Admiral cuthbert collingwood biography of george

He received his early education in the grammar school of that town; but at the age of eleven was entered as a volunteer on board the Shannon frigate, commanded by his maternal cousin, Captain Braithwaite; and for the next eleven years be continued with Braithwaite in the Shannon, and afterwards in the Gibraltar and Liverpool, always on the home station, though occasionally stretching as far as Gibraltar or Newfoundland in charge of convoy.

In the following year he was landed with the party of seamen attached to the army at the battle of Bunker's Hill, a service which won for him his promotion to the rank of lieutenant, 17 June In June he was made commander into the Badger, vacant by the promotion of Nelson to post rank ; and on 22 March was posted into the Hinchingbrook frigate, from which Nelson was removed to the Janus.

The Hinchingbrook was at the time employed on an expedition against San Juan, an expedition which was defeated by the pestilential climate.

Cuthbert collingwood family tree

Nelson himself was for many months most dangerously ill, and of the original complement of , were buried in the short space of four months. Collingwood was one of the few who escaped, and in the following December was appointed to command the Pelican of 24 guns, which was wrecked on the Morant Keys in August , in a violent hurricane.

The loss of life was fortunately small, and after ten days of extreme priva- tion on the barren Keys the men were rescued by a frigate sent from Jamaica. Shortly after his return to England, Collingwood was appointed to the Sampson of 64 guns, which was paid off at the peace, and her captain appointed to the Mediator frigate for service in the West Indies.

It was during this time that his friendship with Nelson became most intimate, partly perhaps from the peculiar circumstances of their commission, which threw Nelson, then the senior captain on the station, into a most remarkable opposition to the commander-in-chief in reference to the strict carrying out of the navigation laws, which the admiral was disposed to relax [see Nelson, Horatio, Viscount ].

Collingwood entirely agreed with Nelson in his line of conduct, and strictly followed the course which he prescribed ; but as a junior officer his name did not come into any prominence in connection with the dispute. Towards the end of the Mediator returned to England and was paid off. The next three years Collingwood passed in Northumberland, 'making,' as he said, 'acquaintance with his own family, to whom he had hitherto been, as it were, a stranger.