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The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria cover

The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria

Chapter 285: MARITIME LOSSES SUSTAINED BY THE BRITISH.
By Edward Farr
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The volume traces British political, parliamentary, and military developments from the accession of George III through the early nineteenth century, chronicling changes of ministry and cabinet, debates over colonial taxation and the American conflict, parliamentary controversies involving figures such as Wilkes and Warren Hastings, questions of Catholic relief and slave-trade abolition, and responses to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, including major naval and continental campaigns, the union with Ireland, and domestic legislation on finance, civil liberties, and parliamentary reform.

MARITIME LOSSES SUSTAINED BY THE BRITISH.

In the European seas British commerce suffered some blows during this year, which spread a gloom over the whole nation. Admiral Geary, who on the death of Sir Charles Hardy in May, had been appointed to the command of the fleet in the Channel, captured, in the beginning of July, twelve French merchantmen from Port-au-Prince; but while he proceeded southward, in hopes of falling in with a detached squadron of French and Spanish ships, of which he had received intelligence, and was cruizing off Cape Finisterre, a rich convoy for the East and West Indies, attended by the Ramillies and two frigates, were intercepted by the combined fleets of the enemy, and nearly fifty merchant ships were captured and carried into Cadiz. Many of these ships were laden with naval and military stores for the different settlements to which they were destined; and the loss of these, together with that of 3000 men taken prisoners on board, so increased public dissatisfaction at the mode of employing the Channel-fleet, that Geary soon afterwards resigned the command. But this was not the only disaster which the English met with on the seas during this year. About the same time, fourteen ships of the outward-bound Quebec fleet were captured by some American privateers off the banks of Newfoundland. These concurrent losses, in their nearer or more remote consequences, affected all classes of society.