Able Seaman James French, who served as a Landsman in the Mercury when she assisted in the capture and destruction of several vessels off the town of Rota, near Cadiz in April 1808

Naval General Service 1793-1840, 1 clasp, Off Rota 4 April 1808 [19] (James French.) nearly extremely fine £4000-5000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The John Goddard Collection of Important Naval Medals and Nelson Letters.

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Provenance: ‘Jubilee’ Collection, Glendining’s, May 1992.

Off Rota 4 April 1808 [19 issued] - 8 medals known, including examples in the National Maritime Museum (2); Royal Naval Museum; and the Patiala Collection (Sheesh Mahal Museum, India).

James French is confirmed on the rolls as a Landsman on board the Mercury in the action with Spanish gun-boats off Rota, near Cadiz. Tow other men with these names appear on the Admiralty Claimants’ List, one as a Boy aboard Africa at Trafalgar, the other as an Ordinary Seaman in the Shannon at the capture of the Chesapeake.

James French was born in Essex, and entered the Navy as a Landsman on board the Mercury on 22 January 1807, aged 20 years. He subsequently transferred to the Rodney, as an Ordinary Seaman, on 5 March 1810; to the Superb on 31 October 1812, being advanced to 2nd Gunner on 19 January 1813; to the Creole, in the same rate, on 7 July 1813; and lastly to the Clorinde on 9 November 1814, as Able Seaman, until finally paid off on 13 July 1816. Sold with copied muster rolls and record of service.

Mercury assists in the capture and destruction of several vessels off the town of Rota, near Cadiz

On 4 April 1808, while the British 38-gun frigate Alceste, Captain Murray Maxwell, the 28-gun frigate Mercury, Captain James Alexander Gordon, and 18-gun brig-sloop Grasshopper (16 carronades, 32-pounders, and two long sixes), Captain Thomas Searle, lay at anchor about three miles to the north-west of the lighthouse of San-Sebastian, near Cadiz, a large convoy, under the protection of about 20 gun-boats and a numerous train of flying artillery on the beach, was observed coming down close along-shore from the northward. At 3 p.m., the Spanish convoy being then abreast of the town of Rota, the Alceste and squadron weighed, with the wind at west-south-west, and stood in for the body of the enemy's vessels.

At 4 p.m. the shot and shells from the gun-boats and batteries passing over them, the British ships opened their fire. The Alceste and Mercury devoted their principal attention to the gun boats, while the Grasshopper, drawing much less water, stationed herself upon the shoal to the southward of the town and so close to the batteries, that by the grape from her carronade she drove the Spaniards from their guns, and at the same time kept in check a division of gun-boats, which had come out from Cadiz to assist those engaged by the two frigates. Captain Maxwell in his official letter, alluding to this gallant conduct on the part of Captain Searle, says: “It was a general cry in both ships, ‘Only look how nobly the brig behaves.’” The situation of the Alceste and Mercury was also rather critical, they having in the state of the wind, to tack every fifteen minutes close to the end of the shoal.

In the heat of the action the first Lieutenant of the Alceste, Allen Stewart, volunteered to board the convoy with the boats. Accordingly the boats of the Alceste pushed off, under Lieutenant Stewart, and the boats of the Mercury quickly followed, under Lieutenant Watkin Owen Pell, who, it should be noted, had lost a leg when wounded in the Lion in February 1800, when he was a midshipman of barely 12 years of age. Dashing in among the convoy, the two divisions of boats, led by Lieutenant Stewart, soon boarded and brought out seven tartans, from under the very muzzles of the enemy's guns and from under the protection of the barges and pinnaces of the Franco-Spanish squadron of seven sail of the line, which barges and pinnaces had also by that time effected their junction with the gun-boats.

Exclusive of the seven tartans captured, two of the gun-boats were destroyed, and several compelled to run on shore, by the fire from the two British frigates and brig, which did not entirely cease until 6.30 p.m. All this was effected with so slight a loss to the British, as one man mortally and two slightly wounded on board the Grasshopper. The damages of the latter, however, were extremely severe, as well in hull, as in masts, rigging, and sails. With the exception of an anchor shot away from the Mercury, the damages of the two frigates were confined to their sails and ridging, and that not to any material extent.