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John Thomas Duckworth
Sir John Thomas Duckworth, 1st Baronet, GCB (9 February 174831 August 1817) was an officer of the Royal Navy, serving during the Seven Years' War, the American War of Independence, the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, as the Governor of Newfoundland during the War of 1812, and a member of the British House of Commons during his semi-retirement. Duckworth, a vicar's son, achieved much in a naval career that began at the age of 11. Serving with most of the great names of the Royal Navy during the later 18th and early 19th centuries, he fought almost all of Britain's enemies on the seas at one time or another, including a Dardanelles operation that would be remembered a century later during the First World War. He was in command at the Battle of San Domingo, the last great fleet action of the Napoleonic Wars. Early life Born in Leatherhead, Surrey, England, Duckworth was one of five sons of Sarah Johnson and the vicar Henry Duckworth A.M. of Stoke Poges, County of Buc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leatherhead
Leatherhead is a town in the Mole Valley District of Surrey, England, about south of Central London. The settlement grew up beside a ford on the River Mole, from which its name is thought to derive. During the late Anglo-Saxon period, Leatherhead was a royal vill and is first mentioned in the will of Alfred the Great in 880 AD. The first bridge across the Mole may have been constructed in around 1200 and this may have coincided with the expansion of the town and the enlargement of the parish church. For much of its history, Leatherhead was primarily an agricultural settlement, with a weekly market being held until the mid-Elizabethan era. The construction of turnpike roads in the mid-18th century and the arrival of the railways in the second half of the 19th century attracted newcomers and began to stimulate the local economy. Large-scale manufacturing industries arrived following the end of the First World War and companies with factories in the town included Ronson and G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glorious First Of June
The Glorious First of June (1 June 1794), also known as the Fourth Battle of Ushant, (known in France as the or ) was the first and largest fleet action of the naval conflict between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the First French Republic during the French Revolutionary Wars. The action was the culmination of a campaign that had criss-crossed the Bay of Biscay over the previous month in which both sides had captured numerous merchant ships and minor warships and had engaged in two partial, but inconclusive, fleet actions. The British Channel Fleet under Admiral Lord Howe attempted to prevent the passage of a vital French grain convoy from the United States, which was protected by the French Atlantic Fleet, commanded by Rear-Admiral Villaret-Joyeuse. The two forces clashed in the Atlantic Ocean, some west of the French island of Ushant on 1 June 1794. During the battle, Howe defied naval convention by ordering his fleet to turn towards the French and for each of his ves ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Naval Gold Medal
The Naval Gold Medal was awarded between 1793 and 1815 to senior officers of the Royal Navy for specified actions. Two different sizes were struck. 22 large medals were awarded to flag officers ( admirals), commodores and captains of the fleet. 117 smaller medals were awarded to captains.Ribbons and Medals, page 54 As a separate medal was awarded for each action, it was possible for a recipient to receive and wear more than one.Medals Yearbook, page 122 Awards of the gold medal were discontinued after 1815, as would-be recipients became eligible for the Order of the Bath on its enlargement to three classes. Appearance * Size: The large medal has a diameter of , and the small medal . Medals were mounted in a gold frame, glazed on both sides. * Obverse: Britannia holding a spear and standing on the prow of an ancient galley, being crowned with a laurel wreath by a figure of Victory. Behind is an oval shield charged with the Union Flag.Battles and Medals, pages 32-33 * Reverse: ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
War Of 1812
The War of 1812 (18 June 1812 – 17 February 1815) was fought by the United States of America and its indigenous allies against the United Kingdom and its allies in British North America, with limited participation by Spain in Florida. It began when the United States declared war on 18 June 1812 and, although peace terms were agreed upon in the December 1814 Treaty of Ghent, did not officially end until the peace treaty was ratified by Congress on 17 February 1815. Tensions originated in long-standing differences over territorial expansion in North America and British support for Native American tribes who opposed US colonial settlement in the Northwest Territory. These escalated in 1807 after the Royal Navy began enforcing tighter restrictions on American trade with France and press-ganged men they claimed as British subjects, even those with American citizenship certificates. Opinion in the US was split on how to respond, and although majorities in both the House and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Haitian Revolution
The Haitian Revolution (french: révolution haïtienne ; ht, revolisyon ayisyen) was a successful insurrection by slave revolt, self-liberated slaves against French colonial rule in Saint-Domingue, now the sovereign state of Haiti. The revolt began on 22 August 1791, and ended in 1804 with the former colony's independence. It involved black, biracial, French, Spanish, British, and Polish participants—with the ex-slave Toussaint Louverture emerging as Haiti's most prominent general. The revolution was the only slave uprising that led to the founding of a state which was both free from Slavery in the Americas, slavery (though not from forced labour) and ruled by non-whites and former captives. It is now widely seen as a defining moment in the history of the Atlantic World. The revolution's effects on the institution of slavery were felt throughout the Americas. The end of French rule and the abolition of slavery in the former colony was followed by a successful defense of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexandria Expedition Of 1807
The Alexandria expedition of 1807, also known as the Fraser expedition, ( ar, حملة فريزر) was a failed attempt by the British to capture the Egyptian city of Alexandria during the Anglo-Turkish War in order to secure a base of operations against the Ottoman Empire and the French Empire in the Mediterranean Sea. It was a part of a larger strategy against the Ottoman-French alliance of the Ottoman Sultan Selim III. Though Alexandria was briefly captured and occupied, attempts to proceed inland were rebuffed, with British forces being twice defeated in battles at Rosetta (Rashid, the port that guarded the entrance to the Nile), at a cost of over 900 officers and men killed, and many captured at the second siege of Rosetta alone. Captured British soldiers were marched to Cairo, and were marched there between rows of stakes whereon were displayed many hundreds of the severed heads of their slain comrades. British captives were then condemned to hard-labour or were sold into ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Battle Of San Domingo
The Battle of San Domingo was a naval battle of the Napoleonic Wars fought on 6 February 1806 between squadrons of French and British ships of the line off the southern coast of the French-occupied Spanish colonial Captaincy General of Santo Domingo (''San Domingo'' in contemporary British English) in the Caribbean. All five of the French ships of the line commanded by Vice-Admiral Corentin-Urbain Leissègues were captured or destroyed. The Royal Navy led by Vice-Admiral Sir John Thomas Duckworth lost no ships and suffered fewer than a hundred killed while the French lost approximately 1,500 men. Only a small number of the French squadron were able to escape. The battle of San Domingo was the last fleet engagement of the war between French and British capital ships in open water. Background In late 1805, First Lord of the Admiralty Lord Barham withdrew the Royal Navy blockade of the French Atlantic ports following the Trafalgar Campaign, in which the French Navy had lo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atlantic Campaign Of 1806
The Atlantic campaign of 1806 was a complicated series of manoeuvres and counter-manoeuvres conducted by squadrons of the French Navy and the British Royal Navy across the Atlantic Ocean during the spring and summer of 1806, as part of the Napoleonic Wars. The campaign followed directly from the Trafalgar campaign of the year before, in which the French Mediterranean fleet had crossed the Atlantic, returned to Europe and joined with the Spanish fleet. On 21 October 1805, this combined force was destroyed by a British fleet under Lord Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar, although the campaign did not end until the Battle of Cape Ortegal on 4 November 1805. Believing that the French Navy would not be capable of organised resistance at sea during the winter, the First Lord of the Admiralty Lord Barham withdrew the British blockade squadrons to harbour. Barham had miscalculated – the French Atlantic fleet, based at Brest, had not been involved in the Trafalgar campaign and was th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of French domination over most of continental Europe. The wars stemmed from the unresolved disputes associated with the French Revolution and the French Revolutionary Wars consisting of the War of the First Coalition (1792–1797) and the War of the Second Coalition (1798–1802). The Napoleonic Wars are often described as five conflicts, each termed after the coalition that fought Napoleon: the Third Coalition (1803–1806), the Fourth (1806–1807), the Fifth (1809), the Sixth (1813–1814), and the Seventh (1815) plus the Peninsular War (1807–1814) and the French invasion of Russia (1812). Napoleon, upon ascending to First Consul of France in 1799, had inherited a republic in chaos; he subsequently created a state with stable financ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Assault On Cádiz
The Assault on Cádiz was a part of a protracted naval blockade of the Spanish port of Cádiz by the Royal Navy, which comprised the siege and the shelling of the city as well as an amphibious assault on the port itself from June to July 1797. After the battle of Cape Saint Vincent the British fleet led by Lord Jervis and Sir Horatio Nelson had appeared in the Gulf of Cádiz. In the first days of June the city was bombarded, causing slight damage to the Spanish batteries, navy and city. Nelson's objective was to force the Spanish admiral Jose Mazarredo to leave the harbour with the Spanish fleet. The Spanish response was to build gunboats and small ships to protect the entrance of the harbour from the British. By early July, after a series of failed attacks led by Rear Admiral Nelson, and with the British ships taking huge fire from the Spanish forts and batteries, the British withdrew and the siege was lifted. The naval blockade, however, lasted until 1802. Background In Fe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ferrol Expedition (1800)
The Ferrol Expedition (or Battle of Brión) took place on 25 and 26 August 1800, and was an unsuccessful British attempt to capture Ferrol from Spain. Ferrol was a major Spanish naval base with a shipyard for shipbuilding and dry dock for repairs. Background The primary object of the British expedition and fleet of 109 ships during the year 1800 was the conquest of Belle Île but the defences appeared too strong. The expedition therefore proceeded to the coast of Spain, where it arrived on 25 August. Battle After a heavy cannonade against a small Spanish fort of eight 24-pounder cannon by the British ships of the line HMS ''Impetueux'' with 74 guns, HMS ''London'' with 96 guns, HMS ''Courageux'', HMS ''Renown'' and HMS ''Captain'', each with 74 guns. HMS Impetueus, HMS Brilliant, HMS Cynthia an the small gunner HMS St. Vincent, state on their logs to had taken part on the gunning of the small Fort. No mention on HMS London and HMS Renown logs of being part of the gunni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
