Sir Hector Munro - Who's Who in Scottish Military History

We’ve mentioned Sir Hector Munro before in the Who’s Who about Lord Macleod. They were contemporaries of each other but while Macleod was a Jacobite, Munro was a staunch supporter of the Hanoverians. When MacLeod was an exile in Europe, Munro was rising through the ranks in the British Army.

In his long career Munro served in many parts of the world but it was in India he had his biggest success, and biggest failure.

It’s not clear exactly when he was born but his father moved from Novar to Clayside at Dunrobin Mains, near Golspie when he was a baby, so he was probably born in 1725-1726.

He was first commissioned into Loudon’s 64th Highlanders in 1747 but biographies mention previous service against the Jacobites. He may well have served in one of the Independent Companies raised by the Northern clans in 1745-46 and under Loudon’s command which were beaten at Inverness and Dornoch. If he was captured, as has been rumoured, then he was unlikely to have taken part in Cromartie’s defeat at Golspie.

After being commissioned in the 64th Highlanders he went with them to the Low Countries, where they were serving in the War of Austrian Succession. His regiment was in action at Bergen-op-Zoom near Antwerp but saw little service apart from that. It was disbanded in June 1748 at the end of hostilities.

Munro was after an army life so transferred into the 48th Foot as an ensign, and then in the days of purchasing commissions he bought himself a lieutenancy in the 31st Foot in Ireland, and a few years later he was a Captain and company commander of the 2nd battalion 31st Foot (which became the 70th Foot in 1758).

Another regiment soon followed in 1759 when Munro got his majority in the newly raised 89th Highlanders. This was during the Seven Years War and Imperial commitments saw the 89th being sent to India.

With Munro in charge the 89th arrived outside French held Pondicherry in Madras in September 1760. They were there until early 1761 when they were sent to Bombay after the French capitulated.

When the 89th sailed for home in 1763 Munro elected to stay in India. In 1764 he was sent to his third East Indian Company Presidency in India, Bengal, with some other European troops to help quell a mutiny amongst EIC sepoys.

No believer in taking a soft line Munro decided that the only way to deal with the sepoys, whether their grievances were justified or not, was to execute the ringleaders in typical EIC fashion - by tying them to the wheels of a cannon and blowing them apart. He also disbanded the most rebellious native regiment.
With the mutiny suppressed Munro was given charge of the Bengal Presidency Army and took it north from Calcutta to head off an invasion force of Mughals on the Bihar – Oudh border.

On 22nd September 1764 Munro’s army met the Mughals at Buxar, under the command of Nawab Wazir Shuja ud-Daula.

On paper it looked like there would be no contest. The Indians had a force of 40,000 and Munro had only 7,000 men. However since taking command Munro had drilled his men hard to prepare for battle and it would be no walkover.

In a shocking display of underestimating your opponent Shuja ud-Daula left his prepared defences and advanced over open ground to meet Munro’s force.
Wave after wave of Mughal cavalry attacked the Bengal Presidency Army but Munro’s training had paid off and the disciplined firepower of the redcoats held off the horsemen.

Munro then showed his tactical prowess by throwing forward his sepoys at the point of the bayonet onto his opponent’s left flank. The Indians were unprepared for this assault and fell back. Retreat soon turned to rout as the whole Indian front line collapsed.

Whilst Plassey in 1757 may have been the decisive battle to decide which European power influenced Indian affairs, it was the overwhelming victory at Buxar which led to the East India Company becoming the de facto rulers of India’s richest provinces and it tuned British traders into rulers.

It was the high point of Munro’s career and with a very large haul of prize money he resigned his commission and returned to Scotland in early 1765. His uncle had left him the Munro estate at Novar in Cromarty near Evanton, and his money bought him a seat in Westminster as MP for Inverness Burghs. For the next few years he led the life of a country laird spending his Indian fortune on improving his house and estate.

Investment mistakes and loss of money in the 1770s probably led to his decision to rejoin the army. India was where he had made his name and his fortune over ten years before; so with his EIC and parliamentary connections, and his reputation preceding him, he was appointed in 1777 as commander-in-chief at Madras. Now he also had a local royal commission as an EIC major-general and a seat on the Madras council.

Things were complicated in India when Munro arrived. Struggles for control of the East India Company were taking place in London and in Madras the local rulers were not as compliant as the ones in Bengal. It was a recipe for future disaster.

Munro had to deal with weak allies, a strong and antagonistic neighbour, and the involvement of the French and Dutch. Both had enclaves in India and the American War of Independence saw them become allies of the Unites States and enemies of Britain. When the news of the French taking the American’s side reached Munro in 1778 he immediately marched south to take their base at Pondicherry. He had last been there nearly twenty years before with the 89th Highlanders and once again the French capitulated.

Eager to capitalise on his success he captured the other French settlements on the Coromandel Coast / Malabar Coast. Unfortunately this eagerness to defeat the French antagonised Hyder Ali, the powerful ruler of Mysore at Seringapatam.

Ali had no love for the British and had beaten them in a war in 1768. He also considered the French possessions to have been under his protection. Munro’s attacks on Pondicherry was too much for Hyder Ali and he made preparations to march across the Eastern Ghats and onto the Carnatic Plain.

Time and again we’ve seen in our who’s who and on this day articles that pride comes before a fall; and once again a Scot in a position of power chose to ignore the advice of others and carry on regardless.

Hyder Ali and his son Tipoo Sultan amassed 90,000 men. It took time to assemble an army of that size and throughout 1779 and early 1780 it was obvious to everyone except Munro that he would be marching East in strength. Munro chose to ignore the signs. Even when reinforcements were sent to him, including the newly raised Lord Macleod’s Highlanders, they were sent to outlying posts.

In June 1780 Ali moved. Munro finally responded. Instead of ordering his outnumbered troops back to the protection of Madras to regroup he decided to push his force forward and consolidate his army in the field.

The man who lead the Bengal Army to victory against impossible odds at Buxar must have thought he could outfight Ali’s native host. Munro was sadly misjudging his opponent. Ali’s army was well trained by French advisors, and equipped with the latest guns. As Munro advanced on Arcot he expected his other troops to meet him at Conjeeveram.

Unfortunately for Munro his supply train was not as good as he had hoped and his advance bogged down. Ali advanced to meet him before he could congregate all his forces, and Colonel Baillie’s column containing Macleod’s Highlanders was attacked and soundly beaten at the Battle of Pollilur by Tipoo Sultan’s force. 2,800 men, including the future general, David Baird, were killed or captured.
Munro knew his position was untenable and finally retreated to Madras leaving Hyder Ali in control of most of the Carnatic Plain.

Munro’s handling of the affair nearly wrecked his career. He was criticised by Macleod on his tactics and his failure to support Baillie’s men once battle commenced. Certainly no other East India Company in the Carnatic had been beaten so badly. Rather than being sacked Munro was effectively demoted when Eyre Coote was sent to take command of the Madras Army. Munro continued to serve under Coote and attempted to rebuild his reputation as Coote took the fight back to Ali.

Eventually after a spell in his sick bed in Madras he was given independent command again. This time it was to capture the Dutch port of Negapatam in November 1791. Munro’s old skill returned and this attack was a success.

Munro’s second spell in India was now coming to an end. With the campaigning over he resigned his appointment and returned to London. Mixed fortunes awaited him at home. He was granted a knighthood for capturing Pondicherry and then sacked by the East India Company for losing Baillie’s column. He must have cried all the way to the bank because he was awarded yet more prize money and was made a major general in the British army.

He remained a soldier on paper an eventually becoming a full general on 1st January 1798 and he was also Colonel of the 42nd Highlanders (the Black Watch).

His main activity between his return to the UK in 1782 and his death in 1805 seems to have been interesting himself on improving his estate in the then current fashion of replacing tenants with sheep. The man who restored order in Bengal by blowing mutineers from his cannon had no problems bringing the army in to restore order when his improvements provoked protests in the summer of 1792.

However he also showed a slightly more benevolent side when he built a folly on his land to provide jobs during a period of unemployment. Fyrish Monument is said to represent the gates of Negapatam, the city he had captured in 1781 and which had saved his reputation. It doesn’t, but it certainly has an Asian feel to it, and given he renamed many of the parks on his estate after places in India then it’s likely Fyrish was built to remind him of his many years in the sub-continent.

Finally was it civic duty as the local MP, or right-wing tendencies, which led him to provide a substantial sum of money to the building of the new court house and jail in Inverness? The building is gone but Munro’s steeple and clock still survive to mark his contribution to his constituency’s policing.

It was at Novar where Munro died. Uncertainty over his date of birth was matched by the uncertainty of his date of death. Sources quote late December 1805 or early January 1806. His headstone says 27th December 1805.

Munro is a little known figure in his own land. I come from East Sutherland and had never heard of him until recently, but he was an important figure in the history of the British in India. His reforms in the Bengal and Madras EIC armies and his victory at Buxar had laid solid foundations for British supremacy in India and the establishment of the Raj.

Major General William Roy - Who's Who in Scottish Military history

When William Roy became a Major General in 1781 it wasn’t because of his exploits in battle, it was because of his work with paper and ink.

Unlike most of the men we have covered in the who’s who series he wasn’t really a warrior (although he did see action during the Seven Years War), he was chiefly a surveyor, but Roy’s legacy to his country was probably greater than most of his soldier contemporaries.

Calling him a surveyor was actually unfair because he was also a renowned engineer and antiquarian, and his achievements in either of these fields would have made him a great Scot on their own; but it as a surveyor that he is most well known. His greatest work was his Military Survey of Scotland which he worked on between 1747 and 1755 and is known today as Roy’s Map.

Roy was born at Miltonhead near Carluke in Lanarkshire in 1726, the son of an estate factor. Little is known of his youth but the indications are that he was a bright pupil and attended Lanark Grammar School.

No records survive of any further education but by 1747 he was a competent and experienced surveyor and map maker

There is no knowledge of his whereabouts during the Jacobite Rebellion and if he was at his home in Carluke it may have passed him by, however it would have an impact on him the year after the end of the Rebellion.

In 1747 the government were determined there would be no more Jacobite rebellions. The clans would be pacified, and the government would garrison the Highlands from the line of forts across the Great Glen. The government also decided it would conduct a full survey of the country recording roads, settlements, bridges, forests and fields. In short everything an army on the march would need if it was chasing an enemy. It was something they lacked in 1745-46 as they were repeatedly wrong-footed by the Prince’s Highland Army.

Nothing had been done in Britain on this scale before. Lieutenant-Colonel David Watson, the Deputy Quartermaster-General of North Britain, the man who suggested it, was given the job.

It was a big task so Watson took on three assistant surveyors to do the work for him. William Roy, Paul Sandby, and John Manson. Roy worked on the survey between 1747 and 1755 and because of the amount of work he put into it, it is his name, not Watson’s which we use today to refer to the map. In 1755 it was known simply as the Great Map.

It was a Labour of love for Roy who was also an antiquarian and wherever possible he would add little notes of Roman encampments. He also chose to mark certain events from recent history too. In the far north he notes the spot in the Kyle of Tongue where ‘Le prince Charles Edward’ ran aground in 1746.

The surveyors would go out each summer to do their measurements and they would return to Edinburgh each winter to work on the map which was on a scale of 1000 yards to an inch.

After he completed his work the War Office were so impressed they commissioned Roy as a Practitioner-Engineer with the rank of Lieutenant. He continued to work on mapping but was now also a fighting soldier, and he was present at many battles of the Seven Years War including Minden.

His impressive work on the Great Map was also said to have influenced military surveys of Canada, North America, Bengal and Ireland. All areas of concern for the British Army in the late eighteenth century.

Roy rose steadily through the ranks of the British Army becoming a Deputy Quartermaster-General then Surveyor-General of Coasts and then Engineer-Director of military surveys in Great Britain, each position gained him a promotion and by 1781 he was one of Britains most senior engineers and a Major General in the army.

In the mean time he had spent mapping what was left of the Antonine Wall. In fact Roy mapped Scotland in the period when it moved from a mainly agricultural society to the beginnings of the industrial revolution; a time when the central belt of Scotland was transformed by heavy industry. Sites of interest from antiquity which were swept away in nineteenth century industrialisation had been recorded for posterity by Roy.

In his later career Roy concentrated on making land surveying more accurate. He surveyed parts of Southern England but he was determined a full national survey of the whole of the UK at one inch to a mile should be carried out by the army. Unfortunately the cost of that was too prohibitive for the governments of the day and Roy spent many years pleading his case to no avail.

Roy was also convinced triangulation was the way ahead for mapping and in 1787 he commissioned Jesse Ramsden, the foremost scientific instrument maker of his day, to design a theodolite and chain which would hopefully allow his dream of a fully mapped Britain to become a reality.

He was not to see it happen. Roy died in 1790 and was buried in London. In Carluke they erected a monument near where he was born.

Just before he died he had completed a survey of a stretch of Hounslow Heath with Ramsden’s instruments. This short stretch of accurate mapping became the baseline of the Trigonometrical Survey of Great Britain launched in 1791. As before with his Military Survey of Scotland the new survey was to ensure the British Army had accurate maps of their own country. This time in case of a French invasion. As a military mapping exercise the task of the Trigonometrical Survey was given to an army department, the Board of Ordnance.

The Ordnance Survey was eventually published in 1801 when the threat of invasion by Napoleon was at its peak. Luckily the Board of Ordnance’s maps were not needed to repel invasion. Even luckier was that Roy's vision, the Ordnance Survey, continues to be updated and is still with us today.

John Mackenzie, Count of Cromarty - Who’s Who in Scottish Military History.

Today’s Who’s Who is about one of several Scots who fought for the Jacobites during the ’45 Rebellion and ended their military career in the British Army.

John Mackenzie, Lord MacLeod was the eldest son of the 3rd Earl of Cromartie. He was born in the family seat of Castle Leod near Strathpeffer in 1727. At the age of four he was first styled Lord Macleod and that was how he was best known for the rest of his life.

For the next fourteen years he had an uneventful life; then in 1745 his life changed forever. In December 1745 his father came out for the Jacobite cause and raised a Clan Regiment for Prince Charles’s army.

By the time they mustered the Jacobites had turned back at Derby and were now marching north. Cromartie and his son took their men south to meet and join the army.

Cromartie’s regiment joined the Jacobite host outside Stirling and it was near there at the Battle of Falkirk where Lord Macleod fought in his first battle. After the Jacobite’s reached Inverness Cromartie and his men were included in the Duke of Perth’s force which routed Loudon from Sutherland March 1746. Cromartie moved into Dunrobin Castle and sent his son further north in his first independent command.

He was only eighteen but Lord Macleod was given 300 men to go to Caithness and Orkney to find Jacobite recruits and plunder Hanoverian sympathisers’ lands for supplies and arms.

After three weeks without much success he returned to Dunrobin and was captured there on the day before the battle of Culloden by Highlanders loyal to the government.

He was taken to London with other Jacobite officers to be tried before the Commissioners. He pleaded guilty to high treason, but his youth and the limited part he played in the Rebellion may have counted in his favour. He was spared, death or slavery and pardoned. A condition of his pardon was the forfeiture of his title and he was sent into exile, but at least by 1748 he was alive and free.

He ended up under the wing of one of many Scots serving in European armies. Field Marshal James Keith. In 1750 Keith arranged MacLeod’s commission into the Swedish Army through the wife of the Swedish King – who also happened to be the sister of the Prussian King who was a friend of Keith.

Pomerania is in North Germany and Poland, opposite Sweden, and in the 1750s part of it was Swedish territory. Sweden coveted the parts of Pomerania they had ceded to Prussia in 1720 and the spread of the Seven Years War across Europe gave Sweden an excuse to attack Prussia in 1757. For the next five years Sweden and Prussia were at war over Pomerania and Macleod was involved in the fighting.

In 1762 Sweden ended the war after it had recovered no territory for the cost of 40,000 lives and vast sums of money it couldn’t afford to spend. Improbably Macleod then joined the army of his former enemy, Prussia, and fought alongside them against Russia.

Prussia and Russia ended their war in 1763 and Macleod returned to Swedish service. For the next few years he gave loyal service to Sweden; becoming an ADC to King Adolf Frederick and a earning a promotion to Lieutenant Colonel. Amongst his honours he was given the Order of the Sword of Sweden and was made a Swedish count. The title he took was Count of Cromarty.

In 1777 he returned to Scotland. The War against the American States was draining the resources of the army and at the same time trouble was brewing in India. New regiments were needed for both theatres of war. Many former Jacobites or their families saw this as a way to help pave the way for the restoration of their lands and titles if they raised or served as soldiers in the British Army. In all eleven regular battalions were raised in Scotland in 1777 and 1778.

Macleod set to work immediately. In the 1770s there was no set recruiting areas in Scotland and any new regiment could send out recruiting parties across the country. The reputation of Lord MacLeod preceded him and he had no difficulty finding recruits. 840 men from the Highlands and 236 from the Lowlands. He had so much success at recruiting that a second battalion of the 73rd was authorised and that started recruiting as well shortly after the first had reached its establishment. The 2nd Bn 73rd was commanded by the Honourable George Mackenzie, Lord Macleod’s brother.

In late 1777 the 1/73rd (Highland) Regiment of Foot (MacLeod's Highlanders) first mustered at Elgin under their colonel, John Mackenzie, Lord Macleod. A year later George II recognised Macleod’s Swedish title and the Count of Cromarty led his regiment to embark for India a month later in January 1779. (In the peerage a count and an earl are the same rank so in effect, though not in name and lands, he was the fourth Earl of Cromartie).

The regiment stopped off in West Africa for a short time and didn’t arrive in India until a year after it had left the UK. It landed in Madras in January 1780.

In September 1780 several companies were despatched to join a British force under the Scot Major General Sir Hector Munro, which was fighting the Indian army of Hyder Ali. The Companies were soon lost in an action against the Mysore Army at the Battle of Pollilur and the captured troops imprisoned at Seringapatam. They included a young officer called David Baird who would later lead a British force back to Seringapatam nearly twenty years later to take revenge on his former captors.

By this time McLeod had been promoted to Major General. He soon made it clear to Munro he was unhappy with the way his detached troops from the 73rd had been used. They were the same rank and about the same age but Munro had been in the British Army for many years and had served in India for most of that time and there may have been a clash of personalities.

By this time Macleod was over fifty and after many years service in Scandinavia he may not have taken to the tropical heat of Southern India. Whatever the reasons: age, temperature or arguments with his superiors; the old soldier left his regiment to return home before he had a chance to lead them into action.

He retired from army life on half pay and in 1782 he was promoted to Major General. In the mean time he decided on a political path and entered parliament as the MP for Ross-shire.

A final act of rehabilitation took place in 1784 when he purchased his family estate for £19,000 on the back of an Act of Parliament. The Count of Cromarty gave up his constituency and became a laird (His replacement at Westminster would later raise the 78th Highlanders).

He moved into a home at Tarbet on the Black Isle and stayed there for the next five years, spending his time rebuilding and improving his estate.

He was in Edinburgh in 1789 when he died; and probably fitting for a man who was in exile for so many years, he was buried in the kirkyard in the Canongate rather than his family lands in Ross-shire.

Macleod had returned from India in 1780 but remained the Colonel of his regiment until his death. Before he died he saw his regiment survive a reduction of the army and its renumbering as the 71st (Highland) Regiment of Foot (MacLeod's Highlanders). As the 71st it would later achieve more fame as the Highland Light Infantry.

Who's Who in Scottish Military History - John Campbell, 4th Earl of Loudon

John Campbell, the Fourth Earl of Loudon was a Scottish soldier in the British Army who was involved in the later stages of the Jacobite Rebellion. Described as incompetent, arrogant and tyrannical he nevertheless managed to make a career as a soldier and rose to the rank of Major General. His name will crop in several 'On this Day' posts on the blog over the next few weeks so it's worth giving some background to the man here.

Born in 1705 in Loudon Castle in Ayrshire. At 22 he joined the Royal Scots Greys and by 1737 he had purchased his way up to Captain. By then his father had died and he had become 4th Earl. 1741 saw him in the important post of governor of Stirling Castle and only a couple of years later he followed the army to Flanders. After service at Dettingen in 1743 he was appointed Aide-de-Camp to George II.

In 1745 Britain was at war with France. Extra troops were needed to fight in Flanders and the Independent Companies of the 43rd Highlanders of the Black Watch were assembled for overseas service. Their gendarme role in the highlands was to be filled with a new regiment raised by Loudon.

Twelve companies of highlanders were raised in June 1745 but unfortunately for Loudon his regiment was to be put to the test sooner than he hoped.
The first blow came at Prestonpans in September 1745 when three companies were lost in the rout of Cope's army. Loudoun was serving as adjutant-general to Sir John Cope and was also at Prestonpans. He managed to escape capture and in October 1745 he was sent to Inverness to take comand of the remaining companies of his 64th Highlanders scattered in barracks across the Highlands.

By early 1746 the Jacobites had retreated from Derby and were heading north to rendezvous at Inverness, which just happened to be Loudon's base.

Loudon gathered together his remaining companies of the 64th Highlanders at Inverness except for garrisons at Ruthven, Fort Augustus and Fort William. He also gathered some companies of loyal clans from the Northwest of Scotland. In all he had about 2,000 men under his command.

He failed in a disastrous attempt to intercept Prince Charles Edward south of Inverness where his large force was routed by a small number of determined Jacobites. He realised his force of untrained regulars and hastily raised loyal clansmen were no match for the Jacobites. The clansmen who had seen off government forces at Prestonpans and Falkirk were left to march into Inverness virtually unopposed as Loudon retreated further north.

He was then outflanked at Dornoch by an amphibious landing of Jacobites and decided the North was too hot for him. He scattered his force and headed west, away from Cumberland's army. He saw the end of the Jacobite Rebellion whilst in Skye.

Although he had failed to stop any Jacobite force sent against him during his time in the North he had distracted large numbers of Jacobites away from the main force opposing Cumberland, and his presence at Inverness between October 1745 and February 1746 impeded Jacobites attempts to raise new recruits for their army.

After Culloden he was involved in pacifying the Highlands. Unlike the harsh treatement generally meted out by the Hanoverians, Loudon seems to have been realtively fair to his fellow countrymen.

His regiment was disbanded in 1748 after service in France, and in 1749 took command of the 30th Foot. In 1755 he was promoted to Major General.

His next major command was in North America where in 1756 he was sent to take over as Governor General of Virginia. Loudon had loyally served the Duke of Cumberland for many years and Cumberland repayed his loyalty with this important command.
This was during the Seven Years War against France and he was also given command of British forces in North America. Unfortunately for Loudon he often ignored the advice of local soldiers such as George Washington. He was outwitted by the French, and whilst his troops failed in their attack on the French-Canadian fort and town of Louisburg, it allowed Montcalm to take his army to capture the strategic British position of Fort William Henry.

Although Loudon was a good administrator and put in place many of the logistics needed to fight a war in such harsh conditions, he had overseen a string of reverses and was replaced by another Scot, James Abercrombie.

Britain was at war with France and Spain, and Major Generals were still needed so he was entrusted to garrisoning the captured French island of Belle Île. France had pretty much given up on recapturing the island so it should have been a safe posting for Loudon.

Events overtook the best plans of the War Office to keep Loudon out of trouble. In 1762 Spain invaded Portugal. Loudon was the nearest spare British commander and he was sent from Belle Île. Luckily a more senior officer was there to take command of the combined Portuguese and British Army. William, Count of Schaumburg-Lippe who just happened to be one of the best commanders on either side during the war, repeatedly beat off Spanish attacks and eventually forced the Spanish back.
Loudon acted in Lippe's shadow until the Spanish were beaten, and once the Portuguese Army was rebuilt Lippe felt it safe to leave and Loudon took over as Commander in 1763.

That was pretty much the end of Loudon's less than glittering military career. The Seven Years War came to an end shortly after Loudon's promotion to Commander in Portugal. He returned home to the postion of Governor of Edinburgh Castle and was made Colonel of the Scots Guards. He retired as General in 1770 and went home to improve his estate in Ayrshire where he took a notion to plant lots of willow trees.

He died unmarried aged 76 in 1782. He lived long enough to see some of his former Jacobite foes back in the fold raising regiments to fight against rebellious Americans. I wonder what he thought of his former enemies, now Hanoverians, fighting his former friends, now rebels.

Who's Who in Scottish Military history - Adam Duncan, 1st Viscount Duncan of Camperdown

The Dundonian Adam Duncan is hardly known outside Angus and even there he is known mainly because his family gifted Camperdown Park to the city nearly 150 years after his death.

He really should be better known because his victory at Camperdown in 1797 was an overwhelming defeat of the Dutch Navy; which at the time was still a powerful fleet and a threat to the UK .

Duncan was born on 1st July 1731 in Lundie, a few miles from Dundee , into a prosperous local family. His father was Provost of Dundee between 1744 and 1747.

At fifteen Duncan joined the Royal Navy. Just in time for the Seven Years War which saw British ships fight for supremacy of the seas against the French and Spanish. There was a lull in his active service between the Seven Years War and the American War of Independence and then he served as a captain from 1778 to 1782 where he distinguished himself in various actions against French and Spanish ships.

In 1783 the war was over and he returned to Portsmouth and was promoted to Rear Admiral of the Blue. Over the next twelve years he was steadily promoted until in 1795 he was promoted Admiral and made Commander-in-Chief in the North Seas . Duncan ’s appointment was to a very important post. In the late eighteenth century the Dutch had one of the strongest navies in the world and with Holland under the control of the French it meant they were a threat to Britain and more importantly a threat to the Thames sea trade which ultimately paid for the Royal Navy and protected the country from Napoleon.

By 1797 Duncan had managed to blockade the bulk of the Dutch fleet in the port of Texel with only four ships. Keeping ninety five Dutch ships in port with only four ships pretending to be many more was a sleight of hand which would put Paul Daniels to shame. It couldn’t last though and autumn storms forced Duncan back into Yarmouth to refit.

The Dutch took the opportunity to head for the open sea. They weren’t actually going anywhere, it was just a political move to show that they were no longer trapped in port. It was a mistake they would soon regret. On 7th October 1797 Duncan left port again, this time with sixteen ships and on 11th October 1797 the two fleets met off the small Dutch fishing village of Camperduin in North Holland.

The Royal Navy took the advantage straight away and in a bold stroke Duncan ordered his sixteen ships to fight their way in between the eighteen Dutch ships and put themselves between the Dutch fleet and the coast so that the Dutch could not run away into port.

The fighting was a brutal slugging match with ship pounding ship but in the end the Royal Navy’s gunners were better than their Dutch equivalents and sunk nine ships. The rest of the Dutch fleet had been badly mauled and scattered out to sea.

In one day Duncan had effectively destroyed the Dutch Navy; a fleet which had been feared by the British for over one hundred and thirty years.

Duncan was a hero at home and was made a Viscount. His family thought he deserved an earldom (and that was granted to his son) but he was also awarded a pension of £2000 which was no trifling amount in 1797.

That was a fitting end to Duncan ’s long career but he didn’t have a long retirement. Old age and a punishing life at sea caught up with him and he died suddenly on 4th August 1804 at Cornhill in Berwickshire, and is buried in the churchyard at Lundie.

Apart from Camperdown Park in Dundee he is commemorated with a statue in his home town. It was unveiled in 1997 in Dundee , on the 200th anniversary of his most famous battle.

His name also lives on in the Royal Navy. The seventh HMS ‘Duncan’ a Type 45 Destroyer was recently launched on the Clyde. Appropriately it was launched on 11th October - the anniversary of the Battle of Camperdown.

You can see a video of that launch here: