The unique French Revolutionary Wars Frigate Action Officer’s Naval General Service Medal for Lively 13 March 1795, awarded to Volunteer 1st Class Benjamin Simpson, Royal Navy. Simpson was appointed as a Volunteer aboard the 32 gun frigate H.M.S. Lively circa 1895, and aboard her had an eventful time capturing a number of prizes. On 13th March 1795 when serving under her acting captain, Commander George Burlton, he was present for the capture of the French frigate Tourterelle near Ushant off the coast of Brittany, having already that month taken the 18 gun French corvette Espion, after a two hour action off Brest.
In the engagement with the Tourterelle, having closed to within range on opposite tacks the two vessels began firing at 10.30 a.m. Once she had passed the Lively’s stern the Tourterelle wore, but then Burlton managed to pin her alongside and the two frigates maintained a close action until 1.30. By that time the vastly inferior French vessel had lost all her topmasts, was significantly disabled in her lower masts, and was badly holed in the hull. She had lost sixteen men killed and twenty-five wounded, and had only eight cannons still in action with but five men to man each of them. Her situation left her captain, Guillaume Montalan, with little alternative but to surrender, and shortly after striking the colours the Tourterelle’s mainmast also went by the board. Nevertheless, her defence had proved a most valiant one and her talented captain in due course would be rightly absolved of any blame for her loss when brought before a military council to account for it. For his part, the Lively’s captain, who was a veteran of the Battle of the Glorious First of June in 1794 for which he had been promoted to Master and Commander, was swiftly posted captain at the urging of a ‘Committee of Gentlemen from Lloyd’s Coffee House’ who also raised two hundred guineas for his purchase of a piece of plate.
Command of Lively then reverted to that of Captain George Stewart, the Lord Garlies, who had been held up owing to heavy snow and had therefore had his command temporarily passed to Burlton. The Lord Garlies was a distinguished naval officer who would later become Admiral a Knight of the Thistle and the 8th Earl of Galloway. Simpson remained serving under Garlies and as such fought at the action of 25 January 1797 against the Spanish ship of the line, San Francisco de Asiz, an inconclusive engagement in the Gulf of Cadiz, before then participating in the Battle of Cape St. Vincent on 14 February 1797. In this action, Lively and three other British frigates jointly fired on a Spanish ship of the line that had become separated from the rest, but other than that Lively took no significant part in the combat and suffered no losses. Her main function was to repeat signals. Lively did take possession of San Isidro, one of the Spanish vessels that surrendered. Despite being present Simpson would however not appear to be issued with the ‘St. Vincent’ clasp when it was ultimately sanctioned.
After the battle Lively carried Sir Robert Calder, with the account of the victory, and Lord Minto, Viceroy of Corsica, and his suite, who were on board during the battle, back to England. The carrying of the Despatches announcing the victory off Cape Saint Vincent, was a significant honour for Lord Garlies and the crew of Lively. Lord Garlies then handed over his command of the vessel shortly after her arrival in England.
Subsequently Simpson remained aboard Lively, and with her now under the command of Captain Benjamin Hallowell, was present when Lively supplied boats for the cutting out expedition led by Lieutenant Thomas Masterman Hardy on 29 May 1797, during the battle for Santa Cruz, the capital of the island of Tenerife. Then in October 1797 he was present when Minerva and Lively captured the Marselloise as she was sailing from Guadaloupe to France. They then took the richly-laden former Sugar Cane into Martinique. Simpson may ultimately have been present when Lively, now under the command of Captain James Nicoll Morris, was grounded near to Rota Point, Cadiz. Unable to be got off, she was set alight and destroyed by her crew under Spanish fire on 13 April 1798. Nothing further is known of his service.
Simpson became one of only three verified claimants of the clasp “Lively 13 March 1795”, and owing to an error in the issue of his medal that resulted in his “St. Vincent” being claimed but not added, was as a result the recipient of the unique Naval General Service Medal 1793-1840 with this single clasp.
Naval General Service Medal 1793-1840, 1 Clasp: Lively 13 March 1795; (BENJN. SIMPSON, VOLR.)
Condition: top part of the naming of the surname scored, provably as a result of an unsympathetic silver test, however all naming clearly visibly and correct as issued, overall Nearly Extremely Fine.
Benjamin Simpson appears to have joined the Royal Navy as a Volunteer in 1795 when put aboard the 32 gun frigate H.M.S. Lively under Captain George Stewart, the Lord Garlies, son of the 7th Earl of Galloway and later Admiral George Stewart, K.T., 8th Earl of Galloway. However it would be under Acting Captain George Burton (later Rear Admiral Sir George Burlton, K.C.B.) that Simpson first saw action in the capture of the French frigate Tourterelle near Ushant off the coast of Brittany on 13 March 1795.
The command of the new eighteen-pounder frigate Lively 32 was one that was coveted by many officers, and it was to the good fortune of Commander George Burlton that he was able to hold it in an acting capacity for Captain Lord Garlies when that officer was stranded by snow in Scotland whilst undertaking his duties as the High Sheriff of the County of Kirkcudbright in the early months of 1795.
Putting out from Spithead on 27 February under the orders of Captain Charles Stirling of the Jason 38, the Lively parted company two days later in heavy weather which had torn in from the south south-east, leaving Burlton to make the best of his way to the designated cruising ground alone. Here he was soon in business, for in the late hours of 2 March he picked up his first major prize of what was to prove a profitable month when he took the French corvette Espion of 18 guns, Captain Jean Jacques Magendie, following a two-hour action off Brest. The prize was all the sweeter given that it was only eight months previously that as the British sloop Espion 16 under Commander William Hugh Kittoe, she had been captured by the French frigate Tamise 32 off the Scilly Isles.
Burlton immediately made for Plymouth to land his prisoners, from where he wrote to inform the Admiralty on 4 March of the capture. The Lively put back to sea on the evening of 7 March and soon enjoyed more fortune, for within twenty-four hours, some twenty miles west of Ushant, she boarded the small vessel Favonius, which was en route to France in convoy, having been captured from the British whilst bound from Archangel to London the previous June, only to be left ice-bound with other prizes at North Bergen over the winter. The next day, 9 March, Burlton’s temporary command recaptured the Halifax-owned brig Joseph, which had been seized by a French frigate the day before whilst in passage to London, and she towed this vessel into Plymouth on 11 March.
By 13 March the Lively was back at sea once more, and at 7 a.m., some forty miles north-east of Ushant, she found herself on the same tack as three French vessels which were sailing for their home coast on a weak northerly breeze. Two would prove to be prizes of the Espion, whilst the third was the frigate Tourterelle 28, Captain Guillaume Montalan. Initially, the man-of-war displayed no inclination to investigate the solitary stranger, but then she apparently had second thoughts and tacked towards the British frigate.
The Lively had only been launched five months previously at Northam in Devon, and it had been no surprise that such a fine new frigate had been allocated to the influential Lord Garlies. She carried an armament of twenty-six 18-pounder cannons on her gun deck in addition to six- 6-pounder cannons and six 24-pounder carronades on her quarterdeck and forecastle, giving her a broadside weight of metal of three hundred and twenty-four pounds. Her crew numbered two hundred and fifty-one men, and her temporary captain, George Burlton, had been a lieutenant for a long seventeen years before being promoted master and commander in acknowledgement of his role as the first lieutenant of Rear Admiral Thomas Pasley’s flagship Bellerophon 74 at the Battle of the Glorious First of June in 1794.
The Lively’s immediate opponent, the Tourterelle, was also in her first year of service. She was armed with thirty cannon and reportedly offered a broadside weight of metal of one hundred and eighty-eight pounds. Her crew numbered two hundred and thirty men, and she was returning to port after a two-week cruise off the south-west coast of England during which she had taken several prizes. At five hundred and eighty-one tons she was a much smaller vessel than her British opponent, which weighed in at eight hundred and six tons.
It appears that the Tourterelle had mistaken the Lively for what the French would describe as a corvette, and this erroneous identification persuaded Captain Montalan to lie-too under topsails and await the stranger’s approach. Only upon realising his blunder did he seek to tack in the hope of escaping, but unfortunately the lack of wind inhibited this manoeuvre, and he was left with no other option but to accept an engagement.
Little is recorded of the resulting engagement, other than having closed to within range on opposite tacks the two vessels began firing at 10.30 a.m. Once she had passed the Lively’s stern the Tourterelle wore, but then Burlton managed to pin her alongside and the two frigates maintained a close action until 1.30. By that time the vastly inferior French vessel had lost all her topmasts, was significantly disabled in her lower masts, and was badly holed in the hull. She had lost sixteen men killed and twenty-five wounded, and had only eight cannons still in action with but five men to man each of them. Her situation left Captain Montalan with little alternative but to surrender, and shortly after striking the colours the Tourterelle’s mainmast also went by the board. Nevertheless, her defence had proved a most valiant one and her talented captain in due course would be rightly absolved of any blame for her loss when brought before a military council to account for it.
The Lively suffered two men wounded in the engagement, including her third lieutenant, Loftus Otway Bland, whose left eye was badly damaged after a misfiring cannon he was in the process of re-priming had gone off. The frigate itself had sustained burns to her sails and rigging, leading to the suspicion that the French had been firing red-hot shot, and upon going aboard the Tourterelle a boarding party discovered that a furnace had indeed been in use, but that it had been thrown overboard shortly before the French frigate’s surrender. It would later be claimed by British prisoners aboard the Tourterelle that her surrender had been delayed for up to an hour whilst attempts had been made to remove all evidence of the furnace.
The Lively’s success was embellished by the recovery of the Espion’s prizes, and she returned to Plymouth with the Tourterelle on 14 March where the latter was bought into the Navy as a twenty-eight-gun frigate. Disappointingly, she only served for four years in this capacity before being converted into a troop ship, and her career ended in ignominy when she was sunk as a breakwater at Bermuda in 1816.
The Espion was bought back into the Navy as the Spy but her career was not of an eventful nature and she was sold off at Plymouth in 1801.
In his dispatch to the Admiralty, Commander Burlton recommended lieutenants Joseph Watson and John Maitland to Their Lordships’ attention. The former, the son of Captain Thomas Watson who had died in the Leeward Islands when commanding the Conqueror 74 in action against the French fleet on 19 May 1780, was promoted commander with seniority from 16 March and was posted captain in March 1798; the latter, a nephew of Captain Hon. Frederick Lewis Maitland, was promoted commander in December 1796, posted captain with seniority from August 1797, and would eventually rise to flag-rank. Lieutenant Bland was promoted commander in August 1797, achieved post rank in September 1798, and enjoyed a most active and enterprising career before his early death at the age of 39 in 1810. As for Burlton, he was swiftly posted captain at the urging of a ‘Committee of Gentlemen from Lloyd’s Coffee House’ who also raised two hundred guineas for his purchase of a piece of plate, and after a similarly active career he too died relatively young in 1815, having just achieved flag rank.
As for the Lively, Captain Lord Garlies eventually arrived to take command of her, and shortly afterwards took Admiral Sir John Jarvis out from England to assume his command in the Mediterranean. Lively captured the Danish ship Concordia on 27 February 1796 but had to share the prize money with 13 allied ships that were in sight at the time.
Benjamin Simpson was still aboard Lively under Garlies’ command when then officer commanded a division of four frigates and a sloop, and engaged the Spanish ship of line San Francisco de Asis in the action of 25 January 1797, in which Garlies was eventually forced to withdraw.
The action of 25 January 1797 was fought in the Gulf of Cadiz.
The winter of 1796–1797 was one of the stormiest of the 18th century. The British Royal Navy lost the ships of line HMS Courageux, wrecked off Gibraltar, and HMS Bombay Castle, foundered in the shoals of the Tagus river's mouth, as well as two frigates. A French expedition sent to Ireland to assist the rebel United Irishmen against the British government failed due to the storms. The Spanish navy also suffered the effects of the winter. The third-rate ship of the line San Francisco de Asís, commanded by Captain Don Alonso de Torres y Guerra, which was anchored in the Bay of Cadiz during a mission to protect the arrival of Spanish commercial shipping from America, was hit by the storms, and having lost her anchor, she was forced to go out to open sea.
Spain and Britain, which had been allies against the Revolutionary France until the Peace of Basel and had cooperated in the Siege of Toulon in 1793, became enemies when Spain aligned itself with France by Second Treaty of San Ildefonso in 1796. The British navy, on the outbreak of the war, withdrew from the Mediterranean Sea and was stationed in the Iberian Atlantic coast, from Cape Finisterree to Gibraltar. Sir John Jarvis, commander of the Mediterranean Fleet, took its base at Lisbon, having been ordered by the Admiralty to focus on "taking every opportunity of annoying the enemy", asides of protecting the British trade and cutting Spain from its colonies. Among the British ships based in Lisbon, there was a division under Captain Lord Garlies which comprised the frigates Lively, Niger and Meleager, and the sloops Fortune and Raven. According to Sir John Barrow, 1st Baronet, Second Secretary to the Admiralty for 40 years, Lord Garlies, later known as the Admiral George Stewart, K.T., the 8th Earl of Galloway, was "an excellent man, but of a warm and sanguine temperament".
At dawn on 25 January, the three frigates and one sloop of Garlie’s division were sighted from the San Francisco de Asís sailing north-eastwards at a distance of 11 leagues from the port of Cádiz, parallel to the city. The lack of response to the signals of recognition made from the Spanish ship put on alert its crew. The British ships began to come close to the San Francisco de Asís relying on their lightness and their advantage, both in number and in artillery, as the division's ships mounted 40 pieces each of the two heaviest frigates, 34 the lesser one, and 28 the sloop.. Minerve and Meleager were armed, moreover, with 24-pounder carronades.
At 1 pm the British division had approached enough to open fire on the San Francisco, who had hoisted its flag, ready to engage Garlie’s ships, which also hoisted their British flags. The San Francisco then opened fire, and a running battle ensued without intermission until 4 pm. In the process, the San Francisco received the fire of two British frigates which successively shot him with grapeshot. The Spanish ship could only return the fire with the stern chasers of its batteries, although she luffed occasionally to shoot broadsides on the British frigates, inflicting serious damage. The British gunners, noted for their skill through the war, were not particularly accurate during the action, and San Francisco, already hit by the storm, didn't suffer serious damage.
The British frigates left the battle at 4 pm, and although after consulting among themselves the British commanders resolved to return to fight at 4:30 pm, they finally withdrew half an hour later. The imminence of the nightfall and the possibility of running aground on the coast between Helva and Ayamonte convinced Alonso de Torres y Guerra to turn back to Cádiz instead of chasing Garlie’s division, but trying before to sail between the retreating British ships to shoot upon them two complete broadsides. The British vessels, however, managed to avoid the action by taking advantage of its fasteness and the darkness of the dusk.
The San Francisco de Asís had 2 men killed and 12 wounded in the action. She received a shot at the mainyard, another one awash, and minor damage to the rigging and the hull. The ship had been repaired when, on 14 February, it took part in the Battle of Cape St. Vincent. The damage and casualties aboard the British division remain unknown, and the action is not mentioned in English sources, though the Spanish naval historian Cesáreo Fernández Duro states that one of Galloway's frigates lost its foretopmast. A success by ship of line fighting alone against a squadron of well armed frigates was not common during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. As a reward for his victory, Captain Alonso de Torres y Guerra was given the encomienda of Corral de Calatrava in the Order of Alcántara, which included, asides of the title of knight, an income of 15.800 reales. On the other hand, Garlie’s career wasn't damaged by the result of the action.
Simpson was then still aboard Lively as a Volunteer 1st Class when she was present at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent on 14 February 1797.
Lively and three other British frigates jointly fired on a Spanish ship of the line that had become separated from the rest, but other than that Lively took no significant part in the combat and suffered no losses. Her main function was to repeat signals. She did take possession of San Ysidro (or San Isidro), one of the Spanish vessels that surrendered.
After the battle Lively carried Sir Robert Calder, with the account of the victory, and Lord Minto, Viceroy of Corsica, and his suite, who were on board during the battle, back to England. The carrying of the Despatches announcing the victory off Cape Saint Vincent, was a significant honour for Captain Lord Garlies and the crew of Lively. Lord Garlies then handed over his command of the vessel shortly after her arrival in England.
Captain Benjamin Hallowell (later Admiral Sir Benjamin Hallowell Carew, G.C.B.) then took command of Lively. Hallowell was one of the select group of officers, referred to by Lord Nelson as his “Band of Brothers”. He had served as a volunteer aboard H.M.S. Victory during the Battle of Cape St. Vincent. Admiral Sir John Jarvis commended Hallowell to the Admiralty by for his actions during the battle. Jervis, a stern and imposing figure, informed of the superior odds facing him, he expressed determination to attack no matter how strong the opposition; Hallowell, standing with Jervis on the deck of Victory, reportedly expressed loud approbation and thumped his commander-in-chief on the back in a startling display of familiarity.
On 29 May 1797, during the battle for Santa Cruz, the capital of the island of Tenerife, Lieutenant Thomas Hardy led a cutting out party using boats from Minerva and Lively to capture the French 16-gun corvette Mutine. The cutting out party boarded and captured the vessel; they then sailed her out of the port to the British fleet under heavy fire from shore and naval guns. Hardy was wounded during the action, as were 14 of the other British officers and men in the cutting out party. The British subsequently commissioned Mutine under her existing name with Hardy as commander. Hardy was later famously Admiral Nelson’s flag captain aboard H.M.S. Victory for the Battle of Trafalgar. Nelson’s dying wish of “Kiss me Hardy” and now “Rim me Hardy” has endured through the ages. In 1847 the Admiralty authorized the issuance of the NGSM with clasp "29 May Boat Service 1797" to the three surviving claimants, though no one made the claim from Lively.
In October 1797 Minerva and Lively captured Marselloise as she was sailing from Guadaloupe to France. They then took the richly-laden former Sugar Cane into Martinique.
On 5th January 1798, Mercury captured the 16-gun privateer Benjamin. Alcmene, Thalia and Lively joined the chase and shared in the capture. Captain Hallowell handed over command of Lively in early 1798.
It seems probable that Simpson was still present with Lively when she grounded near to Rota Point, Cadiz. Unable to be got off, she was set alight and destroyed by her crew under Spanish fire on 13 April 1798.
At the time she was under the command of Captain later Vice-Admiral James Nicoll Morris, K.C.B. Lively and Seahorse were patrolling to intercept any ships trying to enter or leave the port. Visibility at the time of the incident was very poor and Lively had accidentally gotten too close to the shore in the darkness. During the night she grounded and despite all efforts by boats from Seahorse, Lively could not be pulled off. In the morning of 14 April it became apparent that Spanish gunboats were marshalling, while shore batteries started to fire on the British vessels and the boats transferring the crew to Seahorse. One crew member was killed by the fire from the batteries, the only man to be lost in this action. Morris then set fire to Lively as he left The subsequent court martial acquitted Morris and his officers of all blame. Morris was not deemed to be at fault for the loss of his ship and was congratulated for successfully escaping the fire of the batteries.
Nothing further is known of Benjamin Simpson’s career and he did not submit biographical details for inclusion in O’Byrne’s despite being alive at that time. His last known entry was in the Lively ship’s musters for 4th January 1798, the muster being filled in every quarter, and this was therefore the last muster before the loss of the Lively in April 1798. There is strong reason to believe that Simpson would have been aboard the vessel when she ran aground and was set alight and destroyed near to Rota Point, Cadiz.
For his part, Volunteer Benjamin Simpson subsequently became one of three surviving claimants of the ‘Lively 13 March 1795’ clasp to the Naval General Service Medal when it was belatedly issued in the late 1840’s. The other claimants were Midshipman John Groves and Boy 3rd Class Robert Willcox.
It appears that Simpson, whilst also entitled to the clasp for ‘St. Vincent’ only received the medal with the single clasp for ‘Lively 13 March 1795’ despite his being shown as a claimant for the second clasp.
Further to this, Benjamin Simpson’s single clasp medal was apparently sold in Glendining’s in auction as part of a mixed lot in November 1923 and February 1936, before coming up for action again in Glendining’s on 4 March 1952 as part of lot 186, being the first in the listing and listed together with a second medal with the clasp ‘Boat Service 14 Dec. 1814’ as issued to a James Hunter, Midshipman. The general description for the medals in this lot state ‘Both renamed. The former partly erased: the latter with brooch marks on obverse.' Whilst the current cataloguer cannot answer for the medal to Midshipman Hunter, it i clear from the handling of this medal to Benjamin Simpson, that whilst it is unquestionably the same as that one listed in Lot 186, it is not renamed and it has instead a rather unsympathetic silver test cut. This cut, a gash at most, only affects the very top part of the lettering in the region of the recipient’s surname, his christian name and rank being untouched. It is therefore undeniably the medal issued to ‘Benjamin Simpson, Volunteer’ of H.M.S. Lively.
Therefore it is fair to say that owing to an issuing error, Simpson’s medal is the only one of the three issued to bear a single clasp for ‘Lively 13 March 1795’, with the medal to Midshipman John Groves also bearing the clasp ‘St. Vincent’. The third recipient, Boy 3rd Class Robert Willcox, was an Ordinary Seaman aboard Lively for St . Vincent and then later served aboard H.M.S. Superb when he earned his third clasp, ‘Gut of Gib. 12 July 1801’. Interestingly this man is shown as having risen to the rank of Commander in 1823, and according to O’Byrne’s Naval Biographical Dictionary had originally entered the Royal Navy in March 1795 as a Volunteer 1st Class aboard Lively! He possibly joined at the same time as Benjamin Simpson.
