HMS Northumberland (1798)

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  HMS Northumberland was launched at the yards of Barnard, Deptford on the 2nd of February 1798, one of the Royal Navy's workhorse 74-gun third-rate ships. Over the course of her active service, she witnessed prize captures in the Mediterranean, a bloody engagement in the Caribbean, a bloodless occupation of Danish colonial islands, and a moment that would etch her name into history. What does it mean for a warship to carry the most famous prisoner on earth to the edge of the world? And how did a vessel built in a Deptford yard end up as the last ship Napoleon Bonaparte would ever board freely? The answers reach across nearly three decades of British naval history, from the waters off Valletta to the South Atlantic and, finally, back to the Thames.

• 2. Mediterranean Prizes

  ›

  On the 6th of April 1800, a French polacca called Vengeance was captured entering Valletta, Malta, and Northumberland shared in the proceeds of the seizure. Prize money was the currency of naval ambition at the time. Ships that participated in a capture divided a share of the value among officers and crew. On the 8th of January 1801, a French bombard named St. Roche fell to the frigate Penelope while carrying wine, liqueurs, ironware, Delfth cloth, and various other merchandise from Marseille to Alexandria. Northumberland and a schooner were in sight, and so they too shared in that prize. Later that year, Northumberland's officers and crew served in the navy's Egyptian campaign, which ran from the 8th of March to the 8th of September 1801. That service qualified them for the clasp "Egypt" on the Naval General Service Medal, which the Admiralty authorized in 1850 for all surviving claimants. On the 6th of December 1801, she arrived off Tunis under the command of Captain Martin.

• 3. Commerce and Conflict

  ›

  In August of 1803, Northumberland detained a vessel that the French had originally seized on the 1st of July that year. The ship, Comet, had been sailing from England to Bengal under charter to the British East India Company when the French captured her. An American house with an office in London purchased Comet at A Coruña as a prize and was sending her to London when Northumberland intercepted her and sent her into Plymouth instead. Three years later, at the Battle of San Domingo in 1806, Northumberland sustained serious damage and suffered 21 killed and 74 wounded. That casualty count was the highest of any British ship in the battle. The following year, she was part of a squadron under Rear-Admiral Alexander Cochrane. That squadron, which also included several other vessels, captured the ships Telemaco, Carvalho and Master on the 17th of April 1807.

• 4. The Danish West Indies

  ›

  Britain grew alarmed in 1807 that neutral Denmark might enter an alliance with Napoleon. Rather than wait for that threat to materialize, the Royal Navy moved to occupy the Danish West Indies. Northumberland was among the ships that took part in that expedition. British forces captured St Thomas on the 22nd of December and Santa Cruz on the 25th of December 1807. The Danes offered no resistance, and the entire operation was bloodless. Three years later, on the 22nd of November 1810, Northumberland was sailing in the company of another 74-gun third-rate when the two ships captured the 14-gun French privateer ketch La Glaneuse.

• 5. Napoleon's Final Voyage

  ›

  Napoleon Bonaparte had surrendered to Captain Frederick Maitland of HMS Bellerophon on the 15th of July 1815. He was transported to Plymouth aboard Bellerophon, but concerns arose about the ageing ship's suitability for the long southern voyage. Northumberland was selected instead. In Tor Bay, Devon, Napoleon was transferred from Bellerophon to Northumberland. Under the command of Captain Charles Ross, Northumberland escorted Napoleon to his final exile on the island of Saint Helena between August and October 1815. He would never leave the island. On the 17th of March 1817, Northumberland shared with the tender Seagull in the proceeds of a seizure of glass aboard the Mary, of London, her last recorded prize action.

• 6. End of Service

  ›

  In February 1827, Northumberland was converted to a hulk, stripped of her active role and repurposed for harbour duties. She returned to Deptford, where she had been built nearly three decades earlier, to be broken up in 1850. That same year, the Admiralty was issuing Naval General Service Medals to surviving veterans of the Egyptian campaign, men who had served aboard her in 1801 and were still alive to claim their clasp. The ship that outlasted Napoleon, who died in 1821, was herself broken apart in the same year those medals finally reached the men she had carried.