Charles Napier (Royal Navy officer)
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Sir Charles Napier | |
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Awards |
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Alma mater | University of Edinburgh |
French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
He became a
In April 1809, Napier took part in the capture of the
His rank was confirmed on 22 May 1809, but he was put on half-pay, when he came home as temporary captain of the frigate Jason escorting a convoy. While on half-pay he spent some time at the University of Edinburgh.[2]
Napier, still on half-pay, then went to Portugal to visit his three cousins,
In 1811, he was appointed captain of the frigate HMS Thames (32 guns) and served in the Mediterranean Fleet under Sir Edward Pellew, disrupting enemy shipping. Among his principal exploits was the 1813 capture of the island of Ponza,[3] which was a possible haven for corsairs.[Note 3] In 1813 he moved to command the frigate Euryalus (36 guns), operating mainly off the French and Spanish Mediterranean coast.
American War and the "Hundred Days"
After the surrender of Napoleon and his first period of exile in 1814, Napier and his ship were transferred to the coast of North America, where the
He next distinguished himself in the following attack on the city of
Euryalus proceeded to
With Napoleon's escape from Elba and brief return to power, (the 'Hundred Days'), Euryalus returned to Britain. Napier's last mission of the Napoleonic wars was to land troops at the mouth of the River Scheldt to guard against the French advance into Belgium.
Marriage and family
At the end of the war Napier was made a
Steam and iron
During these years Napier began a voluminous and indefatigable correspondence with the Admiralty on the urgency for naval reform, which lasted for the rest of his career. He sought to persuade successive civil administrations of the need for innovative ship-design and tactics, the development of steam ships and the use of iron in ship construction, the proper training of officers, and decent living conditions for ordinary seamen. He held that the use of the
Portugal
At the beginning of 1829 he was appointed to command the 42-gun frigate Galatea. The Admiralty gave him permission to fit her with paddles of his own design, worked by winches on the main deck. He carried out trials that proved that ships could travel independently of the wind. The Admiralty, however, did not adopt this innovation.
At the start of Portugal's
Sailing to Portugal with his stepson Charles Elers Napier as aide-de-camp, bringing troop reinforcements and using the incognito of 'Carlos da Ponza', he arrived in Porto, where Queen Maria's father Dom Pedro, ex-Emperor of Brazil, and the Liberal forces were being besieged by Miguel's armies. He assumed command of the Liberal fleet, succeeding its previous British commander George Rose Sartorius.
With the fleet Napier then transported the Liberal army to the
On the demand of France Napier was struck off the British navy list. On the other hand, Dom Pedro appointed him Admiral of the Portuguese Navy on 10 July. Napier's victory, with a fleet largely manned by British seamen, was viewed in Britain as a credit to the Royal Navy. The victory and consequent accolades greatly annoyed King
Continuing his Portuguese services, Napier commanded land forces in the successful defence of Lisbon, September 1833. For these services he was made
On 12 September 1833 he captured The Lord of the Isles steamer at Sao Martinho and in 1836 defended his prize in the Court of Common Pleas.[5]
In 1834, with a small army made up largely of British sailors, he reconquered the Minho region for the constitutional cause. After the final defeat of Miguel and the death of Dom Pedro shortly afterwards, Napier found himself frustrated in his attempts to reform the naval administration of Portugal and returned to England. His departure was followed by a vote of thanks to him in both houses of the restored Portuguese parliament.
Napier unsuccessfully contested the Portsmouth parliamentary seat for a second time in the by-election of December 1834. He then occupied himself until 1836 with writing a history of the Portuguese War and his own part in it.
Syrian War
Though he published his An Account of the War in Portugal as 'Admiral Charles Napier', he was only an Admiral as far as Portugal was concerned. He was restored to his former rank of captain in the British
When troubles broke out in
In the summer of 1840 the
The Egyptians abandoned Beirut on 3 October. While preparing to attack them at Boharsef, Napier was ordered to relinquish command of the army to withdraw and hand over the land forces to the now recovered Brigadier-General Smith. To do so would have meant giving up the tactical initiative, and Napier accordingly disobeyed the order and continued with the attack against Ibrahim's army. The ensuing Battle of Boharsef, on 10 October, was a hard-fought victory, one of the very few land battles won by a naval officer. By the end of the month the only coastal position still held by the Egyptians was Acre, which Stopford was instructed to recapture.
On 3 November the Mediterranean Fleet, with its Turkish and Austrian allies, moved into position against the western and southern sides of the town. The fire of the ships (48,000 rounds in all) was devastatingly accurate. A shell penetrated the main magazine in the south of the city, which exploded killing 1,100 men. That night Acre was occupied. British losses were only 18 men killed and 41 wounded. During the action, Napier had manoeuvred independently against Stopford's orders and his division, by accident and mutual misunderstandings, left a space in the fleet's deployment, not that this affected the outcome. Some captains wanted Napier to be court-martialled for insubordination, but Stopford did not push the issue.
The rapid collapse of Muhammad Ali's power, with the prospect of bloody chaos in Egypt, was not part of the Allies' plan, so Stopford sent Napier to command the squadron at Alexandria and to observe the situation. Here, acting once again on his own initiative, Napier appeared before the city on 25 November and enforced a blockade.
Napier, without reference to his admiral or the British government, personally negotiated a peace with Muhammad Ali. The treaty guaranteed Muhammad Ali and his heirs the sovereignty of Egypt, and pledged to evacuate Ibrahim's beleaguered army back to Alexandria, if Muhammad Ali in turn renounced all claims to Syria, submitted to the Sultan and returned the Ottoman fleet. 'I do not know if I have done right in settling the eastern question', Napier wrote on 26 November to
Parliament and Channel Fleet
In acknowledgement of his distinguished services during the campaign Napier was
He was invited to stand as Parliamentary candidate in two constituencies and so at his own request was placed on half pay. He was returned as
In November, 1841, Napier was appointed
Napier continued to be interested in warship design and was responsible for the design of the paddle-frigate Sidon launched in May 1846. In the same year he was promoted rear-admiral of the Blue on 9 November. in May 1847 he was appointed to the command of the Channel Fleet, hoisting his flag in HMS St Vincent. By this time he was perhaps the naval personality most famous to the general public: his level of everyday name-recognition is shown by the passing allusion in William Makepeace Thackeray's famous humorous ballad Little Billee ("the British fleet a-riding at anchor / with Admiral Napier, K.C.B."). He did not stand again for his parliamentary seat at Marylebone in the July–August 1847 general election.
The Channel Fleet was sometimes a sinecure, but this was by no means the case during Napier's period of command. The fleet's area of operations was not just the English Channel but more or less throughout what in the 20th century would be called the Western Approaches. Portugal was in the closing stages of its 'little' civil war, the Patuleia, and British interests in that country needed protecting. Ireland, in the aftermath of the Great Famine, was feared to be near insurrection. Moreover, there were considerations of experiment and training with new ships, made necessary by the rapid technological advances such as screw propulsion. During 1848, the fleet was mainly off the coast of Ireland, where the political situation dictated that Napier show the flag and train for the eventuality of transporting and landing soldiers on practically any part of the Irish coast. In December he took the Channel Fleet further than it had ever operated before, when it was sent to
Napier returned to Britain in April 1849 and was ordered to strike his flag. His disappointment that his expected three years term had been cut short led to bitter letters to The Times criticising the Admiralty's policy. When he applied for the vacant Mediterranean command, the Government and Admiralty agreed that he could not be trusted and he was rejected, Rear-Admiral Sir
Baltic Campaign of the Crimean War
On the outbreak of the Crimean War, Napier received the command of the Baltic Fleet, the largest fleet which the Royal Navy had assembled since the Napoleonic Wars. This was not without misgivings on the part of the Admiralty, but he was the most senior and experienced officer available. Napier hoisted his flag in February 1854 in the steam ship of the line Duke of Wellington, his subordinate commanders being the rear-admirals Armar Lowry Corry, second in command, Henry Ducie Chads, third in command, and James Hanway Plumridge, commanding the scouting forces. They were all elderly men, at most a year or so younger than Napier himself.
Napier's force, which was augmented in June by a French fleet sent by
The major success of the campaign was the capture and destruction, in a near-perfect combined operation by French and British soldiers and sailors, of the Russian fortress of
Never one to mince his words or submit to what he felt to be unmerited criticism, Napier's 'disrespectful' tone in his despatches, which the Admiralty complained of,[10] sealed his professional fate. Nevertheless, though lacking any dramatic action apart from the capture of Bomarsund, Napier had achieved a great deal. In one modern assessment, the campaign "had successfully bottled up the Russian Navy for the entire first summer of the war. The tsar had been denied an opportunity to reinforce his Black Sea fleet with additional ships. The 30,000 Russian troops posted in the Gulf had also been prevented from joining the army in the Crimea."[11] In addition, Napier's constant training had welded the fleet personnel into a much more competent force for the next year's campaign; and not a single ship had been lost.
Retirement
On Napier's return from the Baltic to Britain in December 1854 he was ordered to haul down his flag and informed his command was terminated,[12] the fleet being given for the campaign of 1855 to Admiral the Hon. Richard Saunders Dundas,[13] the
The Admiralty attempted to make Napier a scapegoat for the perceived failure of the campaign (which, within the limits of the possible, had been rather successful) and
After the war the Russians testified that, knowing Napier's reputation, their main hope had been of his making a foolhardy attack on their fleet under the guns of Kronstadt, where they were confident he would have come to grief. Napier was elected MP for
Just before his death Napier had hoped to persuade Giuseppe Garibaldi to acquire a fleet for the liberation of Italy, which he would have commanded.
Character
According to the Encyclopædia Britannica entry of 1911, "Sir Charles Napier was a man of undoubted energy and courage, but of no less eccentricity and vanity. He caused great offence to many of his brother officers by his behaviour to his superior, Admiral Stopford, in the Syrian War, and was embroiled all his life in quarrels with the Admiralty."[2] Napier was a large, untidy man of about 14 stone (about 200lbs/90kg) who walked with a limp and a stoop due to his leg and neck wounds. His common nickname in the Navy was 'Black Charlie' because of his swarthy appearance and dark side-whiskers. He was also known as 'Mad Charlie' because of his eccentric behaviour and enthusiasms, and 'Dirty Charlie' from his habit of wearing the most unsuitable and ill-fitting clothes while insisting that his officers were correctly dressed at all times.[citation needed]
Memorial
There is a memorial to him within St Paul's Cathedral.[14]
Works
- Charles John Napier (1836). An account of the war in Portugal between Don Pedro and Don Miguel. T. & W. Boone.
- Charles John Napier (1842). The war in Syria. Vol. 1. John W. Parker.
- Charles John Napier (1851). Sir William Francis Patrick Napier (ed.). The Navy, its past and present state: in a series of letters. John & Daniel A. Darling.
- Charles John Napier (1857). The history of the Baltic campaign of 1854. Richard Bently.
Popular culture
In circa 1845 Stephen Glover wrote The Retreat from St. Jean d'Acre and dedicated it to Commodore Napier.
Notes
- ^ Priscilla Napier (1995), who is not elsewhere free from error, gives the birth year as 1787 (p. 1, and book title), but provides no evidence. All other authorities agree on 1786.
- ^ Priscilla Napier states (p. 3) he was made midshipman in 1800 and "entered on the books of" HMS Martin, but never actually served in her, because she was lost before he could join her; but Edward Elers Napier (p. 6) quotes a contemporary account showing he was made midshipman in 1799 and sailed in Martin from Leith Roads in November of that year. Martin disappeared, presumed lost with all hands, in October 1800, therefore 5 months after Napier left her for Renown.
- ^ From this exploit he took the pseudonym of "Charles, Conte di Ponza" (Charles, Count of Ponza) when he commanded a Portuguese naval squadron during the Liberal Wars.
References
- ^ Edward Elers Napier, Life and Correspondence, Vol. I, p. 12.
- ^ a b c d e Chisholm 1911.
- ^ The annual register or a view of the history, politics and literature for the year 1813. Baldwin. 1823. p. 161.
- ^ Diplomacy and Duels on the High Seas Littleton Waller Tazewell and the Challenge of HMS Euryalus By Stuart Butler
- ^ State Trials (New Series) III, 621.
- ^ Edward Elers Napier, Life and Correspondence, vol. I, p. 312.
- ^ Edward Elers Napier (1862) Volume 1 pp. 363–367, 372.
- ^ Edward Elers Napier (1862), Volume II, p. 111.
- ^ West, Julius (1920). A History of Chartism, III. London: Constable and Company. p. 193.
- ^ Russian War, 1854, Baltic and Black Sea, Official Correspondence, p. 197: Secretary of the Admiralty to Sir Charles Napier 13 January 1855: "... you have repeatedly thought fit to adopt a tone in your correspondence with their Lordships which is not respectful of their authority".
- ISBN 1-84529-420-3), p. 223.
- ^
ISBN 978-1317037002. Retrieved 24 March 2019.
Duke of Wellington left Kiel on the 7th [of December 1854], anchoring at Spithead nine days later. On the 22nd Napier was ordered to strike his flag and go ashore. [...] It was the end of his seagoing career [...].
- ^
ISBN 978-0851779232. Retrieved 24 March 2019.
There had never been any doubt that the navy would return to the Baltic in 1855 but this did nothing to stop speculation about the identity of the new Commander-in-Chief and the composition of his command. By the end of February 1855 everything was settled: Rear-Admiral the Hon. Richard Dundas (no relation to the former C.-in-C. in the Mediterranean) was to command a fleet comprising steamships only.
- Sinclair, W.pp. 455/6: London; Chapman & Hall, Ltd; 1909.
Further reading
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Napier, Sir Charles". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 19 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 169. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
- Napier, Elers (1862). The Life and Correspondence of Admiral Sir Charles Napier, K.C.B.. London: Hurst and Blackett. (Vol. 1 / Vol. 2)
- ISBN 0-85955-209-8
- "Correspondence between the Admiralty and Vice-Admiral Sir C. Napier respecting Naval Operations in the Baltic 1854" in Russian War, 1854, Baltic and Black Sea, Official Correspondence edited by David Bonner-Smith and Captain A. C. Dewar (London: Navy Records Society, 1943)
- O'Byrne, William Richard (1849). John Murray – via Wikisource. . .