustrated when the secretary of state decided that it was contrary to law.43 This decision reflected Lord Liverpool’s view that the measure was only ever regarded as a temporary expedient designed to serve the interests of Poole and Dartmouth merchant communities when prices in the United Kingdom were exceptionally high. Gower responded to this setback by pointing out that in wartime conditions provisions sourced from Britain and Ireland would remain at prices that were detrimental to the prosperity of the fisheries and those who depended on them. He continued to press the government in London to permit governors to adopt a more responsive attitude to the needs of the resident community. Thus in February 1805, Gower brought to Lord Camden’s attention a scheme promoted by the St John’s merchant community to use some ships’ rooms land for storehouses. He pointed out that the lack of such facilities hindered the trade of the Island and hence its general prosperity.44 These efforts and the fundamental governance questions that underlay them were the subject of a lengthy, detailed analysis written for the Committee for Trade in late 1805. The report considered directly the larger implications of Gambier’s and Gower’s various proposals. It pointed out that their adoption would require legislation and opined that parliament was unlikely to overturn ‘a long-established’ system without a great deal more evidence of the implications of demographic changes in Newfoundland. Reforming governors would need to convince the

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secretary of state that ‘an actual and unavoidable change of circumstance had taken place, which requires an adequate change of policy’.45 In addition to dealing with more routine matters, Gower’s correspondence over the rest of his term sought to address this challenge. Thus in April 1806 he told William Windham, the new secretary of state, that the returns for 1804 showed that only 21 fishing vessels came from Great Britain carrying 600 ‘passengers’, most of whom were employed by merchants or planters. He compared this state of affairs with the pre-war period when several hundred boats came out carrying 5,000–6,000 passengers and pointed out that the size of the season’s catch showed that most of the labour force needed for the fisheries was now resident on the Island. Newfoundland was also developing a more stratified labour force. Gower reported that the Island possessed a sizeable population of resident ‘artificers’ and pointed to thirty vessels of between 30 and 232 tons that had been built in Newfoundland in 1804 as proof of this.46 He also drew the secretary of state’s attention to the increasing size of the settled population and to its evolving composition. By 1806 the population had reached almost 22,000, of whom only a quarter were servants employed in the fisheries. Most of the rest was made up of women and their 8,000 children.47 As we have seen, Gower and other naval governors of the period sought to address the educational needs of these children and found their lack of power to raise revenue a major impediment to doing so. Gower’s scheme to relocate the main street of St John’s provided another opportunity for him to remind the secretary of state of the weak alignment of law and practice in some important aspects of the life of the settlement. Gower’s instructions included an injunction not to allow any ‘right of property whatever’ more than 200 yards from the high-water mark, but he pointed out that this stipulation had been widely ignored by his predecessors. As a result, claims to pieces of this land had never been questioned and Gower had to ask Windham to seek legal advice on whether these de facto ‘holders’ could be dispossessed to facilitate the planned road.48 Gower made it clear to the secretary of state that governors faced ongoing difficulties dealing with the complex implications of past actions and customary practice that were not consistent with the letter of the law. The apparently lax enforcement of law and instructions necessitated by the lack of alignment of instructions and acts of parliament and the actual and changing conditions of the fisheries and trade of the Island gave naval government a fluid and even arbitrary air. Gower thought that this was wrong in itself and wrongfooted incoming governors, leading them up blind alleys and hamstringing their efforts to meet the evolving needs of the community. For example, instructions prohibiting the occupation of ships’ rooms had not been enforced consistently because it was widely recognized that to do so was contrary to the interests of the fisheries and trade of Newfoundland. Gower described their continuation as an embarrassment to governors who found themselves nominally subject to an instruction ‘contrary to the nature and interest of the object which it is his duty to promote’.49 He flatly rejected Lord Liverpool’s implicit assumption that these needs should be ignored because they encouraged a sedentary fishery that was at odds

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with the British government’s view that Newfoundland was to be a nursery for seamen. Gower pointed out that there was no reason in law why the Royal Navy should not extend its recruitment efforts to include men who were resident on the Island. He also encouraged Windham to take a more comprehensive view that considered changes to the legislative and regulatory framework of Newfoundland as a way of removing impediments to productive activity on the Island. This approach would maximize the benefits that British interests could derive from what had, in fact, if not yet in law, become a sedentary fishery. It was only through these means that Newfoundland could challenge the growing threat to the fishery coming from United States’ interests operating from New England ports.50 Gower concluded his cogently argued document by relating his proposals to prevailing realities and to the overarching rationale of the British government of the Island: In fine, the Measures I have suggested are not proposed with a speculative view, to give the Fishery a new form, but with the advantage of experience to recognize that which it has naturally taken, in maintaining a competition with the Fisheries of the United States, adapting itself to other branches of British Commerce, and to the circumstances of other countries on which it greatly depends for the sale of its produce, as well as to the policy which Great Britain has observed towards her colonies.51

While he was working on this statement Gower also offered the secretary of state a series of critical ‘Observations’ on his instructions. This practice, which was taken up by some of his successors, provided a way of drawing detailed practical attention to the implications of the lack of alignment between the needs of the settlement and the legislative and regulatory framework that had been a major theme in his earlier correspondence. On this occasion he canvassed the ships’ rooms question, restrictions on building, property rights beyond the 200 yards from high-water mark, limitations on the number of public houses and the need to source provisions beyond Great Britain if the settlement was to prosper.52 At the end of his residence on the Island in 1806, Gower acted in conformity with his views on the provisioning question by extending licences for importing bread and flour from the United States into the spring of 1807, even though, as he acknowledged to Windham, he was not authorized to do so.53 Over the winter of 1806–7 Windham forwarded Gower’s proposals to the Committee for Trade but told him that the press of business meant that a response would be delayed until after the vice admiral had sailed for St John’s. The Committee’s belated reply was essentially a fob off: as no legislation was possible in the current session there was time to give ‘mature consideration’ to the matters raised.54 Before he saw this response, Gower fired off another volley in support of his position. In it he signalled his understanding of his responsibilities as governor and the need to return to, and further explain, the measures he had been promoting during his time in office. In this letter he claimed to have discovered further incoherence in the legislative provisions governing property rights in ships’ rooms and repeated his claim that Newfoundland fishermen were available for

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recruitment by the Royal Navy, whether they were forced to return to the United Kingdom at the end of a season or not. Gower was right on this point as a matter of law. As we have seen, however, after an officer was murdered in St John’s when ashore on impressment-related business, prudence prevailed over right.55 Gower also made a more general point concerning the value of current restrictive measures for the fisheries and the trade of the Island. While legislative provisions against the privatization of ships’ rooms had an ‘imposing appearance’ they were not materially beneficial to the actual operation of the fisheries. Here, as in other respects, ‘changes in the Fishery have rendered that regulation less important than formerly, at the same time that having becoming inapplicable to the present circumstances of the Fishery it is also rendered ineffective’.56 As in other matters bearing on land, the current position was marked by anomalies that served the interests of particular individuals or groups and ignored those of the wider community. In August 1805 John Bland, the clergyman and magistrate, had reported to Gower that ships’ fishing rooms at Greenspond had been engrossed by one company and that those who controlled it vigorously resisted proposals for their more equitable use.57 In making these points, Gower was at pains to show that he was not proposing that Newfoundland should become a colony with legislative rights. He thought the ‘habits and occupation’ of the inhabitants made that ‘inexpedient’. Gower probably had in mind the conventional British assumption that colonies needed an agrarian elite that would form the core of an assembly and the fact that, as a later chief justice put it, Newfoundland was a ‘common manufactory’ and was thus in need of ‘sound management but not any measure of self-government’.58 He saw no reason, however, why Grand Juries on the Island should not be empowered to raise rates for local purposes and why the chief justice should not decide causes by reference to the laws of England. These measures, which reflected the role of the Grand Jury before 1750 when petitioning was introduced, would serve the interests of the community without requiring a legislature and would ensure that the Island would not be an additional burden on the Treasury.59 Gower did not think a ‘Council’ was necessary to advise the governor formally but suggested he should be able to seek advice from law and revenue officers on the Island. In making this suggestion, he may have had in mind the naval practice by which an admiral might consult his senior officers while keeping the powers of determination firmly in his own hands, or he might have been looking forward to a time when governors of Newfoundland would be advised by an appointed council drawn from the local elite, like that established in Lower Canada by the Quebec Act of 1774.60 Gower was undecided on the question of whether governors should reside in Newfoundland all year, noting that their presence in London was an advantage in dealing with Newfoundland business. He was, however, emphatic in his commitment to the naval government of Newfoundland.61 This necessity was presented as a military, rather than a civil, imperative, resulting from the Island’s defensive reliance on the Royal Navy and the consequent need for it to be under the control of the senior naval officer on the station.62 Consistent with his views on the lack of justification for colonization, Gower insisted that his proposals for

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reforming the legislative framework of Newfoundland were a Burkean response to changing circumstances. They did not involve ‘an abandonment of the ancient system of policy under which the Newfoundland fisheries has been regulated’.63

Moving out of Palliser’s Shadow: Leasehold revenue and active naval government under Duckworth As noted in an earlier chapter, Gower’s successor, Vice Admiral John Holloway, interested himself in the plight of the Beothuk but otherwise took an unadventurous approach to the internal affairs of Newfoundland. His correspondence with the secretary of state was notably brief when compared with that of Gower or of Sir John Duckworth. It is telling, however, that his longest report, written on his return to England after his second summer of residence on the Island, included criticism of his predecessor’s promotion of leases of ships’ rooms. Holloway thought that this practice promoted colonization and thus prompted further reliance on supplies from the United States. His actions were as good as his words. He issued a proclamation preventing applications for the enclosure of land for any purpose other than that of carrying on the fisheries as specified by law.64 He acknowledged that it was too late to reverse existing holdings but adamant that there should be no further encroachment on ‘ancient ships’ rooms’. Unlike other wartime naval governors, he expected the migratory fishery to revive after the war and seemed in denial about the changes in the population and economic basis of the Island that had occurred since the 1780s.65 As noted earlier, Holloway even resisted his predecessors’ suggestion that the government of Newfoundland would benefit from the appointment of a permanent secretary. He saw no need for such an official – a resident naval officer was all that was necessary to manage the returns required by the secretary of state – and thought it would undermine the confidence and authority of naval governors: a permanent secretary ‘would conceive himself as a Tutor to the Governors who in certain cases would be fearful of exercising their own judgement’.66 Sir John Duckworth’s appointment to the governorship saw a revival of the questioning attitude towards the framework of government which had exercised Holloway’s predecessors. He was amongst the best informed of the wartime governors, being unique among them in acting on the expectation that they should, if circumstances allow, make efforts to visit the distant parts of their government. He visited the southern outports in his first year and included references to this tour in the hundred pages of his ‘Observations of Instructions’ which he submitted to the secretary of state in late 1810. Duckworth thought that colonizing tendencies should be kept in check, even though Newfoundland was inevitably moving towards colonial status. He argued, however, that governors’ needed to sit within a legal framework that would enable them to respond effectively to the changing circumstances of the Island.67 He told the second Lord Liverpool that governors should have discretion to make land grants to assist public purposes such as churches, hospitals and schools but should not make them to individuals.

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Duckworth also reversed the line that Holloway had taken on ships’ rooms. The land they occupied should be applied to meet the present needs of the resident population, and if the migratory fishery revived after the war there was plenty of land available to meet its operational requirements. He tried to assist Liverpool to appreciate the situation on the ground by providing plans to show the location and extent of unused ships’ rooms at St John’s. He noted that the increasing importance of the seal fishery was further stimulating the demand for a resident labouring population on the Island.68 Duckworth felt it necessary to apologize to Lord Liverpool for the volume of material sent to him over the winter of 1810–11, but it seemed to have a beneficial effect. In mid-summer, just before Duckworth left for the Island, the Prince Regent conveyed his appreciation of the governor’s conduct and noted particularly the ‘clear and distinct’ observations he had provided in his Instructions. Duckworth, who frequently complained that his merits were not appropriately recognized, no doubt appreciated this sign of royal favour. He would also have been gratified by Liverpool’s response to his many proposals. The secretary of state empowered him to make land grants for public purposes, pending amendments to legislation to take account of changes in the economy and population of Newfoundland in recent decades. The ministry also passed legislation that allowed the governor to dispose of ships’ rooms on lease. It failed to provide Duckworth with a copy of the act before he sailed, so he had to write to Robert Peel, the under-secretary, requesting it.69 Within a year, Lord Liverpool was able to tell Duckworth how pleased the ministry was that revenue arising from these leases would lower the cost of Newfoundland to the British Treasury. Consistent with this expectation, however, he declined requests for it to pay for a debtors’ prison at St John’s and to increase magistrates’ salaries. These initiatives would have to wait until the leases generated enough revenue to cover their cost.70 Crown income from leases was boosted by rents of more than £200 collected from those who had already encroached on the ships’ rooms and applied the land for their own private purposes.71 At the end of his governorship, Duckworth also secured approval from the secretary of state to lease small plots of land away from the harbour for agricultural purposes. This measure, which was presented as a response to provisioning challenges resulting from the hostilities with the United States, had been proposed originally by Sir Erasmus Gower, many years before.72 In addition to giving the final push which produced a ministerial shift on the ships’ room lease question, Duckworth also secured an unequivocal declaration on the need for the British government to address the legislative basis of the government of Newfoundland. This step had been promoted in various forms by all his wartime predecessors except Holloway and attracted some sympathetic attention from William Windham when he was secretary of state. It fell to Lord Bathurst, a close ally of the second Lord Liverpool, the son of the promoter of Palliser’s Act, to signal a clear change of tack. Bathurst told Duckworth before he left for Newfoundland in the summer of 1812 that it was now recognized that the legal structure of the settlement needed to be changed to reflect its prevailing

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circumstances. He advised, however, that legislation to achieve that would have to wait until after the end of the war with France. In the meantime, Duckworth was directed to consult with those ‘whose Judgements, temper and Information you can rely most’ and write a report which took due account of the prosperity of the settlement and the interests of Great Britain.73 Duckworth responded to Bathurst at the end of his third season in residence. He reported that there was a lack of agreement among those he consulted on every matter except the decided change from a migratory to sedentary fishery and the question whether the old system would ever be restored. Given the change, the maintenance of a legislative framework created to serve the needs of a migratory fishery had the effect of depriving the inhabitants of the means of subsistence and hampered the fishery in its sedentary form. Duckworth’s advice was to address these two principal ‘impediments’ to the future prosperity of the fishery and those employed in it. While he clearly thought that the soil and climate of the Island ruled out the scale of agricultural development being promoted by some of St John’s elite, Duckworth, like Gower, supported landholding provisions that would enable the settled population to supplement its diet through smallholding.74 He also thought it was important to remove the protection afforded to ‘ancient’ ships’ rooms and to grant land for fishing-related purposes to sedentary fishermen. If these measures were managed properly, they would not interfere with a partial restoration of migratory fishing after the war. Like Gower and his predecessors, Duckworth did not support the conversion of Newfoundland into a colony. Although he did not discern any ‘considerable tendency’ towards colonization among the inhabitants, however, he thought that in light of the size and commercial importance of St John’s it was necessary to make ‘provision’ for its ‘better regulation’. This need could be met by giving the Grand Jury the power to propose regulations to Courts of Sessions, subject to the final approval of the governor.75 During Keats’s governorship there were further glimmers of recognition that changing conditions needed to be reflected in changes to long held, if fitfully maintained, official views. He was thus authorized to grant leases for the purposes of cultivation and made more than a hundred grants of holdings up to four acres in the vicinity of St John’s. Keats recommended that those who had already occupied land should be able to rent it at equivalent rates.76 He did not rule out changes to what he termed the ‘ancient system’, but he thought that governors and their political masters in London should wait until they had a clear view of the post-war shape of the settlement.77

Conclusion As we have seen, Duckworth was very active in encouraging the secretary of state to permit governors to use revenue raised on the Island to address the educational, social and religious needs of the population on a systematic, rather than a discretionary, hand-to-mouth basis. To this end, he was successful in persuading the ministry in London to introduce legislation that would give governors access to

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revenue from leasing land currently set aside for ships’ rooms that were no longer necessary to the operation of the fishery. A number of Duckworth’s predecessors had seen this land as a potentially promising source to fund initiatives to create some of the institutions of civil society that had not seemed necessary when the fishery was largely migratory. Paradoxically, the legislation on ships’ rooms leases provided some members of the local elite with the pretext for framing an attack on naval government which marked an early stage in the political, as opposed to the demographic and social, transition of Newfoundland to colonial status. The reactions to an initiative which marked the culmination of the wartime admiralgovernors’ programmes of civil improvement will be considered in the final chapter of this book.

Notes 1 These themes were prominent in two pamphlets by William Carson, a leading ‘reformer’: A Letter to the Members of Parliament of the United Kingdom (1812) and Reasons for Colonizing the Island of Newfoundland (1813); see herein, pp. 209–12. 2 NA ADM 1/474, f32, 10/1/1798. 3 NA CO 194/43, ff179–80, 17/10/1803. 4 John Reeves, History of the Government of Newfoundland &c (London: J. Sewell, J. Debrett and J. Downes, 1793), 156. 5 See Sean Cadigan, Newfoundland & Labrador. A History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 80–1, and Patrick O’Flaherty, ‘The Seeds of Reform: Newfoundland, 1800-18’, Journal of Canadian Studies, 2, no. 2 (1988): 44–6. 6 John Reeves, Mr Reeves’ Evidence &c (London: J. Sewell, J. Debrett and J. Downes, 1793), 69–72; R. A. MacKinnon, ‘The Growth of Commercial Agriculture Around St. John’s 1800-1935’ (MA thesis, Memorial University, St John’s 1981), 15. 7 Reeves, History, 142–3. 8 NA CO 195/15, f270, 9/5/1795. 9 PAN MG 204, Duckworth Papers, box 1, f00262, 1809. 10 O’Flaherty, ‘Seeds of Reform’, 41. 11 Keith Matthews, Lectures on the History of Newfoundland (St John’s: Breakwater Books, 1988), 126–7. 12 Ibid., 71–5. 13 See herein, pp. 133–4. 14 NA CO 194/53, ff10–12, 3/11/1812. 15 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 16: 171–2, 22/9/1806; Maudie Whelan, ‘The Newspaper Press in Nineteenth-Century Newfoundland: Politics, Religion, and Personal Journalism’ (PhD thesis, Memorial University, St John’s, 2002), 23–4. 16 Michael Ryan’s project was advertised in his father’s publication (Royal Gazette and Newfoundland Advertiser, 19/7/1810); he told potential subscribers that ‘political discussion will be encouraged and not repressed, so far as it is connected with principles and the general good of the Country’. Duckworth’s response was reported to the secretary of state by Keats in NA CO 194/54, f142, 10/11/1813. 17 NA CO 194/54, ff142–5, 10/11/1813. 18 Ibid., f127, 25/2/1814. 19 NA CO 194/56, f39, 9/6/1815.

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20 D. B. Swinfen, Imperial Control of Colonial Legislation 1813-1865. A Study of British Policy towards Colonial Legislative Powers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), passim. 21 See Mark Francis, Governors and Settlers (London: Macmillan, 1994), 15–16. 22 Sean Cadigan, Hope and Deception in Conception Bay (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 31. 23 Helen Taft Manning, British Colonial Government After the American Revolution 1782-1820 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1933), 66–7. 24 David Mackay, ‘Far-Flung Empire: A Neglected Imperial Outpost at Botany Bay, 1788-1801’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 9, no. 2 (1981): 141–2. 25 Great Britain, House of Commons, Financial Account 1814, 207. 26 NA CO 194/39, ff318–22, 9/5/1797. 27 NA 194/42, ff98–100, 21/10/1799; Sean Cadigan, ‘Artisans in a Merchant Town: St John’s Newfoundland, 1775-1816’, Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, 4, no. 1 (1993): 100–1. 28 NA CO 194/51, ff87–91, 19/6/1811; 194/52, f34, 13/6/1816. 29 NA CO 194/43, ff86–7, 18/9/1802, ff88–9, 90–1, 29/9/1802. 30 Ibid., f132, 3/2/1803, f155, 31/5/1803. 31 Ibid., ff175–6, 12/12/1804. 32 NA CO 194/43, f175v, 12/12/1803. 33 See Philip Girard, ‘Liberty, Order and Pluralism: The Canadian Experience’, in Exclusionary Empire. English Liberty Overseas, 1600-1900, ed. Jack P. Greene (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 170–2. 34 NA CO 194/43, ff174–5, 175–7, 12/12/1803. 35 The quotations are from a copy of Liverpool’s memorandum that is among Gower’s correspondence with the secretary of state for early 1805, but it dates from the previous year. 36 NA CO 194/44, ff233v–34, nd early 1804. 37 Cf Grant C. Head, Eighteenth Century Newfoundland. A Geographer’s Perspective (Toronto: McClelland and Steward Ltd, 1997), 231. 38 See herein, pp. 148–50. 39 NA CO 194/44, ff30–30v, 19/11/1804; Head, Eighteenth Century Newfoundland, 230. 40 NA CO 194/44, ff40–43, 28/11/1804, ff180–1, 25/10/1805. 41 See Roger Knight and Martin Wilcox, Sustaining the Fleet 1793-1815. War, the British Navy and the Contractor State (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2010), 73–80. 42 NA CO 194/44, ff50–8, 24/12/1804. 43 Ibid., f249, 9/4/1804. 44 Ibid., f80, 6/2/1805. 45 Ibid., f334, nd but late 1805. 46 NA CO 194/45, f20, 13/2/1806, f61–3, 29/4/1806. 47 NA CO 195/14, f42, 19/3/1806; Shannon Ryan, A History of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic to 1818 (St. John’s: Flanker Press Ltd, 2012), 224. 48 NA CO 194/45, ff54–5, 19/4/1806. 49 Ibid., ff256–7, 9/6/1806. 50 Ibid., ff61–3, 29/4/1806. 51 NA CO 195/16, ff187–212, 9/6/1806. 52 NA CO 194/45, ff65, 70, 78, 83v, 84–5, 29/4/1806. 53 Ibid., f158v, 9/11/1806. 54 Ibid., ff249–50, 24/5/1806; f277, 23/6/1806.

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55 See herein, p. 63 and Keith Mercer, ‘The Murder of Lieutenant Lawry: A Case of British Impressment in British North America, 1794’, Newfoundland and Labrador Studies, 2, no. 2 (2006): 255–89. Mercer’s otherwise comprehensive account does not refer to Gower’s views on the question. 56 NA CO 194/45, ff253–6, 55, 9/6/1806. 57 PAN, D’Alberti Papers, 15: 96–7, 1/8/1805. 58 Cadigan, Hope and Deception, 124–5. 59 See Jerry Bannister, The Rule of the Admirals: Law, Custom, and Naval Government in Newfoundland, 1699-1832 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 151, on petitioning and its implication for Grand Jurys. 60 NA CO 194/45, ff257v–8v, 9/6/1806. 61 Cf Ian M. Bates, Champion of the Quarterdeck. Sir Erasmus Gower (1742-1814) (Pomona: Sage Old Books, 2017), 260 who ascribes a more emphatic pro-residence position to Gower. 62 NA CO 194/45, ff259v, 268, 9/6/1806. 63 Ibid., f261, 9/6/1806. 64 NA CO 194/47, f82, 12/9/1808. 65 See herein, pp. 7–8, 13–14. 66 NA CO 194/46, f76v, 25/11/1807; see herein, p. 79. 67 NA CO 194/49, ff60–2, 25/11/1810. 68 Ibid., ff36, 63v–64, 67, 195, 25/11/1810. 69 NA CO 194/50, ff 137v, 138, 143, 22/6/1811, ff143–5, 6/7/1811. 70 NA CO 194/52, ff23, 25, 27, 6/6/1812. 71 NA CO 194/56, f107, 10/11/1815. 72 NA CO 195/17, ff6, 8, 7/4/1813. 73 NA CO 194/52, ff33–4, 13/6/1812. 74 See Cadigan, Hope and Deception, 125–6 and ‘The Staple Model Reconsidered: The Case of Agricultural Policy in Northeast Newfoundland, 1785-1855’, Acadiensis, 21, no. 2 (1992): 54–5 and herein, pp. 196–7. 75 NA CO 194/53, ff3–8, 2/11/1812. 76 NA CO 194/54, ff164–6, 18/12/1813. 77 NA CO 194/57, ff24–5, 15/4/1816; see herein, p. 215.

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Chapter 8 NAVAL GOVERNMENT AND ITS CRITICS 1811–15

In May 1800, Vice Admiral William Waldegrave submitted an elaborate statement of service to the Admiralty Board in support of the renewal of his bids for a peerage and for a new appointment. Among the achievements enumerated in this document were those arising from his government of Newfoundland. Waldegrave singled out his fiscal responsibility and his attention to the fisheries and the wellbeing of the population of the Island. He told the Board that his ‘efforts were unceasing to correct the abuses that had been long practiced in the Military departments, make the trade flourish and render the Inhabitants comfortable and happy’.1 More than a decade later, Admiral Sir John Duckworth, equally eager for employment and with his own aspirations for a peerage, was determined that his achievements as governor should not pass unnoticed. Duckworth wrote to Lord Bathurst in language reminiscent of Jane Austen’s Mr Collins: Your Lordship will, I trust, excuse me if I preface this Report by assuring you of the unceasing anxiety that I have felt to promote the happiness of the Community over which I have presided, to anticipate your wishes in all things, and to merit the continuance of that approbation with which his Royal Highness the Prince Regent has condescended to honour me.2

Although Waldegrave’s and Duckworth’s laudatory references to their Newfoundland careers were coloured by their immediate ambitions and their personalities, commendations of naval governors also came from those who were subject to them. Towards the end of the war years, however, they also faced an undertow of criticism directed at the system of naval government and those who had presided over it.

Naval governors and local elites As Sir James Wallace was about to leave the Island in 1796, he received letters from deputations of merchants from Bonavista and Trinity expressing warm appreciation of his vigorous responses to the recent French threats to the fisheries and the settlements. The governor’s ‘timely and wise precaution’ saved the country

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from ‘pillage, which ultimately must have brought ruin, generally, to those who are engaged in its commerce’.3 Waldegrave’s views on his achievements received some support from officials and other residents of St John’s. Thus in October 1799 the magistrates of the town wrote to express their ‘unfeigned sorrow and regret’ that the ‘usual routine of appointments’ made it very likely his term was about to end. They commended Waldegrave for the ‘benevolent attention you have ever paid to the relief and comfort of the Poor and distressed of the whole Island’, for his efforts to advance the cause of the established church, and his support for commerce and the fisheries. The officers, non-commissioned officers, privates and drummers of the garrison wrote in such ‘flattering’ terms that Waldegrave struggled to find words ‘to express my feelings on the occasion’.4 Law officers and the military were closely associated with governors, but the language of their valedictory declarations seem warmer than either duty or decorum required. Significantly, the ‘Merchants of Newfoundland’ commended Waldegrave on similar grounds in a letter sent to him at the end of the year. The committee responsible for managing the rebuilding of the Anglican Church in St John’s was as fulsome in its praise as the magistrates. It conveyed to Waldegrave its ‘most grateful sentiments’ for his ‘disinterested and unremitting endeavours’ in support of the project.5 Vice Admiral Pole spent only a few months on the Island, but as he prepared to sail for England in late October 1800 he received a very warm letter of thanks signed by thirty men on behalf of the merchants and principal inhabitants of St John’s. It conveyed ‘most sincere and unfeigned thanks’ for his support of the Island’s trade and appreciation of Pole’s ‘polite attention to individuals’.6 The last matter of commendation may have reflected ongoing resentment at some of Waldegrave’s more bruising verbal exchanges with the merchants. It seems significant that references to the quality of governors’ personal interactions with the St John’s elite appeared in valedictory statements addressed to all of Pole’s successors down to Duckworth. Thus, Gambier was commended for the ‘civilities shown to individuals’. The thirty-five memorialists knew that the governor had served the usual term, but they complimented him by saying that his return for the next season would give them ‘much pleasure’. It would also assure them that their trade would be protected in difficult wartime conditions and that they would have an effective advocate with the ministry in London.7 Although Vice Admiral Sir Erasmus Gower had some passages of arms with military personnel on the supply of provisions to Government House and on army recruitment, he left the governorship with a warm statement of approbation from Major-General Skerret, the army commander-in-chief: ‘We take the liberty, my dear Sir Erasmus, to mingle you every day in our conversation, not only in speaking of the happy effects of your government, but the great beneficial advantages you have conferred on this country – in improving the condition of the lower orders of people in your attention to their morals, loyalty, comfort and security.’ Similar sentiments were expressed at the anniversary meeting of the Society for Improving the Condition of the Poor of St John’s in early August 1805. The Society resolved that its thanks ‘be communicated to Sir Erasmus Gower, for his bountiful, zealous and efficient patronage . . . and his unremitted attention to its welfare’.8 An address

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from thirty-two merchants at the end of Gower’s first season at St John’s noted his ‘civilities’ and ‘very liberal and we may say unexampled donations by Your Excellency for Charitable purposes’. These benefactions merited ‘the warmest sentiments of gratitude from the community at large, and the most ardent prayers of the poor for your happiness’.9 The end of Gower’s term was marked by an address signed by thirty-nine individuals and firms declaring they would welcome an extension of his term and praising his attentions to the interests of the trade and the fishery. His government had been to the ‘advantage and happiness of all ranks’. The ‘civilities so generally shown, your urbanity of manners’ would ensure that Gower’s memory ‘will be highly revered by the Inhabitants of the Island’.10 These sentiments were echoed in valedictory addresses to Holloway. The Society of Merchants expressed ‘veneration and esteem’ for the Governor’s character and extolled his ‘private worth’ and ‘public virtue’. It regretted that his term was ending and that the conventions of the Newfoundland appointment made it very unlikely that his governorship would be extended.11 As Duckworth was embarking on the voyage home at the end of his last year in office, he was presented with a farewell address by ‘civil and military officers, the clergy and the magistrates’ commending his ‘attention and regard’ for the welfare of the community. Significantly, however, they also registered disapproval of the ‘misrepresentations’ in which some of their fellow residents had indulged.12 Thus, while praising Duckworth’s performance as governor, his admirers among the official classes of St John’s recognized that the system of naval government was being challenged by some members of the elite to which they belonged.

Elite challenges to active naval government: The Prince Regent’s ‘humble petitioners’ In early November 1811 a group of the Prince Regent’s ‘most dutiful and loyal subjects’ petitioned him in protest at an act of parliament passed earlier in the year in response to successive governors’ attempts to regularize the use of ‘ships’ rooms’ no longer required to meet the needs of the migratory fishery. The petitioners claimed that an act which had been passed without any consultation with the people of Newfoundland deprived them of access to land unless they were willing to pay ‘exorbitant and unprecedented’ lease charges. The level of these charges was itself a consequence of artificial constraints on the amount of land available for building in the vicinity of the town. The petitioners painted a grim picture of St John’s as a town without the most basic physical and civic infrastructure.13 While elements of this account were formally accurate, they were disingenuously framed to serve an agenda that challenged the pattern of activist naval government that had emerged over the course of the last two decades. The complaint that the act converted publicly accessible land into leasehold property was made by those who had monopolized this resource without making any payment for it and who were now permitted to hold it on the same terms as those who leased it. As Patrick

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O’Flaherty observed, there appears to be no basis to the opposition to the leasing legislation ‘other than mercantile self-interest’.14 The claims about the physical and civil infrastructure of the town ignored the initiatives in which a string of wartime naval governors had taken a leading role and glossed over the part some merchants had played in inhibiting civic provision of amenities by resisting attempts to secure public revenues in support of them. Moreover, the petitioners’ positive proposals made it clear that ships’ rooms’ leases and their cost were not really the key issues at stake. In the second part of the petition the focus shifted from the alleged injustice of lease holding arrangements to the question of who controlled the revenue arising from them. The petitioners proposed putting these funds in the hands of a ‘Board of Police’, a newly minted local authority accountable for its expenditure to the grand jury. The Board was to be established with seven named members, two of whom would retire on an annual rotation and be replaced by those selected by the governor from a list of five nominees drawn up by the grand jury. Significantly, the funds were to be spent on the civic amenities of a kind which had long been the focus of the governors’ attention. The petitioners’ approach mirrored the practice in British settlements which possessed representative institutions that identified priorities and imposed taxes to fund their pursuit.15 In pre-colonial Newfoundland, however, the funds in question were part of the revenue of the Crown and the petitioners’ proposals were a direct challenge to the ambitions of recent naval governors. Duckworth saw them as a clear indication that some members of the St John’s commercial and professional elite wished to take the government of the richest and most populous part of Newfoundland into their own hands. Governors’ wishes to commit lease revenue to support schools, fire services and other features of civil society did not, as one historian has suggested, arise from ‘personal whim’ since they were responding to expressions of need coming from the community. At the same time, however, the disposal of these funds raised important questions about the agency of governors and settlers.16 Two weeks after the document was signed, three residents suggested for membership of the proposed ‘Board of Police’ wrote to Duckworth providing a copy of the petition and soliciting his ‘countenance’ and ‘support’ for the measures proposed in it.17 This invitation, which can only possibly have been intended either as a matter of pure form, or an exercise in pure effrontery, did not elicit a response from Duckworth, but he dutifully forwarded the petition to Lord Liverpool for presentation to the Prince Regent. He declined giving advice on the matter but could not resist pointing out that the proposed ‘Board of Police’ would ‘render the Merchants of Newfoundland the Masters of the Fishery’ and ‘overturn’ the policy of discouraging colonization.18 Given these views, Duckworth must have been highly pleased by the unequivocal rejection of the petitioners’ primary claim which he was instructed to convey to them in July 1812. This response also referred to governors’ responsibilities for all Newfoundland residents, a consideration which was ignored in the St John’s-focused ambitions of the petitioners.

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His Royal Highness regrets that it is not in his power to direct a compliance with the prayer of the address. His Royal Highness must reserve to himself or to His representative acting on His Royal Highness’s instructions, the entire control over the funds which may hereafter be derived from the leases of Tracts of Ground commonly called the Ships’ Rooms. In the application of these Funds the advantage and comfort of His Majesty’s subjects throughout the Island will not be overlooked; and the desire which His Royal Highness has uniformly shown to give effect to the Governor’s recommendations in favour of objects of public utility must be a sufficient proof of the interest which he takes in the welfare of Newfoundland.19

Only two of the forty men involved in mounting the petition put their name to a farewell address to Duckworth, but the fact that it dealt exclusively with the ‘zeal and attention’ he had shown in defending the Island and its trade during the American war and ignored the considerable attention he had paid to its civic infrastructure may have been intended to signal emerging views of the limits of naval governors’ responsibilities.20 Be that as it may, over the course of the next few years the claims of the petitioners solidified into a concerted challenge to the status quo and a campaign to reconstitute Newfoundland as a colony with a representative government. In Upper and Lower Canada and in Nova Scotia, ‘reformers’ focused on the evils arising from the machinations of ‘official factions’ of officeholders and some members of the local elite.21 In Newfoundland, however, where power was in the hands of naval governors, the system of government became the target of reformist criticism. The early passages in this campaign, which took place during the terms of the last two wartime governors of the Island, were advanced in two pamphlets written by William Carson, a Scotland-trained physician who had arrived in Newfoundland in 1808 after practicing as a surgeon for a few years in the English town of Birmingham. Carson was prominent enough among those who petitioned the Prince Regent to be named as one of the inaugural members of the ‘Board of Police’.

William Carson’s attack on naval government In mid-1812 Carson published a pamphlet in Scotland which elaborated on the petitioners’ criticism of the leasing legislation which Duckworth had secured and put into effect. Carson presented the measure as one that excluded ‘the public’ from ‘ancient Ships’ Rooms’ and used it as an example of the wider, anti-public character of naval government. Carson’s comments on the naval governors’ short residence and their ignorance of the territory over which they ruled echoed those made by Griffith Williams, an artillery officer who served in Newfoundland and farmed there, half a century before.22 He accused naval governors of arriving in St John’s with stock misconceptions about the population, resources and climate of Newfoundland, never travelling beyond the town, making no effort to gain

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information about the Island and being content to rely entirely on their own sense of their own importance. ‘A high-minded admiral, endowed with nearly absolute power, cannot be expected to submit to the painful and humiliating task of learning.’ Carson went much further than Williams by rejecting naval government and claiming that naval officers were entirely unfit to be governors or judges. A naval commander accustomed to receive implicit obedience, whether his orders are dictated by justice or injustice, by reason or false prejudice, cannot be expected to brook with temper any opposition to his will. . . . An act of independence would be arraigned as an act of mutiny. All the influence of his office, all the arts of his satellites would be marshalled to effect his overthrow. Accustomed to use force to knock down opposition, Force being the power, he knows best how to direct, the toils of investigation, deliberation, and judgement are seldom had recourse to, by a Naval Governor.23

Since Duckworth and his predecessors saw their government as being hamstrung by a lack of appropriate legal instruments and were constantly (and often unsuccessfully) driven to refer to the secretary of state, they were no doubt surprised to find themselves portrayed as possessing all the licence of thoroughgoing tyranny, later likened by one of Carson’s allies to ‘Persian satraps or Turkish bashaws’.24 They were also probably stung by the accusation that they made no effort to understand the settlement over which they ruled. Duckworth and the chief justice were certainly affronted by what they saw as Carson’s treasonous impudence and sought Lord Bathurst’s advice on whether an action for libel could be brought against the author.25 Ironically, the ministry’s unfavourable response to this suggestion and to Sir Richard Keats’s far more tenacious pursuit of Carson only served to provide naval governors with fresh grounds for wishing for a review of the legislative basis of their government. At the beginning of his governorship Duckworth had questioned Carson’s rights to rural land that he occupied. When told that it derived by subsequent purchase from a grant made by Sir Erasmus Gower, the governor insisted that Carson should not encroach beyond the six-acre limit of the grant. In 1812 Duckworth gave Carson another cause of grievance when he declined to reappoint him as surgeon to the Volunteer Corp.26 But while there was some personal history between Carson and the governor, Duckworth set the pamphlet in the context of the local merchants’ challenge to naval government. In a report he sent to the secretary of state in late 1812, Duckworth stressed the need to keep the local merchants in check. Their ‘Society’ in St John’s was ‘making continual efforts for the acquisition of a power which ought not in my opinion to be vested in them’. Duckworth’s proposal for a local authority in St John’s studiously ignored the petitioners’ request for a ‘Board of Police’, seeing this as a vehicle for the ‘improper influence’ of Carson and his allies.27 When a further pamphlet from Carson’s vitriolic pen was published early in 1813, Duckworth forwarded a copy to Lord Bathurst. Carson’s second pamphlet reiterated the abuse of naval government that had featured in the earlier one,

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embellishing claims about the ignorance of governors by presenting them as reliant on misinformation furnished by self-interested time servers. With these preliminaries out of the way, Carson made an emphatically stated case for Newfoundland to become a colony with a resident governor, a ‘Senate House’ and a ‘House of Assembly’. These measures were necessary because of the significant growth of the settled population of the Island and to ensure that its members were represented in decisions on taxation.28 This last point had traction among some members of St John’s elite. As Duckworth prepared to leave the Island for the last time, he received a memorial signed by sixty-seven residents seeking the repeal of a duty on rum imported from North America and the West Indies. They objected to its economic impact on a commodity that was an ‘article of necessity’ for which there was no viable substitute. The memorialists also drew attention to the constitutional implications of such measures: ‘not being represented in Parliament, your memorialists beg leave respectfully to state have been improperly taxed.’29 This hostile reaction to a measure that had been proposed by both Waldegrave and Gambier and raised revenue of £10,000 in 1812 met with a cool response from Duckworth.30 He undertook to forward the document ‘purporting to be a memorial of the merchants and housekeepers of St John’s’ but did not comment on the constitutional questions raised by it or by Carson’s pamphlets.31 He was, however, clearly stung by Carson’s portrayal of naval governors as ill-informed and arbitrary rulers subject to their own caprices or the nefarious influence of sycophants.32 He told Lord Bathurst that Carson’s second pamphlet exhibited ‘the same spirit of violent hostility against the present establishment’ as the first publication but was even more ‘libellous’.33 As this publication appeared at the very end of Duckworth’s term he left his successor, Sir Richard Keats, to consider how the government of Newfoundland would respond to it. Although Keats’s correspondence with the secretary of state was generally calmer than that of Duckworth and avoided his forceful, flamboyant hyperbole, it assumed a far more strident tone when discussing challenges to governors’ authority and the lack of legal means to combat them. When he arrived at St John’s in the summer of 1813, Keats reported that the alarms of the previous winter had proved short-lived and noted the ‘tranquil’ state of the settlement. Significantly, however, he bemoaned the fact that this state of comparative happiness should suffer any interruption by the arts of Wicked and designing men, who by an abuse of the mild laws under which we live, by poisonous publications and on frivolous and groundless pretexts, are unceasing in their endeavours to fill the minds of the unwary with suspicions and thus bring into disrepute and contempt the Government by which they are protected.34

Keats urged Bathurst to act against Carson and the Edinburgh printer of the second pamphlet, claiming that this publication exacerbated the strains caused by the rapid growth of the population of St John’s. He feared that if action was not taken, Carson and his supporters would claim credit for forcing the government

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to increase public access to agricultural land when this measure owed nothing to them.35 It has been observed that the political reform rhetoric which emerged in St John’s in the closing years of the war was confined to one section of the ‘principal inhabitants’ of the town and by no means reflected a general or unified condemnation of naval government.36 It was, nevertheless, the harbinger of the political future of Newfoundland, pointing to the settlement’s achievement of colonial status in 1824 and the introduction of a representative assembly in 1832. Given the constitutional structures which emerged in other British overseas settler societies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the rapid increase of permanent settlement of the Island, the post-war development of Newfoundland government had an air of inevitability. In 1815 Newfoundland lacked what a pre-war secretary of state regarded as an essential feature of government. Writing of Quebec in 1791, William Grenville opined that A Government cannot be supposed to exist in any country for any considerable length of time which is defective in so essential a power as that of assessing, levying, & applying contributions of individuals in order to execute those objects which are general necessity, or advantage to the Community. Whatever form of Constitution therefore is to be adopted for this province . . . there must exist somewhere, a power competent to exercise these Functions. Such a power cannot any longer be stated to reside in the Parliament of Great Britain.37

Considerations such as these lend credence to Christopher English’s suggestion that the ‘reformers’ may have been pushing on an ‘open door’.38 Be this as it may, it is nevertheless regrettable that the history of the period that preceded the grant of colonial status and responsible government has been seen through the lens of these later developments and the political rhetoric of those who promoted them. This perspective is overwhelming in the late Joseph Smallwood’s hagiographical portrayal of William Carson as a figure to be compared with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin.39 As noted earlier, however, Carson’s claims have not been corrected by some other historians.40

Conclusion This book has provided the basis for re-examining assumptions about the naval government of wartime Newfoundland that are found in both contemporary and subsequent accounts of it. To approach the subject in this way is not to suggest that naval government was a desirable, or even a viable, model for the future of the settlement. Nor is it to confront Smallwood’s heroic image of William Carson with a pantheon of naval luminaries. Rather, the purpose of this exercise has been to understand how naval governors approached their role, how the professional ethos of the service from which they came was reflected in their approach to

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governing a civilian population undergoing rapid and significant change, and how far their government was open to the objections made by contemporaries and later historians. These matters will be discussed in the conclusion to this study.

Notes 1 NMM WDG/5/6, 1/5/1800. In 1814 Waldegrave reused some of this material when he petitioned the first lord for a pension in recognition of his service up to 1800 and as compensation for not having been employed since; BL Add MS 3825, ff286–9. 2 NA CO 194/52, f86, 1/11/1812. 3 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 5: 286–7, 26/9/1796, 297–8, 10/10/1796. 4 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 9: 211, 24/10/1799. 5 NMM WDG/4/17, 27/10/1799; WDG/4/18, 29/12/1799; NA CO 194/42, f152, 10/2/1800. 6 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 11: 215, 23/10/1800. 7 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 13: 214–15, 21/10/1803. 8 The Naval Chronicle, XXX (1813): 301. 9 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 15: 265–6, 23, 25/10/1805. 10 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 16: 272–5, 15/10/1806. 11 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 19: 243, 19/10/1809, 284–5, 21/10/1809, 293, 22/10/1809. 12 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 22: 504–6, 507, 22/10/1812. 13 NA CO 194/51, f61v, 27/11/1811. 14 Patrick O’Flaherty, ‘Government in Newfoundland Before 1832’, Newfoundland Quarterly, 84, no. 2 (1988): 29. 15 Aaron Graham, ‘The Colonial Sinews of Imperial Power: The Political Economy of Jamaican Taxation, 1763-1838’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 5, no. 2 (2017): 190–1. 16 Sean Cadigan, Newfoundland & Labrador. A History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 86. 17 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 21: 338, 23/11/1811. 18 NA CO 194/51, ff57–8, 28/12/1811. 19 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 22: 9, 24/7/1812. 20 Ibid., 504–6, 22/10/1812. 21 See J. M. Bumstead, ‘The Consolidation of British North America, 1783-1860’, in Canada and the British Empire, ed. Phillip Buckner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 52–3. 22 See Griffith Williams, Account of the Island of Newfoundland (London: Thomas Cole, 1765), 22–3. Williams’s main concern was to question the efficiency of naval government and its implications for British fisheries on the ‘French Shore’ of northern Newfoundland; see ‘Griffith Williams’, DCB, IV. 23 William Carson, A Letter to the Members of Parliament &c (Greenock: William Scott, 1812), 8–9. 24 Patrick Morris, Remarks on … Newfoundland (1827), quoted Jerry Bannister, ‘The Oriental Atlantic: Governance and Regulatory Frameworks in the British Atlantic World’, in Britain’s Oceanic Empire. Atlantic and Indian Worlds, c. 1550-1850, ed. H. V. Bowen, Elizabeth Mancke and John G. Reid (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 158.

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Notes to pp. 205–213

25 NA CO 194/52, f47, 23/7/1812, f49, 21/7/1812. 26 See William H. Whiteley, Duckworth’s Newfoundland (St John’s: Harry Cuff Publications, 1985), 40, 43; William Carson, Reasons for Colonizing … Newfoundland (Greenock: William Scott, 1813), 3–4. 27 NA CO 194/53, ff3–8, 2/11/1812. 28 Carson, Reasons for Colonizing … Newfoundland, 13, 21–2. 29 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 22: 541–3, October 1812. 30 NA CO 194/54, f171, 18/2/1813. 31 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 22: 554, 24/10/1812. 32 Carson, Reasons for Colonizing … Newfoundland, 10–12. 33 NA CO 194/54, f31, 23/3/1813. 34 NA CO 194/54, f167, 18/12/1813. 35 NA CO 194/54, f168, 18/12/1813; 194/55, ff100–1, 29/12/1814. 36 Patrick O’Flaherty, ‘The Seeds of Reform: Newfoundland, 1800-18’, Journal of Canadian Studies, 23, no. 3 (1988): 43. 37 Adam Shortt and Arthur G. Doughty, eds, Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada, 1759-1791, 2nd edn (Ottawa: J. de L Taché, 1918), II: 974. 38 Christopher English, ‘The Official Mind and Popular Protest in a Revolutionary Era: The Case of Newfoundland, 1789-1819’, in Canadian State Trials Volume 1. Law, Politics, and Security Measures, 1608-1837, ed. F. Murray Greenwood and Barry Wright (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 316; Olaf Janzen, ‘Newfoundland and the International Fishery’, in Canadian History: A Reader’s Guide, ed. M. Brook Taylor (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 302. 39 Joseph R. Smallwood, Dr. William Carson. His Life, Letters and Speeches (St John’s: no publisher, 1938), Centre for Newfoundland Studies, DAI typescript, 13. 40 See herein, pp. 17–18.

CONCLUSION

None of the wartime naval governors gave much thought to political change in Newfoundland, although Gambier and Gower both suggested that the Island’s government would benefit from the formalization of advisory channels to the governor, and, as noted in the previous chapter, the former canvassed the idea of a legislative assembly. For the most part, however, naval governors adopted a largely conservative position that is to be expected of men of their class and professional background, especially when they were operating under the constraints imposed by the demands of a long and expensive war, the outcome of which remained highly uncertain until Wellington’s successful run of campaigns in the Iberian Peninsula from 1812. Even so, the naval governors were not so resistant to change as some historians suggest. Duckworth accepted local views that the pre-war migratory fishery would not recover its place and Keats’s immediate post-war recommendation to Lord Bathurst that he would not ‘propose any departure from the Old System’ seems to have been made by reference to the operation of the surrogates in the outports and not, as has been suggested, to ‘changes in the laws relating to Newfoundland.’ Keats’s recommendation was advanced as a shortterm position pending consideration of ‘the evidence and benefit of some years of Peace to profit by’.1 Although the naval governors were not generally interested in promoting constitutional change, they nevertheless showed considerable initiative in pursuing measures for improving the material, educational and moral condition of the burgeoning European population of the Island and trying to ensure the survival of its Indigenous people. When Duckworth’s well-wishers among the official classes referred to the ‘misrepresentations’ of his government by Carson and his allies, he was reported as having ‘simply stated that he had done his duty to the best of his ability’.2 This response was pretty much what one would expect from a person in his position, but it would not have impressed those like Carson who regarded naval government as fundamentally unsound. To the extent that this condemnation rested on the view that admirals’ rule of Newfoundland was incompatible with the model of colonial representative government found in Canada and the British West Indies, it was unanswerable. Carson’s references to the rights of British subjects and the language of those who petitioned the Prince Regent and opposed the rum tax were indicative of this line of argument. However, he and other contemporary and modern critics also relied on less absolutist claims about the nature and effectiveness of naval government in late Georgian Newfoundland.

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The fact that naval governors were migratory, served relatively short terms and did not usually venture beyond St John’s, prompted questions about how well informed they were about the settlement and whether the terms of their appointment allowed for the continuity of application and the acquisition of expertise necessary to address the needs of its increasingly settled population. In Carson’s pamphlets, these drawbacks were exacerbated by allegations of arrogant authoritarian complacency hard-wired into the dispositions of senior naval officers. Carson’s claims were part of a highly partisan polemic, but some of the underlying issues raised in this critique were also of concern to less prejudicial observers. These included the former chief justice John Reeves and three of the naval governors themselves, Vice Admirals Waldegrave, Gambier and Gower. It is worth noting that those who accused the naval governors of ignorance of their charge have not provided any compelling examples of this shortcoming. Wartime governors may have been unaware of the supposed agricultural potential of Newfoundland proclaimed at some length in Carson’s second pamphlet, but as these claims were largely ill-founded that was not to their discredit.3 The extent and quality of rulers’ knowledge of the territories for which they are responsible is, of course, relative. Seen in that light, the naval governors were probably at least as well informed as other rulers in the late Georgian period. Carson’s claims also implied that his allies in the commercial and professional elite of St John’s possessed a breadth of information and an empathy for the public good which the governors lacked. However, as the merchants’ knowledge of the Island was likely to be closely tied with their present and projected business interests, it may have been detailed and current but was likely to be limited in scope. By contrast, governors were required to report on the settlement as a whole and did so on the basis of detailed returns that have since provided the mainstay of the data upon which historians have relied. These reports, the commentary that accompanied them and the raft of measures designed to address the changing demographic of the settlement, were instrumental in finally persuading officials in London that Newfoundland could no longer be treated as if it were a maritime work camp.4 Claims about the wilful ignorance of the naval governors are in any case hard to reconcile with the requirements of their profession. Governors were successful members of a service in which intelligence was a key asset, and it seems highly unlikely that they would forget this lesson when they stepped ashore in Newfoundland. They certainly had access to the means of being well informed. On taking up their charges they often had copies of some of the correspondence of their predecessor and had ongoing access to networks of informants including clergy, magistrates and surrogates based in the outports. On occasion, they augmented these resources by sending officials on fact-finding tours or, in the case of Duckworth, visiting some of the outports himself. Reports from officials contained quite a fine level of detail of conditions beyond St John’s. Thus in the autumn of 1797 Waldegrave received a thirty-page report from Captain Ambrose Crofton on his cruise around the Island and along the coast of Labrador. He reported on various fisheries, the size of settlements and the extent of property holdings, Beothuk and ‘foreign Indians’, and American activities in Newfoundland

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waters.5 At the very end of the period, Lieutenant David Buchan reported to Sir Richard Keats in his role as the governor’s surrogate in settlements on the coast north of St John’s. He visited Morton’s Harbour, noting progress on constructing the church there and his efforts to ‘adjust’ a dispute about access to it. He also reported on church building at Twillingate, Fogo and Greenspond and forwarded a plea from the latter for government assistance in paying the salary of a teacher.6 Governors also sought local opinion on important matters, including provisioning, rates of exchange, defence arrangements and the legal framework.7 When a group of merchants at St John’s selected an eleven-member ‘Committee for the Trade and Fishery of this Island’ as a channel of communication with the governor, Keats responded immediately that he ‘perfectly approved’ of this arrangement.8 It is true that governors were absent from Newfoundland in the winter and spring, but so too were many merchants. Those who stayed were largely confined to St John’s by uncompromising weather and poor internal communications. Interestingly, the group of political activists who inaugurated representative government, Keith Matthews’s ‘class of 1832’, included a number of figures who were relative newcomers to the Island and continued to absent themselves from it for considerable periods of time.9 When Carson launched his first written attack on naval government, he had been resident in Newfoundland for only four years. In Carson’s scornful commentary, the naval governors’ lack of information on Newfoundland and its people was presented as a wilful consequence of the habits of command to which they had become inured through their service careers. This line of criticism was part of a larger argument that the dispositions of naval governors made them singularly ill-suited to govern a civilian settlement. It was claimed that having absorbed the ethos of a strictly hierarchical service and been highly effective actors in that context, they imposed an essentially authoritarian style of leadership on the government of Newfoundland. From this perspective, the rule of the admirals was a system of essentially arbitrary government resting on the wills of men who were used to getting their own way and were congenitally disinclined to tolerate any interference, or to brook any questioning of their decisions. When this characterization was combined with assumptions about naval governors’ arrogant indifference to acquiring information on conditions in Newfoundland, it produced an image of supreme authority that was arbitrary in both the legal and commonplace sense and singularly ill-suited to advance the prosperity of the settlement or address the needs of those who lived there. This image did not reflect the legal position of naval governors or the practice of their rule in the war years. The condition of John Ryan’s licence to publish The Royal Gazette meant that there was no local press scrutiny of Newfoundland government until after the war and, as Jerry Bannister has observed, in the absence of a ‘local legislature or a bourgeois public sphere, naval governors remained relatively free to act as they saw fit’.10 The qualification is, however, significant. Flag officers were subject to a range of constraints imposed by the Admiralty Board and were constantly called upon to explain and justify their actions. As governors, they were similarly constrained by the instructions and reporting requirements imposed by the secretary of state. While the government of Newfoundland rested partly on

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English law and partly also on the exercise of an extensive royal prerogative, this power was in the hands of the governors’ political masters in London, and their access to it was limited in range and scope. It is significant that the Prince Regent’s response to the St John’s petitioners set the governors’ powers firmly within this framework. The practice of governors consulting with merchants and magistrates and transmitting the outcomes to the secretary of state gave the government of Newfoundland the air of an uneven partnership rather than a military dictatorship. When Bathurst instructed Duckworth to canvas local views on necessary changes to the laws of Newfoundland and to report to him, he did so in language that was free of the arrogant complacency which Carson attributed to naval governors: ‘I am conscious of being little qualified for the discussion of a subject of this nature, yet it has occupied my most anxious attention, and I proceed to submit to your Lordship my sentiments upon it in the fullest confidence that they will be received with candour and indulgence.’11 Keats was equally prepared to seek the views of the Society of Merchants on how he should respond to the provisioning shortages in 1813, and he solicited advice from the grand jury on the infrastructural implications of rural land allocations.12 Nor did the absence of representative institutions on the Island mean that elites were deprived of parliamentary influence. They had significant ‘interest’ in a few English boroughs, and the structure of Georgian politics made such influence far more important than its numerical magnitude might suggest. As Patrick O’Flaherty notes, the merchants of Newfoundland were better represented in the British parliament than such rising centres of commerce and industry as Birmingham and Manchester.13 The parliamentary interest of those involved in the Newfoundland trade did not satisfy Grenville’s specifications for a viable political community, but it did at least help ensure that governors were attentive to demands for convoy protection and willing to forward petitions on other matters to the secretary of state in London. Unlike the bulk of the British population, those who resided in Newfoundland were not entirely reliant on their interests being ‘virtually represented’ by better-placed members of the political community.14 Jerry Bannister has provided a very effective corrective to claims that the naval governors’ fulfilment of the juridical aspects of their responsibilities was underwritten by crude notions of ‘quarterdeck justice’. He also suggests, however, that when judged by ‘modern standards’ the rule of the admirals was ‘not a fair or just form of government’, although it was legitimate in the ‘eyes of the propertied classes’ in whose interest it acted. Interestingly, Bannister notes without correction John Reeves’s references to the popularity of the judicial arrangements upheld by eighteenth-century naval governors. It would, in any case, be difficult to identify a late early-modern regime on either side of the Atlantic which satisfied ‘modern’ standards of fairness and justice.15 This matter aside, Bannister’s work provides strong grounds for rejecting claims that the administration of justice by the naval governors was arbitrary, or that they were any more detached from the interests of the community than rulers in other European states in the period.

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Sean Cadigan has suggested that the failure to address elite demands for full property rights in land contributed significantly to criticisms of naval government which emerged towards the end of the war years. Given Cadigan’s marked scepticism towards Carson’s agricultural project, it seems unlikely that he thought that this failure had an adverse impact on the prosperity of the settled population as a whole.16 Nevertheless, it certainly provides an example of a case where late Georgian naval government did not address the interests of members of what Bannister terms the ‘propertied classes’ of the Island.17 Other specific failures of naval government are harder to identify, and, as Patrick O’Flaherty observed, the connection the reformers drew between constitutional change and popular prosperity was far from compelling.18 It certainly cannot be claimed that the wartime naval governors were unaware of the material hardships facing ordinary members of the population or that they were indifferent to the inadequacies of the civic infrastructure available to support other aspects of their lives. As this study shows, they were highly active in identifying and supporting measures to address the material, educational and spiritual needs of the population for which they were responsible and often worked with local residents to give effect to them. In so doing, however, they were hindered by the legal framework of their government, its financial implications and also (as Gambier, Gower and Duckworth realized) by the absence of an administrative framework that could give consistency and sustainability to the efforts of governors and the governed. In the latter case, governors’ constant trials over keeping the Government House in St John’s in decent shape might serve as a metaphor for naval government more generally. In reading the wartime governors’ letters and reports, it is striking how much of their attention was taken up in addressing particular matters that had also been of concern to their predecessors. This feature of the government of Newfoundland was a consequence of what has been characterized as its ‘informal and voluntarist’ aspects.19 Churches and clergy houses, school buildings, gaols and courthouses, fortifications and ordnance facilities that had been built or restored through the initiatives of governors, local elites, magistrates and clergy fell into disrepair and then became the focus of the reforming zeal and fundraising efforts of subsequent governors. Significantly, one of Keats’s last acts as governor was to seek approval to contribute £40 towards a remediation programme for the Anglican church in St John’s. Despite the time and money that Waldegrave and Duckworth had committed to this building, its structure was being seriously compromised by dry rot and the church wardens had asked Keats to secure a government grant to augment their attempts to address it.20 The post-war fate of naval government in Newfoundland should not be allowed to obscure the distinctive qualities that a succession of flag officers brought to their governmental responsibilities, or the extent to which their approach reflected an informed understanding of the changing needs of the settlement. In his study of eighteenth-century governors’ attention to imperial interests, John Crowley stresses the role played by the ‘social perspectives and assumptions of the British agents . . . who supervised colonial developments’.21 This study

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Notes to pp. 215–220

also shows that their professional ethos and expertise played a significant role in framing their responses to the civil aspects of their government. If strategic considerations, the changing character of the settlement and growing expectations about representative government meant that the amphibious government of Newfoundland was redundant by about 1820, it is nevertheless a mistake to present it before that date as a hybrid of Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore and Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan. W. S. Macnutt’s characterization of the naval governors as ‘humane men, well disposed to the populace of Newfoundland’ whose dispatches ‘at a time of great tension, when projects of reform seemed out of place owing to the perils of war, . . . lighted the way to improvement’ is far closer to the mark.22

Notes 1 NA CO 194/57, ff24–5, 15/4/1816; Cf Patrick O’Flaherty, ‘Seeds of Reform: Newfoundland, 1800-18’, Journal of Canadian Studies, 23, no. 3 (1988): 53. 2 William Whiteley, Duckworth’s Newfoundland (St John’s: Harry Cuff Publications, 1985), 44; PAN D’Alberti Papers, 22: 439, 15/10/1812. 3 William Carson, Reasons for Colonizing … Newfoundland (Greenock: William Scott, 1813), 13–21; cf. Sean Cadigan, Hope and Deception in Conception Bay (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 125–6. 4 See Olaf Janzen, ‘Newfoundland and the International Fishery’, in Canadian History: A Reader’s Guide, ed. Brook Taylor (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 313. 5 NA CO 194/40, ff12–33, 10/1/1798. 6 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 25: 189–91, 2/10/1815. 7 See herein, pp. 87, 88, 114, 151, 160, 200. 8 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 25: 234–5, 23/10/1815. 9 Keith Matthews, ‘The Class of ’32: St John’s Reformers on the Eve of Representative Government’, Acadiensis 6, no. 2 (1977): 87–90. 10 Jerry Bannister, The Rule of the Admirals: Law, Custom, and Naval Government in Newfoundland, 1699-1832 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 142. On the press see herein, p. 189. 11 NA CO 194/53, f3, 2/11/1812. 12 PAN D’Alberti Papers, 23: 126–9, 23/6/1815, 174–6. 13 O’Flaherty, ‘Seeds of Reform’, 41. 14 This idea of representation within the British constitution is usually associated with the widely read late-eighteenth-century philosopher William Paley: Paley, The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, 2 vols, 14th edn (London: R. Faulder, 1803), II: 205. 15 Bannister, Rule of the Admirals, 155. 16 Cadigan, Hope and Deception, 125–6. 17 Bannister, Rule of the Admirals, 187–8, 198–200. 18 O’Flaherty, ‘Seeds of Reform’, 55–6. 19 Patrick O’Flaherty, ‘Government in Newfoundland Before 1832’, Newfoundland Quarterly, 84, no. 2 (1988): 27. 20 NA CO 194/56, ff71v–72, 25/10/1815.

Notes to pp. 215–220

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21 John E. Crowley, ‘Empire versus Truck: The Official Interpretation of Debt and Labour in the Eighteenth-Century Newfoundland Fishery’, Canadian Historical Review, 70, no. 3 (1989): 313. 22 W. S. Macnutt, The Atlantic Provinces. The Emergence of Colonial Society 1712-1857 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Ltd, 1965), 143.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Archival Material Balliol College Archives, Oxford Letters of William Waldegrave to the Morier Family, 1787-1829   British Library (BL) Liverpool Papers, BL Add Ms 38257   Memorial University Centre for Newfoundland Studies, St John’s Newfoundland D’Alberti Papers, 4-26, 1789-1816; online resource from the holdings of the Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador, St John’s (PAN)   Memorial University Library, St John’s, Newfoundland Benjamin Lester Diaries, copy and transcription from Dorset Records Office, Dorchester, UK (online resource)   Memorial University, Department of History, Grenfell Campus, Newfoundland Finding Aid for Colonial Secretary’s Letterbook, 12-15 (online resource) Finding Aid for Colonial Office Papers CO 194 (online resource)   National Maritime Museum Greenwich, Caird Library (NMM) Bridport Papers: MKH/501, 502, 505, 506 Cartaret Papers: CAR/111 Duckworth Papers: DUC/2, 16, 17, 18, 30, 42, 44; XDUC/12,15, 38, 42, 43 Keats Papers: KEA/14, 20 Markham Papers: MRK/101/31-38, 72 Melville Papers: AGC/33/10 Middleton Papers: MID/9, 10 Pole Papers: WYN/103-5 Waldegrave Papers: WDG/3-11, TRN/54 Warren Papers: WAR/14 Yorke Papers: YOR/2-10   Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador, St John’s (PAN) MG 204, Duckworth Paper, box 1   United Kingdom National Archives (NA) ADM 1/473-78: Newfoundland Command, 1793-1815

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INDEX actions/battles Cape St Vincent  32, 35 Copenhagen (1807)  52 San Domingo  40 Trafalgar  11, 70 Addington, Henry (Lord Sidmouth)  33, 81, 93 admiral(s), see flag officers Admiralty, first lords  6, 25, 26, 28, 30, 32–4, 38–42, 66, 68, 79, 84, 86, 188 Charles Yorke  1 Earl Spencer  32–4, 36, 108 Earl St Vincent (Sir John Jervis)  11, 16, 26, 29, 30, 32–4, 36, 38, 51, 64, 67, 105, 106, 113 Henry Dundas (first Lord Melville)  25, 86, 108 Lord Barham (Sir Charles Middleton)  36 Robert Dundas (second Lord Melville)  33, 41, 68, 88, 127, 184 Thomas Grenville  38–9 Admiralty Board  11, 35, 49, 53, 59, 61, 96, 107, 108, 117, 122, 152, 205, see also Admiralty, first lords accountability requirements of  29, 64–6, 69, 71, 92, 103, 217 control of appointments  25, 27, 28 convoys  53–6, 105 fleet deployments  9, 60 imprests  65–6 naval governors  25–8 Navy Board  36, 66–8 patronage  27–8, 50, 66–8 secretaries of  64 Sick and Hurt Board  64 Transport Board  64 Victualling Board  64 Archbishop of Canterbury  133, 136, 142

Army, British  9, 14, 30, 31, 83, 84, 87, 90, 95, 103, 117, 118, 121, 123, 124, 192, 194, 206, see also garrison governors’ disputes with  107–10 recruitment efforts  107–10 Bannister, Jerry  1, 7, 9, 14, 16, 18, 19, 23 n.75, 24 n.81, 77, 103, 161 n.138, 217–19 Barton, Captain Robert, RN Lt Gov  34 Bastard Edward, MP  6, 21 n.24, 81 Bathurst, Lord  13, 68, 87, 93, 115, 122, 141, 142, 151, 154, 179, 199–200, 205, 210, 211, 215, 218 Bay Bulls  59, 141 Beothuk  19, 58, see also Duckworth; Edwards; Eliot; Gambier; Gower; Holloway; Keats; Milbanke; Palliser; Pole; Waldegrave attempted ‘conciliation’  67, 167–8, 176–7 ‘benign’ capture  58, 171, 173, 174 Beothuk Institute  181 Buchan’s contact with  177–9 Christianity and  170–4 European diseases  165–6 European mistreatment  58, 64, 164–6 extinction  164 governors’ instructions and proclamations  166–8, 174, 176–7 Inuit and  171, 180 John Reeves’ evidence (1793)  180–1 perceived Mi’kmaq threat  165–6, 175–7 rights of  174–5 threats to food sources and habitat  164 Bland, Rev. John  81, 197

234

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high sheriff  81 reports on Beothuk  169–72, 174–5, 180 Bonavista  81, 112, 149, 169, 205 Bridport, Admiral Lord  33–4 Bristol Corporation  82, 99 n.32 British Empire  15 administration of  10, 12–13, 43 Anglican church in  132–3 Atlantic  3, 11–12, 15, 16 colonial assemblies in  154, 189, 212, 215 colonial governors  19, 28 Committee of the Council for Trade and Foreign Plantations  80, 114–15, 142, 191, 194, 196 Indigenous peoples  163, 171–2, 181 Newfoundland in  12, 13 Roman Catholic church in  139 Royal Navy and  15, 96 British state, see also Admiralty Board; House of Commons; secretaries of state colonial administration  10, 13, 19, 132, 189 Buchan, Lt David RN  67–8, 177–9 Burin  101, 118, 141 Cadigan, Sean  14, 17, 126 n.10, 138–9, 157 n.24, 186 nn.88, 105, 191, 219 Camden, Lord  86, 112, 138, 139, 148, 193–4 Canada  58, 87, 108, 109, 140, 141, 197, 209, 215 Cape Colony  29, 50 Carson, William  17–18, 102 n.118, 209–12, 215, 216, 218, 219 Carter, Peter  82–3 Cartwright, George  165, 167, 171, 182 n.10, 184n53 Cartwright, Lt John RN  165, 167, 168 Castlereagh, Viscount  80, 85, 86, 110, 113–14, 138, 149, 152, 173, 175 Chappell, Lt Edward, RN  55, 94, 95 chief justices  68, 80, 111, 117, 133, 187, 197, 210 appointment of  80–1 Coke, D’Ewes  124, 129 n.109 Colclough, Caesar  116, 122–3

Forbes, Francis  83, 116 Ogden, Jonathan  68, 81 Reeves, John  9, 79, 110, 114–15, 168, 187, 216 Routh, Richard  68, 82, 111, 113, 129 n.102, 190 Routh’s dispute with Waldegrave  119–20, 146 salaries of  89, 110, 112–13, 116 Tremlett, Thomas  111, 112, 145, 180 Tremlett’s dispute with merchants and Holloway  113–16, 120, 124, 191 Tremlett’s report on outports  111–12 winter residence requirement  119 Church building and renovation  6, 131, 134–8, 140, 149–51, 219 Burin  141 Carbonnar  141 Conception Bay  133, 137 Fogo  137 Greenspond  140 Morton’s Harbour  11, 217 Placentia  134, 137 St John’s  134–7 Trepassey  141 Trinity  141 Church of England  27, 113, 132–42, 149–50 governors’ support  146–8, 198, 206 marriage rites  133–3, 188–9 ministers of (missionaries)  134–5, 172 Roman Catholic threat  113, 131, 133, 138–9, 141 salaries of  134–5, 140–2 Sunday schools  137 Clarence, HRH Duke of, Prince William Henry  33, 39, 42 Cochrane, Vice Admiral Sir Alexander  26, 28, 60 Colclough, Caesar (Chief Justice)  116 anti-Catholic prejudice  122 rabid dog scare  122 Collingwood, Vice Admiral Lord  11, 16, 50 commanders-in-chief, Newfoundland  1, 4, 9, 32, 79, see also Admiralty Board; flag officers; naval governors accountabilities of  9, 49–50, 64–6

Index American War of  1812 and  88 appointment of  25, 31, 42 authority of  103–4 convoys and  53–7, 69 courts martial and  53, 70, 105–7, 109–10 impressment and naval recruitment  16, 63, 197 imprests and financial accountability  65–6 mutiny  104–7 naval discipline  64, 71, 103–7, 109 naval manning  63, 110, 117–18 naval patronage  67 naval provisioning  49, 62, 65 professional attributes and ethos  28 seaward defences and  15, 58, 59, 71 squadrons, size and quality  59 Conception Bay  5, 112, 133, 137, 149 convoys  5, 8, 15, 49, 50, 53–8 destinations  54 management  55–6 political importance  53–4 requests for  54–6 Cornwallis, Admiral William  36, 37 Cornwallis, Marquis  123, 124 Cotton, Vice Admiral Sir Charles  25, 37–9 Crofton, Captain Ambrose, RN  58, 171, 216 Croker, John Wilson  64 Crowley, John  219–20 Cull, William  175–6, 180 Dartmouth, Devon  6, 54, 55, 59, 79, 81, 136, 146, 194 Dillon, Captain William RN  53, 95 Duckworth, Admiral Sir John appointment  38–41 attention to Beothuk  176–8 attention to civic infrastructure  140–1, 149, 151–5, 187, 189 background and career  38–41 Carson’s critique of naval government and  209–10 Church building and renovation  140–1 considers resignation  40 defence of the island in War of 1812 58–9, 85–8

235

impartial handling of Tremlett case  114–16 MP  41 mutiny and  106–7 naval patronage  67–8 petition to Prince Regent and  207–9 reform of legislative framework  189, 198–201 relationship with merchants  207–9 Roman Catholic burial ground  140 ships’ rooms leases and  199–200, 207–8 support for volunteer force  86 visits outports  140, 187 Duncan, Admiral Lord  11, 35, 104, 106 Edwards, Vice Admiral Richard  26, 85, 117, 138, 169 Eliot, Rear Admiral John  37, 167, 169, 193 Exeter, Devon  6, 54, 59 Fawkener, William  80 flag officers, see also naval governors appointments  1, 25–30 competition among  27, 28, 30 employed/unemployed  30 honours  19, 26, 43 Newfoundland governorship  8–9, 18–19 professional attributes and ethos  10– 11 ranks and promotion of  27 remuneration  25–6, 28, 69–70 sinecures  19, 26 Fogo  137 Fortune Bay  5, 11, 140, 149 French Revolution  120 Gambier, Vice Admiral Sir James appointment  11, 35–6 background and career  11, 35–6, 39, 70 Beothuk and  172–5, 179, 180 criticism of legal framework  188, 191–5 impact of evangelical Christianity  137–8 justice system  111–13

236

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naval patronage  67 paternalism and social control  137–8 poor relief  148 popular education  147 proposes legislative assembly  192 quality of squadron  59, 61 relationship with local elite  63 suppression of personal vice  137–8 garrison  9, 14, 15, 89, 206 changing composition  28–9 Irish members of  104, 118–19 mutiny in  104–5, 121, 144 payment of  144–6 provisioning  142, 143 provisioning irregularities  90–2, 95 role of naval governors in  83–4 senior officers and governors  107–9 troop numbers and adequacy  59, 85–6 George the Third, King  13, 25–7, 32, 33, 37, 61, 80, 82, 94, 95, 108, 123, 129, 135, 146, 161, 166, 173, 174, 176, 193 Government House, St Johns  79, 92–4 governors, British colonial  10, 12, 29–30 Gower, Vice Admiral Sir Erasmus Anglican church and  18–19 appointment  25, 35–7 attitude to merchants  57, 145, 206–7 background and career  36–7, 42 Beothuk and  173–4, 180 condition of squadron  61–2 convoys  58, 59 criticism of legislative framework  187, 189, 193–200, 219 defence of island  85–6 dispute with army commanders  90, 108, 110, 206 dispute with commissary official  94 good of fishery  68, 195–7 naval officers’ appointment and  67, 83 naval recruitment and  196–7 popular education and welfare support  112, 148–50, 152, 154 ships’ rooms’ leases  194–5 Graham, Aaron  79, 143 Greenspond  63, 118, 140, 197, 217

Greenwich Royal Hospital  33, 42, 51, 145 Grenville, William  212, 218 Halifax, Nova Scotia  4, 15, 23, 26, 53, 54, 59, 60, 62, 63, 83, 85, 86, 88, 95, 107–10, 144, 153 Hancock, Gordon  7 Harbour Grace  112, 118, 134, 138, 149 Hermitage Bay  111 Hobart, Lord  68, 85, 137, 147, 148, 173, 191–3 Holdsworth family  6 Holloway, Vice Admiral John Anglican church and  139 appointment  25, 37–9 attention to Beothuk  174–6, 180 background and career  25, 37–9 ceremonial regulations of  123–4 condition of squadron  62 dispute with Chief Justice Tremlett  113–15, 120 inadequacy of governor’s salary  30 inadequacy of judicial salaries  111– 13 limited attention to community needs  150, 152, 154, 198 relationship with merchants  150–1 support for volunteer force  86 support for West Indian trade  150 Hornsby, Stephen  12 House of Commons Bristol and  82, 99n32 Dartmouth and  6 enquiry into the Trade of Newfoundland (1793)  108, 117, 155, 165 (1817)  88 members  31, 34–5 Newfoundland electoral ‘interest’  8 Poole and  6 impressment and naval recruitment curtailment of  16 extent  63 Gower on  197 murder of naval officer and  117–18, 197 Innuits  166 interest, see flag officers, appointments; House of Commons; naval

Index governors, civil appointments and patronage Ireland/Irish  3–5, 7, 8, 17, 38, 49, 122, 132, 138, 153, see also garrison; O’Donel alleged disloyalty of  84, 117, 121 convoys from Cork  54, 55 dissident priests  139, 141 faction fighting tradition  139 migration  5, 7, 8 United Ireland movement  121, 122, 139 Jamaica  30, 70, 72, 87, 95, 96, 123 Janzen, Olaf  15, 18, 84 Jenner, Rev  169, 181 Keats, Vice Admiral Sir Richard  11, 28, 57, 67, 68, 215, 218 Anglican church support of  142, 219 appointment  41–2, 50, 52 background and career  1–2 Beothuk protection and  179–80 Carson’s pamphlets and  210–12 convoys  55–6 French and American fishing rights and  88–9, 91 Irish disorder and  122–3, 125 legislative framework and  200 Naval defences in War of 1812  29, 53, 59–62, 69, 72, 74, 77, 88 Passenger welfare  154–5 press licensing  189 public provisioning  153–4 volunteers  88, 92, 116 Keith, Vice Admiral Lord  3, 35, 106 Kent, HRH Duke of, Prince Edward  80, 108, 110 King, Vice Admiral Sir Richard  31, 68, 131, 135 Knox, William  132 Labrador  1, 25, 58, 88, 164, 166, 168, 171, 180, 182, 183, 216 Lambert, Andrew  47 n.94 land leases  17, 155, 193, 200, 201, 208, 209 Lawry, Lt RN murder of  117–18 Lester, Benjamin  6, 20, 72

237

Liverpool Lord, (first)  7, 188, 192–5 Liverpool Lord, (second)  13, 67, 93, 114–15, 140, 151, 176, 177, 198, 199, 202, 208 Macartney, Lord  29, 37 Mackay, David  12 magistrates  26, 63, 91, 105, 112–13, 117, 122, 123, 134, 137, 138, 145, 147, 148, 166, 170, 189–91, 206, 207, 218, 219 governors’ surrogates  16, 58, 110, 111, 187, 192, 193, 215, 216 outports  16, 71, 92, 110, 111, 118, 140, 141, 187, 216 remuneration  11, 112, 199 Mancke, Elizabeth  12, 13 Markham, Rear Admiral John  38 Marshall, Ingeborg  182 n.5, 183 n.18 Matthews, Keith  13, 17, 217 Mercer, Keith  15, 111 merchants  3, 63, 88, 91, 95, 103, 111, 113–15, 148, 187, 189, 216 English West Country  5, 7, 20, 59, 80, 82, 188 governors’ attitudes towards  56, 57, 112, 119, 123, 132, 136–8, 143–5, 150–2, 155, 190–1, 205–8, 210–11, 217, 218 parliamentary interest of  6, 69, 81 Reeves on  115, 143, 155 Reform movement  208–11 resident  14, 26, 60, 81 Society of, at St John’s  8, 87, 113, 120, 210–11 Milbanke, Vice Admiral Mark  8, 68, 77, 107, 170, 172 Montague, Admiral George  1, 38, 51 Morton’s Harbour  141 Murray, Vice Admiral Sir George  1, 29, 30, 40, 50 Nagle, Vice Admiral Sir Edmund  41–2 naval and deputy naval officers, St John’s  81–3 naval commands Channel  11, 20, 31–8, 40, 45, 70, 96 East Indies  33, 37, 65

238

Index

Mediterranean  22, 28, 32, 33, 35, 36, 38, 41, 42, 50, 106, 121 North American  4, 34, 42, 59, 153 West Indies  8, 12, 32, 33, 54, 58, 117 naval government absence of local representation  207, 211 admirals’ authoritarian personalities  209–10 Bannister on  1, 14, 16, 18, 24, 103, 218–19 bias towards migratory fishery  2, 3, 5, 7, 188, 191, 198 Carson’s pamphlets  209–11 criticisms of  205–15 evaluation of  212, 215–20 financial basis of  8, 16, 44, 80, 81, 97, 111, 190, 195, 199–201 governors’ wilful ignorance  210–20 justice and  103, 110–12, 218 legal anomalies in  187–201 Lord Bathurst’s recognition of  199–200 Lord Liverpool’s recognition of  199–200 Macnutt, W. S. on  220 origins  8–10 petition to the Prince Regent  207–9 naval governors, see also chief justices; commanders-in-chief; Duckworth; Gambier; Gower; Holloway; Keats; Pole; secretaries of state; Waldegrave accommodation  79, 90–4 accountabilities  10, 13, 29, 49, 83–4, 89, 91 active administrations  1–2, 77, 78, 131–62, 174, 180, 207, 219 Admiralty Board  11, 25–9, 34, 40, 49–51, 53–7, 59–62, 64–71, 74, 92, 103–8, 117, 118, 152, 163, 205 Anglican church and  131–42, 146, 147, 151, 156, 192, 206, 219 anti-Irish views  104, 118, 120, 131, 156 appointment  1, 9, 19, 25, 43, 66, 206, 207, 216 army commanders and  83–4, 87, 107–10, 192, 206 authority  10, 58, 84, 103–20 careers  31–42

ceremonials  15, 120, 123–4 civil appointments and patronage  80–3 (see also Bland; Carter; Noble; Ogden) collaboration with local elites  86, 95–6, 151, 219 correspondence of  32, 49, 51, 57, 64, 69, 77–8, 84, 95, 96, 108, 117, 133, 143, 170, 175, 195, 198, 202, 211, 216 judicial system and  9, 10, 14, 110–16, 218 knowledge of settlement  209, 216–17 merchants and  6–8, 53, 55, 57, 59, 60, 69, 81, 82, 88, 94, 111–16, 119, 120, 123, 132, 138–9, 143–6, 148, 150–2, 155, 189–91, 193, 205–8, 210–11, 216–18 naval appointments and patronage  6, 27, 66–8 popular welfare and  1–2, 137, 139, 142–54, 191, 206, 207, 209 professional attributes and ethos  2, 10–12, 18–19, 26–8, 49, 53, 66, 103, 104, 107, 125, 155, 212, 215, 220 Roman Catholic Church and  104, 113, 118, 138–42, 151 royal honours  19, 26, 27, 31–3, 36, 39–41, 43, 123 rule by prerogative  7, 118, 189, 193, 218 salaries and remuneration of  29–30 secretaries of  79, 192–4 social life  94–5 terms  26, 29, 43, 206, 216 naval mutinies  104–7, see also Duckworth; Waldegrave Nelson, Vice Admiral Lord  11, 16, 38, 96 New Brunswick  97 Newfoundland, see also garrison; merchants; naval government; naval governors; Newfoundland fishery agricultural potential of  14, 17, 78, 193, 199, 200, 212, 216, 218 Anglican Church in  131–42, 146–51, 155, 192, 206, 219 burial grounds  120, 134–5, 137, 140, 151 civic amenities  1, 20, 131, 142–54

Index defence of  10, 15, 49, 57–9, 71, 79, 83–8, 99, 108, 141, 217 demography  2, 7–8, 10, 13–14, 17, 18, 54, 78, 89, 97, 112, 134, 154, 187, 188, 191–3, 195, 211, 213 economic development  8, 17, 18, 58, 150, 200 fishing admirals  9 importance of St John’s  14, 86 justice system  8, 14, 110–22, 218 marriages in  31, 133–4, 141, 146 outports  5, 10, 16, 49, 54, 57–9, 63, 71, 81, 84, 88, 92, 94, 109, 111, 112, 118, 125, 131, 132, 137, 139, 140, 142, 145, 147, 149, 151, 155, 169, 170, 187, 198, 215, 216 political unrest  205–15 property rights  149, 157, 188, 193, 195, 196, 207, 216, 219 provisioning  3, 5, 7, 30, 54, 60, 63, 66, 84, 86, 90–1, 97, 111, 121, 136, 142, 144, 146–7, 150–5, 160, 191, 194, 196, 197, 206 public disorder  7, 14, 16, 58, 105, 116–18, 123, 125, 143, 147 public education  1, 6, 14, 131–2, 137–40, 148–50, 154, 159, 187, 190, 193, 195, 200, 215, 219 public welfare  131, 142–54, 191, 206, 207, 209 resident population  2, 5, 7, 8, 10, 17, 78, 97, 134, 148–51, 188, 194–6 Roman Catholic Church in  113, 117, 133, 134, 138–42, 149, 151 Royal Naval Hospital  16, 63–5 rum sale  144, 147, 148 rum tax  6, 112, 119, 146, 159, 211 species shortages  87, 144–5, 158 Newfoundland fishery  1, 3–5, 9, 86, 89, 187, 189, 201, 207, see also convoys; merchants, English West Country; Newfoundland; Palliser cod fishery  1, 3, 12 French rights in  88, 213 General Return on  89–90 legislative basis of  7, 19, 133, 187–9, 200, 210

239

merchants’ role in  3, 5, 7, 8, 14, 20, 63, 78, 91, 112, 132, 136–9, 143, 145–6, 148, 151–2, 155, 187–9, 195, 205–8, 210, 211, 216, 218 migratory and sedentary workforce  2–5, 7, 13, 63, 131, 154, 191–200, 215 as a nursery of seamen  3–4, 146, 188 passengers to  4, 5, 8, 54, 63, 89, 153–4, 191 salmon fishery  3, 13, 14, 22, 88–9, 164 seal fishery  3, 13, 94, 199 trade with Mediterranean  3, 8 trade with West Indies  8 United States rights in  51, 89, 177 Newman, Robert  6 New South Wales (Botany Bay)  6–7, 12, 50, 103, 108, 132, 166, 169, 171, 189, 190 Noble, Richard Hatt  82–3 Nugent, Lady  95 O’Donel, Bishop, Dr James  138–9, 141 O’Flaherty, Patrick  7, 17, 18, 207–8, 218, 219 Ogden, Jonathan  68, 80–2 Order of the Bath  33, 36, 39 Palliser, Commodore Sir Hugh  4–5, 17, 40, 57, 94 migratory fishery and  4–5 Palliser’s Act (1775)  5, 7, 187–92, 198–200 protection of Beothuk  164, 167, 171, 175 protection of fishery workers  5 Parker, Vice Admiral Sir William  33, 34 Peace of Amiens (1802–3)  20, 38, 58, 85 Pellew, Vice Admiral Sir Edward  29, 30, 40 Phillip, Arthur, Captain RN, Governor  163, 166, 169, 171 Pickmore, Vice Admiral Francis  94 Pitt, William  13, 36 Placentia  84, 111, 134, 137 misconduct of garrison at  9 Pole, Vice Admiral Sir Charles  11, 16, 28, 36, 111, 121, 137

240 appointment  25 background and career  33–5 Beothuk and  169, 172, 174, 180 convoys  56–7, 99 limited residence and engagement  57, 78, 147, 191 MP  35 relationship with merchants  145, 206 Poole, Dorset  6, 54, 56, 57, 72, 79, 81, 136, 146, 194 Portland, Duke of  13, 69, 78, 80, 82, 83, 99, 104, 108, 110–12, 119, 121, 128, 133, 135, 136, 143–6, 170–2, 184, 190 Prescott, General Robert  108, 109 Prince Edward Island  60, 92, 97, 116, 153 Prince Regent, HRH the  18, 39–43, 119, 205 petition to  207–9, 215, 218 Pringle, Vice Admiral Thomas  35, 106 privateers, American  55, 58, 61, 62 Prowse, D. W.  15, 17 public (dis)order  7, 14, 116–23, 125, 147 constabulary and  105, 111, 117, 120, 151 extent  116–17 Irish emigration and  116, 120, 122–3 popular welfare and  121–2, 143 Royal Navy, magistrates and  16, 58, 105, 117, 118 Pullin, Lt Christopher, RN  171 Quebec  15, 54, 78, 139, 152, 163, 197, 212 Ranier, Vice Admiral Peter  65 Reeves, John, Chief Justice  9, 96, 110, 144, 216 attitude towards merchants  143, 155 Beothuk and  168, 170, 175, 180–2 History of Newfoundland  155 House of Commons enquiry (1793)  96, 155, 169, 188 inadequacies of legislative framework  187, 191 Tremlett case  114–15 Rodger, N. A. M.  20 n.13, 98 n.27 Routh, Richard, Chief Justice  68, 82

Index disputes with Waldegrave  113, 119, 146, 190–1 winter residence and  111–12 Royal Artillery  84 Royal Gazette and Newfoundland Advertiser  62, 189, 217, see also Keats, press licensing; Ryan, John; Ryan, Michael Ryan, John  189 Ryan, Michael  189, 201n16 Ryan, Shannon  13, 18, 20n13, 44n15 St John’s  8–10, 16–18, 31, 34, 42, 47, 50, 52, 54, 57, 59, 66, 68, 77, 105, 110, 111, 116, 173, 207, 208 built environment  150, 193, 195 charitable and poor relief  146–8, 151 commercial development  5, 14, 113 defence  1, 9, 15, 28, 58, 60, 62, 71, 84–7, 89–92, 131–7, 140 educational initiatives  137–40, 148–50 fire prevention  151 fortifications  85, 86, 88, 89 grand jury  118, 122, 151, 176, 197, 200, 208, 218 harbour defences  69 hospital  131, 155, 190, 198 social life  29, 30, 95–6, 115 Society of Merchants of  87, 113, 115, 120, 150, 191 winter at  119, 142 St Vincent, Earl  11, 16, 26, 30, 33–6, 38, 44, 51, 64, 67, 98, 105, 106, 113 secretaries of state  8, 26, 49, 70, 79, 87, 93, 111, 114–16, 121, 148, see also Bathurst; Camden; Castlereagh; Hobart; Liverpool; Portland; Windham appointments and patronage  25, 37, 68, 81–3 correspondence with governors  69, 77–8, 85, 96, 104, 108, 143 distracted by wars  12–13, 64 governors’ accountability to  57, 64, 84, 89–92, 94 governors’ instructions from  51, 131 outmoded conception of settlement  131, 187–90

Index Seymour, Lord Hugh, Captain RN  32, 35 Ships, Royal Navy HMS Adonis  67, 177–8 HMS Agincourt  61, 68 HMS Antelope  62, 68, 93, 130n132 HMS Barfleur  68 HMS Bellerophon  59, 69, 76 HMS Boston  117 HMS Capelin  59 HMS Electra  58 HMS Herring  59 HMS Iris  51, 61 HMS La Concorde  36 HMS Latona  50, 104–6, 110, 119, 124–5 HMS London  68 HMS Mackerel  59 HMS Pilchard  59 HMS Pomone  106–7, 124 HMS Ramillies  61 HMS San Josef  68 HMS Speedy  62 ships’ rooms leases  190–201, 207–9 Skerrett, Brigadier-General, John  109, 110, 206 Smallwood, Joseph  212 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts  132–6, 140, 147 Spithead  29, 34, 36, 50, 56, 57, 70, 96, 103, 104, 106, 114, 173, 175 Treaty Paris (1783)  51, 88, 163 Utrecht (1715)  9 Tremlett, Thomas (Chief Justice)  111, 112, 145, 180 Holloway’s criticisms of  13, 120, 124, 191 investigation of merchants’ complaints against  113–16 transfer to Prince Edward Island  116 Trepassey  11 Trinity  5, 6, 20, 111, 134, 140, 141, 149, 205 Trounsell, Joseph  79, 80, 98 United States of America  1, 20, 42, 54, 58–60, 62, 86, 88, 92, 100, 118,

241 152, 153, 179, 194, 196, 198, 199 privateers  60–1 Torpedo Act (1813)  74n67

Vice Admiralty Court  80, 82, 98, 153 Volunteer Corps, St Johns  210 decline of  88 naval governors’ support for  84, 86–90 War of  1812 and  87–8 Waldegrave, Vice Admiral, the Honourable (Lord Radstock) addresses species shortages  144–5 appointment  29, 31–2 authority and public order  111, 118–23 background and career  31–3, 47n96 Beothuk and  167–73, 180 church building and burial ground projects  132–7 criticism of merchants  55–7, 111, 112, 119, 136, 143 disciplinary challenges  50, 103–7 disputes with Routh  113, 119–20 economy measures  90–1 island’s defences and  28, 85 jurisdictional dispute with army  108–9 positive self-evaluation of governorship  136, 205 status sensitivity  121 support for popular education and poor relief  17, 18, 131–2, 142–7 as Tory paternalist  143, 153 Wallace, Vice Admiral Sir James  50, 63, 68, 69, 117, 118 appointment  25, 31 attention to provisioning  152 background and career  31 limited conception of role  78, 142, 154 organises defence against French  84– 5, 88, 108, 205 war(s)  1–2, 7–8 American of  1812  60, 61, 69, 93, 145, 153, 209

242 American Revolutionary  10, 15, 31, 37–9, 52, 53, 55, 58, 59, 63, 142 British colonies and  12–13 financial effects of  64–5, 154 French  1793–1802, 1803–15  2 land-based defence and  85–6 prisoners of  66, 92 Seven Years  58, 91, 163

Index Warren, Admiral Sir John  59, 72, 153 Whiteley, W. H.  17, 18 Whitshead, Vice Admiral James  38 Windham, William  80, 90, 96, 195, 196, 199 Winter, Thomas  90, 94 Wolseley, Charles, Admiral  35 Young, Rear Admiral William  33, 34