Admiral of the Fleet James Gambier, 1st Baron Gambier, (13 October 1756 – 19 April 1833) was a Royal Navy officer and colonial administrator. After seeing action at the capture of Charleston during the American Revolutionary War, he saw action again, as captain of the third-rate , at the battle of the Glorious First of June in 1794, during the French Revolutionary Wars, gaining the distinction of commanding the first ship to break through the enemy line.

Gambier went on to be a Lord Commissioner of the Admiralty and First Naval Lord and then served as Governor of Newfoundland. Together with General Lord Cathcart, he oversaw the bombardment of Copenhagen during the Napoleonic Wars. He later survived an accusation of cowardice for his inaction at the Battle of the Basque Roads.

Early career

Born the second son of John Gambier, the Lieutenant Governor of the Bahamas and Bermudian Deborah Stiles, Gambier was brought up in England by his aunt, Margaret Gambier, and her husband, Admiral Charles Middleton, 1st Baron Barham. He was a nephew of Vice-Admiral James Gambier and of Admiral Lord Barham and became an uncle of the novelist and travel writer Georgiana Chatterton.

thumb|The third-rate , commanded by Gambier, at the [[Glorious First of June in 1794]]

Gambier entered the Navy in 1767 as a midshipman on board the third-rate , commanded by his uncle, which was serving as a guardship in the Medway, and followed him to serve on board the 60-gun fourth-rate in 1769 where he served on the North American Station. He transferred to the 50-gun fourth-rate under Rear Admiral Parry, in 1772, in the Leeward Islands. Gambier was placed on the sloop and was then posted to England to serve on the 74-gun third-rate , a guardship at Spithead.

Lord Howe promoted Gambier to commander on 9 March 1778 and gave him command of the bomb ship , which was promptly dismasted and surrendered to the French. He was taken prisoner for a short period and, after having been exchanged, he was made a post captain on 9 October 1778 and appointed to the 32-gun fifth-rate HMS Raleigh and saw action at the capture of Charleston in May 1780 during the American Revolutionary War. In 1783, at the end of the War, he was placed on half-pay.

Senior command

thumb|[[Iver Grove, Gambier's home in Buckinghamshire]]

Gambier was appointed to the Board of Admiralty led by Earl Spencer in March 1795. Promoted to rear-admiral on 1 June 1795, he became First Naval Lord in November 1795. Gambier left the Admiralty after the fall of the first Pitt ministry in February 1801 and became third-in-command of the Channel Fleet under Admiral William Cornwallis, with his flag in the 98-gun second-rate . It was around that time that he also bought Iver Grove in Buckinghamshire.

Gambier then returned to the Admiralty as a Lord Commissioner of the Admiralty and First Naval Lord on the Admiralty Board led by Viscount Melville when the second Pitt ministry was formed in May 1804. Gambier left the Admiralty in February 1806.

In May 1807 Gambier volunteered to command the naval forces, with his flag in the second-rate , sent as part of the campaign against Copenhagen during the Napoleonic Wars. Together with General Lord Cathcart, he oversaw the bombardment of Copenhagen from 2 September until the Danes capitulated after three days (an incident that brought Gambier some notoriety in that the assault included a bombardment of the civilian quarter). Prizes included eighteen ships of the line, twenty-one frigates and brigs and twenty-five gunboats together with a large quantity of naval stores for which he received official thanks from Parliament, and on 3 November 1807 a peerage, becoming Baron Gambier, of Iver in the County of Buckingham.

Battle of the Basque Roads

thumb|Cartoon mocking Gambier's refusal to support [[Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald|Lord Cochrane at the Battle of the Basque Roads]]

In 1808 Gambier was appointed to command the Channel Fleet. In April 1809 he chased a squadron of French ships that had escaped from Brest into the Basque Roads. He called a council of war in which Lord Cochrane was given command of the inshore squadron, and who subsequently led the attack. Gambier refused to commit the Channel Fleet after Cochrane's attack, using explosion vessels that encouraged the French squadron to warp further into the shallows of the estuary. This action resulted in the majority of the French fleet running aground at Rochefort. The episode had political and personal overtones. Gambier was connected by family and politics to the Tory prime minister William Pitt. In Parliament, Cochrane represented the constituency of Westminster, which tended to vote Radical. In the aftermath of Basque Roads, Cochrane and Gambier quarreled and Gambier excluded Cochrane from the battle dispatches. Cochrane took the unusual move of standing in opposition to parliament's pro forma vote of thanks to Gambier.

Later career

In 1814 Gambier was part of the team negotiating the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812 between Britain and the United States. He was appointed a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath on 7 June 1815. Promoted to Admiral of the Fleet on 22 July 1830, he died at his home, Iver Grove in Buckinghamshire, on 19 April 1833 and was buried at St. Peter's churchyard in Iver. Gambier, Ohio, is named after him, as is Mount Gambier, the city and dormant volcano in South Australia, and Gambier Island in British Columbia, as well as the Gambier Islands in French Polynesia. Gambier appears as a minor character near the end of Flying Colours, a 1938 Horatio Hornblower novel by C. S. Forester.

Personal life

In July 1788 Gambier married Louisa Mathew, daughter of Daniel Mathew, 1718–1777, of Felix Hall, Kelvedon, Essex and St Kitts, West Indies, and Mary Elizabeth Byam, 1729–1814; they had no children.

See also

  • List of governors of Newfoundland and Labrador
  • List of people from Newfoundland and Labrador

References

Sources

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