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Anniversary of the death of Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell
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Post Posted: Sun Sep 30, 2007 12:04 pm    Post subject: Anniversary of the death of Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell Reply with quote

The 1805 Club and the Britannia Naval Research Association are organising a commemoration service at Westminster Abbey to mark the 300th anniversary of the loss of the Association and three other RN ships, and the death of 2000 men, including Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell.
This will be on Thursday 18 October 2007.
See the SNR website: http://www.snr.org.uk/news/Cloudesley%20Shovell.htm

From the new DNB
Quote:
In 1706 Shovell embarked troops to make a false attack on Normandy, but, when bad weather prevented that attack, he proceeded to Portugal with the troops. The original plan was to land the forces in Portugal for an overland attack on Madrid, but an English council of war objected to the Portuguese plan to divide English forces between two armies. Declining this, Shovell landed them in February 1707 at Alicante. Ordering Sir George Byng to support operations, he returned to Lisbon to refit. Two months later he went to Barcelona where Byng, with Vice-Admiral Phillips van der Goes and the Dutch squadron, rejoined him on 20 May. There, Shovell was instrumental in persuading Charles III to implement the long-planned assault on Toulon. In July, near Toulon, Duke Victor Amadeus II of Savoy and Prince Eugene of Savoy consulted with Shovell on board his flagship, Association. After Shovell agreed to keep ships available throughout the following winter, the commanders resolved to march the allied armies directly on Toulon. More than 100 cannon were landed from the fleet, and allied forces were in such force that the French sank many of their warships in Toulon harbour. The siege continued until 4 August, when French troops rallied. The allied generals decided they could not prevail. By 23 August the armies had dispersed and Shovell, deeply disappointed, sailed for Gibraltar.

Continuing on with twenty-one ships in the main fleet, he reached the Soundings on the morning of 21 October. On the following day, while trying to confirm its position, the fleet lay to in hazy weather from early in the afternoon until nightfall, and Shovell detached three vessels for Plymouth, apparently thinking the fleet was further to the eastward than it was. Shortly after six, still unable to confirm his position, Shovell ordered the fleet to continue up the channel in fleet formation. At about eight, in dark and rainy weather, lookouts in several ships suddenly saw rocks and the loom of the St Agnes light. Several warning guns were fired, but before the flagship could manoeuvre she struck the Outer Gilstone Rock in the Isles of Scilly and sank quickly. Most of the nineteen vessels in the fleet escaped a similar fate, but the 54-gun Romney was wrecked on the same rocks, while the 70-gun Eagle sank off the Tearing Ledge, just south-east of the Bishop and Clerks rocks. Of the 1315 men in these three ships, there was only one survivor, a quartermaster from the Romney. Shovell's body came ashore from the wreck on the south side of St Mary's Island at Porth Hellick Cove. The fact that he came ashore more than 6 miles from the wreck site, in close proximity to the bodies of his two stepsons—Sir John Narbrough and James Narbrough—a pet dog, and the flagship's captain, suggest that they had been able to leave the wreck together in a boat. Numerous legends and traditional stories surround these events. The most persistent is the alleged confession of a woman in the 1730s, who on her deathbed reported that she had found Shovell alive on the beach and, coveting the emerald ring on his finger, took his life. As her dying wish, the parish priest sent the ring to James, earl of Berkeley. In 1879 a similar ring was in the possession of the Berkeley family, but has not been traced since.

The Salisbury carried the body to Plymouth, where Dr James Younge embalmed it at the Naval Hospital, before it was taken by land to London. Shovell's death, with the loss of the Association and her consorts, was a great national disaster and accompanied by a great outpouring of grief. The embalmed body lay in state at the queen's expense at Shovell's home in Frith Street, Soho. Two months after the accident, on 22 December 1707, it was borne in an elaborate hearse to Westminster Abbey, where he was buried in the south choir aisle, near the east cloister door.
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