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Birth of William Brown, Commander in the Argentine Navy

William Brown, Irish sailor, merchant, and naval commander who serves in the Argentine Navy during the wars of the early 19th century, is born on June 22, 1777, in Foxford, County Mayo. He is also known in Spanish as Guillermo Brown or Almirante Brown.

Comparatively little is known of his early life, and it has been suggested that he was illegitimate and took his mother’s surname and that his father’s surname was actually Gannon. He emigrates with his father to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1793, eventually settling in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A short time after their arrival, the friend who had invited them and offered them food and hospitality dies of yellow fever. Several days later, his father also succumbs to the same disease.

One morning, while Brown is wandering along the banks of the Delaware River, he meets the captain of a ship then moored in port. The captain inquires if he wants employment and Brown agrees. The captain engages him as a cabin boy, thereby setting him on the naval promotion ladder, where he works his way to the captaincy of a merchant ship. After ten years at sea, where he develops his skills as a sailor and reaches the rank of captain, Brown is press-ganged into a Royal Navy warship. British impressment of American sailors is one of the primary issues leading to the War of 1812.

During the Napoleonic Wars, Brown escapes the ship he is serving on, a galley, and scuttles the vessel. However, the French do not believe he had assisted them and imprison him in Lorient. On being transferred to Metz, he escapes, disguised in a French officer’s uniform. However, he is recaptured and is imprisoned in the fortress of Verdun. In 1809, he escapes from there in the company of a British Army officer named Clutchwell, and eventually reaches German territory.

Returning to England, Brown renounces his maritime career and on July 29, 1809, he marries Elizabeth Chitty, daughter of an English shipping magnate, in Kent. As he is a Catholic and she a Protestant, they agree to raise their sons as Catholics and their daughters as Protestants. Despite lengthy periods of enforced separation, they have nine children. He leaves the same year for the Río de la Plata on board Belmond and sets himself up as a merchant in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Late in 1811 Brown settles in Buenos Aires just as a criollo rebellion against Spanish colonial rule in Argentina is gaining strength. By April 1812, he is developing a coastal shipping business in fruit and hides. As the Spanish naval blockade of 1812–14 begins to choke trade, he is first commissioned by the patriot government as a privateer licensed to raid Spanish merchantmen, and then, on March 1, 1814, invited to take charge of a small rebel naval squadron to contest Spanish control of the Río de la Plata estuary. Leading a fleet of nineteen ships, he fixes with great speed on a set of wartime naval routines and signaling methods, and organises a system of discipline, founding the navy on principles that pay exceptional attention to the welfare of ordinary seamen.

In early March 1814, Brown shows personal courage and incisive skill in outwitting and defeating a more powerful Spanish force near Martín García Island, thereby dividing the Spanish blockade. A Spanish attempt in May 1814 to break his blockade of Montevideo is decisively crushed by him and his makeshift navy, and the Spanish strongholds on the Atlantic coast collapse, ending open war. In 1815 and 1816, however, he carries out skirmishing raids on military and commercial targets belonging to Spanish South American possessions, until detained by a British colonial governor in Barbados in July 1816 for alleged infringements of international rules of trade.

Illness, and a tortuous but ultimately successful appeal process, take up most of 1817–18, but when Brown returns to Argentina in October 1818, political enemies set in motion a prosecution for alleged disobedience of orders. Cashiered in August 1819, then restored in rank but forced to retire, he attempts suicide the following month. Convalescence and resumption of his trading concern occupies him for several years.

A repentant government renews Brown’s command of the navy in December 1825, when war breaks out with Brazil. Though vastly outnumbered by the Brazilian fleet, he shows audacity and great finesse in a number of successful engagements in the Plate estuary in 1826, roving up the Brazilian coast on occasion to create great confusion. In February 1827, he triumphs in a series of actions known as the Battle of Juncal. After another year of commercial privateering against the Brazilian merchant fleet, he is one of two delegates selected to sign peace terms with Brazil in October 1828.

Retiring from active service that month, Brown tries to remain neutral as civil war erupts in Argentina, but reluctantly accepts the post of governor of Buenos Aires under General Juan Lavalle from December 1828 to May 1829, when he resigns in disgust at government excesses. During 1829–37 he holds aloof from the despotic government of Juan Manuel de Rosas. After French and British encroachments on the region in the later 1830s, he offers to take charge of the navy again to protect national independence and is available to defend Argentine interests when war breaks out with a French-backed Uruguay in early 1841. Though exasperated by a long and “stupid war,” he blockades the Uruguayan navy effectively until French and British fleets intervene in July 1845 with overwhelming force to capture his squadron and bring the war to an end.

Idolised by the Argentinian population for his high-principled and humane advocacy of independent democracy, Brown passes his last years trading and farming a country estate. In late 1847, he journeys to Ireland, hoping to find relations in Mayo, and is shocked by the hunger and destitution of the Great Famine.

Brown dies on March 3, 1857, at his home in Buenos Aires and is buried with full military honours. The Argentine government issues a comuniqué: “With a life of permanent service to the national wars that our homeland has fought since its independence, William Brown symbolized the naval glory of the Argentine Republic.” During his burial, General Bartolomé Mitre famously says: “Brown in his lifetime, standing on the quarterdeck of his ship, was worth a fleet to us.” His grave is currently located in the La Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires.


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The Battle of Deputy’s Pass

The Battle of Deputy’s Pass is fought in County Wicklow on May 29, 1599, during the Nine Years’ War in Ireland. A Gaelic Irish force under Felim McFiach O’Byrne ambushes an English army of about 500, under Sir Henry Harington, which is marching from Rathdrum to Wicklow. The English army is routed and loses about 250 men.

The O’Byrnes had been allied to Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, since the outbreak of the Nine Years’ War in 1593. Fiach McHugh O’Byrne had worked together with O’Neill, so much that he is described as the earl’s “right arm in Leinster.” However, when Fiach is killed in 1597, the power of the O’Byrnes seems to wane. When Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, is appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1599, he orders Harrington into County Wicklow to deal with the O’Byrnes and their allies, the O’Tooles.

Harrington’s force consists of five foot companies, but four of them are inexperienced levies recently raised in England. The only experienced foot company is that of Captain Loftus, whose men are mostly Irish. The companies are organised into a regiment under the command of Sir Alexander Radcliffe. To this is added fifty horsemen commanded by Captain Charles Montague. Harrington wants to take his troops out to scout the Irish fortifications on the ford of the Avonmore River at Rathdrum, and possibly to give his raw troops some experience in fieldcraft. His first attempt to view the Irish position on May 28 fails. Harrington returns to his camp about a mile from the ford. A second effort to view the Irish fortifications is made on May 28, but this is turned back due to poor weather. Harrington orders the men to march back to Wicklow town.

The English army stretches out in a column. In the lead is the van, then the baggage, followed by the battle and then the rear. Captain Atherton, the Sergeant Major of the army, has little doubt that the weight of any Irish attack will fall on the rear of the column. Thus, the horse (cavalry) is placed at the rear. The army has marched little over a mile before the Irish shot (musketeers and caliver-men) begin skirmishing with the rear of Harrington’s force. The Irish try to take a ford to block the advance, but the English secure the crossing, with the shot of the English rear skirmishing with the Irish, allowing the rest of the army to pass unhindered.

The march continues two miles to another ford, with the rear continuing to hold O’Byrne’s Irish shot at bay. Again, the English shot secures the crossing, as Irish fire slackens, possibly due to a shortage of gunpowder. Harrington places 40–50 shot behind an earthen bank on the left flank of the column on the far side of the ford. The Irish bring up a stand of pikemen, but their attack is limited to the English left, as the right of the column is shielded by thick gorse bushes. Atherton gathers 60–80 men to counter-attack the Irish pike. The English shot behind the bank is to hold their fire until Atherton attacks, but instead prematurely fires a single volley at the Irish pike then abandons their position. Without the support from their shot, Atherton’s men refuse to charge the Irish, then withdraw to the main body of the English column.

Atherton finds that the English shot have fled the column, abandoning the main stand of English pike. Now exposed to Irish gunfire, the English pike become disordered as they press to make the river crossing. Exploiting the English confusion, the Irish pike charges into the English rear, killing many without resistance. Montague’s English cavalry charges to support the panicking infantry, but the Irish pike square opens, allowing the horse to pass through. The Irish pike spear the English horse as they pass, including Montague who is wounded by a pike thrust into his side. Despite their officer’s best efforts, the English soldiers’ resistance collapses. The rout continues with the Irish slaughtering Harrington’s men to within one and a half miles of Wicklow town. All the English companies lose their colours, except for Captain Loftus, but they are later recovered by the English horse. After the battle, Radcliffe estimates the English army has lost 250 men killed, missing or deserted.

The first English reports suggest that they lost the battle due to the inexperience of most of their troops. Harrington at first blames the English pikemen for refusing to fight, but at the court-martial in July, Harrington, supported by two of his officers (Captains Linley and Mallory) blames Captain Loftus and his Lieutenant Walsh. This is convenient, as Loftus had died from his wounds and could not refute their accusations. Their version is supported by a map drawn of the battle, possibly by Montague (Harrington’s nephew). Loftus and Walsh are found guilty by the court-martial. Loftus is already dead, but Walsh is executed by firing squad. Mallory and Linley are not found guilty, but they are cashiered, losing command of their foot companies. The men in Loftus’ company are sentenced to death but this is commuted to decimation by drawing lots. Even by Elizabethan standards this is deemed overly harsh. Though Harrington is not charged with misconduct, he is never given command of a force this size again.


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Death of William Brown, Commander in the Argentine Navy

William Brown, Irish sailor, merchant, and naval commander who serves in the Argentine Navy during the wars of the early 19th century, dies in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on March 3, 1857. He is also known in Spanish as Guillermo Brown or Almirante Brown.

Brown is born on June 22, 1777, in Foxford, County Mayo. Comparatively little is known of his early life, and it has been suggested that he was illegitimate and took his mother’s surname and that his father’s surname was actually Gannon. He emigrates with his father to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1793, eventually settling in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A short time after their arrival, the friend who had invited them and offered them food and hospitality dies of yellow fever. Several days later, his father also succumbs to the same disease.

One morning, while Brown is wandering along the banks of the Delaware River, he meets the captain of a ship then moored in port. The captain inquires if he wants employment and Brown agrees. The captain engages him as a cabin boy, thereby setting him on the naval promotion ladder, where he works his way to the captaincy of a merchant ship. After ten years at sea, where he develops his skills as a sailor and reaches the rank of captain, Brown is press-ganged into a Royal Navy warship. British impressment of American sailors is one of the primary issues leading to the War of 1812.

During the Napoleonic Wars, Brown escapes the ship he is serving on, a galley, and scuttles the vessel. However, the French do not believe he had assisted them and imprison him in Lorient. On being transferred to Metz, he escapes, disguised in a French officer’s uniform. However, he is recaptured and is imprisoned in the fortress of Verdun. In 1809, he escapes from there in the company of a British Army officer named Clutchwell, and eventually reaches German territory.

Returning to England, Brown renounces his maritime career and on July 29, 1809, he marries Elizabeth Chitty, daughter of an English shipping magnate, in Kent. As he is a Catholic and she a Protestant, they agree to raise their sons as Catholics and their daughters as Protestants. Despite lengthy periods of enforced separation, they have nine children. He leaves the same year for the Río de la Plata on board Belmond and sets himself up as a merchant in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Late in 1811 Brown settles in Buenos Aires just as a criollo rebellion against Spanish colonial rule in Argentina is gaining strength. By April 1812, he is developing a coastal shipping business in fruit and hides. As the Spanish naval blockade of 1812–14 begins to choke trade, he is first commissioned by the patriot government as a privateer licensed to raid Spanish merchantmen, and then, on March 1, 1814, invited to take charge of a small rebel naval squadron to contest Spanish control of the Río de la Plata estuary. Leading a fleet of nineteen ships, he fixes with great speed on a set of wartime naval routines and signaling methods, and organises a system of discipline, founding the navy on principles that pay exceptional attention to the welfare of ordinary seamen.

In early March 1814, Brown shows personal courage and incisive skill in outwitting and defeating a more powerful Spanish force near Martín García Island, thereby dividing the Spanish blockade. A Spanish attempt in May 1814 to break his blockade of Montevideo is decisively crushed by him and his makeshift navy, and the Spanish strongholds on the Atlantic coast collapse, ending open war. In 1815 and 1816, however, he carries out skirmishing raids on military and commercial targets belonging to Spanish South American possessions, until detained by a British colonial governor in Barbados in July 1816 for alleged infringements of international rules of trade.

Illness, and a tortuous but ultimately successful appeal process, take up most of 1817–18, but when Brown returns to Argentina in October 1818, political enemies set in motion a prosecution for alleged disobedience of orders. Cashiered in August 1819, then restored in rank but forced to retire, he attempts suicide the following month. Convalescence and resumption of his trading concern occupies him for several years.

A repentant government renews Brown’s command of the navy in December 1825, when war breaks out with Brazil. Though vastly outnumbered by the Brazilian fleet, he shows audacity and great finesse in a number of successful engagements in the Plate estuary in 1826, roving up the Brazilian coast on occasion to create great confusion. In February 1827, he triumphs in a series of actions known as the Battle of Juncal. After another year of commercial privateering against the Brazilian merchant fleet, he is one of two delegates selected to sign peace terms with Brazil in October 1828.

Retiring from active service that month, Brown tries to remain neutral as civil war erupts in Argentina, but reluctantly accepts the post of governor of Buenos Aires under General Juan Lavalle from December 1828 to May 1829, when he resigns in disgust at government excesses. During 1829–37 he holds aloof from the despotic government of Juan Manuel de Rosas. After French and British encroachments on the region in the later 1830s, he offers to take charge of the navy again to protect national independence and is available to defend Argentine interests when war breaks out with a French-backed Uruguay in early 1841. Though exasperated by a long and “stupid war,” he blockades the Uruguayan navy effectively until French and British fleets intervene in July 1845 with overwhelming force to capture his squadron and bring the war to an end.

Idolised by the Argentinian population for his high-principled and humane advocacy of independent democracy, Brown passes his last years trading and farming a country estate. In late 1847, he journeys to Ireland, hoping to find relations in Mayo, and is shocked by the hunger and destitution of the Great Famine.

Brown dies on March 3, 1857, at his home in Buenos Aires and is buried with full military honours. The Argentine government issues a comuniqué: “With a life of permanent service to the national wars that our homeland has fought since its independence, William Brown symbolized the naval glory of the Argentine Republic.” During his burial, General Bartolomé Mitre famously says: “Brown in his lifetime, standing on the quarterdeck of his ship, was worth a fleet to us.” His grave is currently located in the La Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires.


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Birth of George Germain, 1st Viscount Sackville

George Germain, 1st Viscount Sackville, a British soldier and politician who is Secretary of State for the Colonies in Lord North‘s cabinet during the American Revolutionary War, is born on January 26, 1716. He is styled The Honourable George Sackville until 1720, Lord George Sackville from 1720 to 1770, and Lord George Germain from 1770 to 1782.

Sackville is the third son of Lionel Sackville, 1st Duke of Dorset, and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Lieutenant-General Walter Philip Colyear. Between 1730 and 1737 and again from 1750 to 1755, his father holds the post of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He is educated at Westminster School in London and graduates from Trinity College Dublin in 1737. While in Dublin he befriends the celebrated writer, Jonathan Swift. He also encounters John Ligonier, 1st Earl Ligonier, who later assists his career in the military.

Sackville then enters the army. He is elected Grandmaster of the Grand Lodge of Ireland in 1751, serving in this post for two years. He marries Diana Sambrooke, daughter of John Sambrooke and Elizabeth Forester, on September 3, 1754. They have two sons and three daughters.

Sackville starts as a captain in the 7th Horse (later the 6th Dragoon Guards). In 1740, he transfers to the Gloucestershire Regiment as a lieutenant colonel. The regiment is sent to Germany to participate in the War of the Austrian Succession. In 1743 he is advanced to brevet colonel. He sees his first battle, leading the charge of the infantry of Prince William, Duke of Cumberland, in the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745. He is wounded, captured and taken to the tent of Louis XV. When he is released and returned home, it is to duty in Scotland as the Colonel of the 20th Foot Regiment.

In 1747 and 1748, Sackville again joins the Duke of Cumberland. He becomes colonel of the 7th Irish horse and serves in Holland. There is a break in his military career between wars (1750-1755) when he serves as first secretary to his father.

During the Seven Years’ War, Sackville returns to active military service. In 1755, he is promoted to major general and returns to active service to oversee ordnance. In 1758, he is given a fourth regiment and joins Charles Spencer, 3rd Duke of Marlborough, as a lieutenant general. He is sworn of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom in January 1758.

In June 1758 Sackville is second in command of a British expedition led by Marlborough which attempts an amphibious Raid on St. Malo. While it fails to take the town as instructed, the raid is still considered to be largely successful as a diversion. Follow-up raids are considered against Le Havre, Caen and other targets in Normandy, but no further landings are attempted, and the force returns home. Later in 1758 they join the allied forces of Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick in Germany. When Marlborough dies, Sackville becomes Commander of the British contingent of the army, although still under the overall command of the Duke of Brunswick.

In the Battle of Minden on August 1, 1759, British and Hanoverian infantry of the centre make an advance on the French cavalry and artillery in that sector. As the disrupted French begin to fall back on Minden, Ferdinand calls for a British cavalry charge to complete the victory, but Sackville withholds permission for their advance repeatedly. For this action, he is cashiered and sent home. John Manners, Marquess of Granby, replaces him as commander of the British contingent for the remainder of the war.

Sackville refuses to accept responsibility for refusing to obey orders. Back in England, he demands a court-martial and makes it a large enough issue that he obtains his demand in 1760. The court finds him guilty, and the verdict not only upholds his discharge, but rules that he is “…unfit to serve His Majesty in any military Capacity whatever.” The king has his name struck from the Privy Council rolls.

Sackville is a Member of Parliament at intervals from 1733. He serves terms in both the Dublin and the Westminster bodies, sometimes simultaneously, but does not take sides in political wrangles. Between 1750 and 1755 he serves as Chief Secretary for Ireland, during his father’s second term as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

On November 10, 1775, Sackville is appointed Secretary of State for the Colonies replacing William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth in the post. He becomes a target for the opposition and is eventually persuaded to step down in exchange for a peerage, and in February 1782 he is made Baron Bolebrooke, in the County of Sussex, and Viscount Sackville, of Drayton in the County of Northamptonshire. His political career ends with the fall of the North government in March 1782.

The controversy over Sackville’s handling of the war continues. Some members are opposed to his taking a seat in the House of Lords, an almost unprecedented incident. In spite of this he is admitted to the Lords, where he is staunchly defended by Edward Thurlow, 1st Baron Thurlow, and his declining health soon makes the issue irrelevant. He retires to his country home at Stoneland Lodge and dies there on August 26, 1785. He maintains to his dying day that he had not been a coward at Minden. Following his death, a defence of his reputation, The character of the late Viscount Sackville, is written by Richard Cumberland.

(Pictured: “George Germain,” 1766 painting by George Romney (1734-1802))