Rear-Admiral Rear admiral is a senior naval flag officer rank, equivalent to a major general and air vice marshal and above that of a commodore and captain, but below that of a vice admiral. It is regarded as a two star "admiral" rank. It is often regarde ...

Basil Beaumont (1669–1703) was a senior

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against ...

officer who was the fifth son, amongst the twenty-one children, of

Sir Henry Beaumont, 2nd Baronet Sir Henry Beaumont, 2nd Baronet (2 April 1638 – 27 January 1689) was an English politician. He was the oldest son of Sir Thomas Beaumont, 1st Baronet and Elizabeth Trott, daughter of Sir Nicholas Trott, and was baptised at Stoughton Grange ...

, of Stoughton Grange and Cole Orton.

Naval career

Of his early service in the navy there is no record: it was short and uneventful, and on 28 October 1688 he was appointed lieutenant of the Portsmouth. Six months later, 21 April 1689, he was appointed captain of , which ship was lost in

Plymouth Sound Plymouth Sound, or locally just The Sound, is a deep inlet or sound in the English Channel near Plymouth in England. Description Its southwest and southeast corners are Penlee Point in Cornwall and Wembury Point in Devon, a distance of abou ...

in a violent storm on 25 December of the same year. Although so young a captain, no blame attached to him. He was accordingly appointed, after some months, to , and early in 1692 was transferred to , in which ship he took part in the

battle of Barfleur The action at Barfleur was part of the battle of Barfleur-La Hougue during the War of the Grand Alliance. A French fleet under Anne Hilarion de Tourville was seeking to cover an invasion of England by a French army to restore James II to the ...

. He continued in the Rupert during the following year; and in 1694 commanded in the Mediterranean. In 1696 he commanded , in the fleet cruising in the English Channel and off

Ushant Ushant (; br, Eusa, ; french: Ouessant, ) is a French island at the southwestern end of the English Channel which marks the westernmost point of metropolitan France. It belongs to Brittany and, in medieval terms, Léon. In lower tiers of govern ...

, and was for a short time detached as commodore of an inshore squadron. He was afterwards transferred, at short intervals, to , , and , whilst in command of the squadron off Dunkirk, during the remainder of 1696 and till the peace. In November 1698 he was appointed to , and during the next year was senior officer at

Spithead Spithead is an area of the Solent and a roadstead off Gilkicker Point in Hampshire, England. It is protected from all winds except those from the southeast. It receives its name from the Spit, a sandbank stretching south from the Hampshire ...

, with a special commission for commanding in chief and holding courts-martial (23 February 1699). In the end of August he was ordered to pay the ship off. He commissioned her again some months later, and continued in her for the next two years, for a great part of which time he lay in the Downs, commanding – as he wrote – "a number of ships of consequence, with no small trouble and a good deal of charge", on which he referred it to the lord high admiral, "if this does not require more than barely commanding as the eldest captain" (9 April 1702). His application did not meet with immediate success; in June he was turned over to the Tilbury, and continued to command the squadron in the Downs, at the Nore, and in the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea, epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the ...

, till, on 1 March 1702–3, he was promoted to rear-admiral, and directed to hoist his flag on board , then fitting out at

Woolwich Woolwich () is a district in southeast London, England, within the Royal Borough of Greenwich. The district's location on the River Thames led to its status as an important naval, military and industrial area; a role that was maintained thr ...

. His rank, not his service, was altered. During the summer he cruised in the North Sea and off Dunkirk, or convoyed the Baltic trade; on the approach of winter he returned to the Downs, where he anchored on 19 October. He was still there on 27 November, when the great storm (

Great Storm of 1703 The great storm of 1703 was a destructive extratropical cyclone that struck central and southern England on 26 November 1703. High winds caused 2,000 chimney stacks to collapse in London and damaged the New Forest, which lost 4,000 oaks. Ships wer ...

) which "o'er pale Britannia passed", hurled the ship on to the

Goodwin Sands Goodwin Sands is a sandbank at the southern end of the North Sea lying off the Deal coast in Kent, England. The area consists of a layer of approximately depth of fine sand resting on an Upper Chalk platform belonging to the same geologi ...

. Every soul on board, the admiral included, was lost. The circumstances of his death have given to Beaumont's name a wider repute than his career as an officer would have otherwise entitled it to; his service throughout was creditable, without being distinguished; and the only remarkable point about it is that, after having held important commands, he attained flag-rank within fifteen years of his entry into the service, and when he was not yet thirty-four years of age.

Family and legacy

Two younger brothers, who had also entered the navy, had previously died; one, William Villiers, a lieutenant, had died of fever in the

West Indies The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greate ...

, 17 July 1697; the other, Charles, was lost in the blowing up of the '' Carlisle'', 19 September 1700; and their mother, Lady Beaumont, after the death of the rear-admiral, memorialised the queen, praying for relief. As Lady Beaumont's second son, George, who, on the death of his elder brother, had succeeded to the title and estates, was unmarried and appointed a lord commissioner of the admiralty in 1714, the implied statement that the family was dependent on Basil is curious. The petition, however, was successful, and a pension of £50 a year was granted to each of the six daughters. Beaumont's portrait, by

Michael Dahl Michael Dahl (1659–1743) was a Swedish portrait painter who lived and worked in England most of his career and died there. He was one of the most internationally known Swedish painters of his time. He painted portraits of many aristocrats and s ...

, is in the

Painted Hall The Old Royal Naval College is the architectural centrepiece of Maritime Greenwich, a World Heritage Site in Greenwich, London, described by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) as being of "outstanding ...

at Greenwich, to which it was presented by

King George IV George IV (George Augustus Frederick; 12 August 1762 – 26 June 1830) was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and King of Hanover from the death of his father, King George III, on 29 January 1820, until his own death ten ye ...

; it is that of a comely young man.Official documents in the Public Record Office.

References

DNB references

These references are found in the DNB article referred to above.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Beaumont, Basil 1669 births 1703 deaths English admirals 17th-century Royal Navy personnel 18th-century Royal Navy personnel Deaths due to shipwreck at sea British naval commanders in the War of the Spanish Succession