1807 (MDCCCVII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar, the 1807th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 807th year of the 2nd millennium, the 7th year of the 19th century, and the 8th year of the 1800s decade. As of the start of 1807, the Gregorian calendar was 12 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.
William Wyndham Grenville, 1st Baron Grenville, was a British Pittite Tory politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1806 to 1807, but was a supporter of the Whigs for the duration of the Napoleonic Wars. As prime minister, his most significant achievement was the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. However, his government failed to either make peace with France or to accomplish Catholic emancipation and it was dismissed in the same year.
Henry Bathurst, 3rd Earl Bathurst, was a High Tory, High Church Pittite. He was an MP for thirty years before ennoblement. A personal friend of William Pitt the Younger, he became a broker of deals across cabinet factions during the Napoleonic era. After the Napoleonic Wars, Bathurst was on the conservative wing of the Tory party.
The Ministry of All the Talents was a national unity government in the United Kingdom formed by William Grenville, 1st Baron Grenville, on his appointment as Prime Minister on 11 February 1806, following the death of William Pitt the Younger.
The Slave Trade Act 1807, officially An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom prohibiting the slave trade in the British Empire. Although it did not abolish the practice of slavery, it encouraged British action to press other nation states to abolish their own slave trades. It took effect on 1 May 1807, after 18 years of trying to pass an abolition bill.
Field Marshal George Townshend, 1st Marquess Townshend, PC, known as The Viscount Townshend from 1764 to 1787, was a British soldier and politician. After serving at the Battle of Dettingen during the War of the Austrian Succession and the Battle of Culloden during the Jacobite Rising, Townshend took command of the British forces for the closing stages of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham during the Seven Years' War. He went on to be Lord Lieutenant of Ireland or Viceroy where he introduced measures aimed at increasing the size of Irish regiments, reducing corruption in Ireland and improving the Irish economy. In cooperation with Prime Minister North in London, he solidified governmental control over Ireland. He also served as Master-General of the Ordnance, first in the North Ministry and then in the Fox–North Coalition.
The Blockade of Africa began in 1808 after the United Kingdom outlawed the Atlantic slave trade, making it illegal for British ships to transport slaves. The Royal Navy immediately established a presence off Africa to enforce the ban, called the West Africa Squadron. Although the ban initially applied only to British ships, Britain negotiated treaties with other countries to give the Royal Navy the right to intercept and search their ships for slaves.
During the Napoleonic Wars, the Anglo-Russian War was the phase of hostilities between Great Britain and Russia after the latter signed the Treaty of Tilsit that ended its war with France. Anglo-Russian hostilities were limited primarily to minor naval actions in the Baltic Sea and Barents Sea.
The Monroe–Pinkney Treaty was a treaty drawn up in 1806 by diplomats of the United States and United Kingdom to renew the 1795 Jay Treaty. As it was rejected by President Thomas Jefferson, it never took effect. The treaty was negotiated by the minister to Britain, James Monroe, and his associate, William Pinkney, on behalf of the Jefferson administration and by Lord Holland and Lord Auckland on behalf of the Ministry of All the Talents, a government that was headed by Lord Grenville.
The West Africa Squadron, also known as the Preventative Squadron, was a squadron of the British Royal Navy whose goal was to suppress the Atlantic slave trade by patrolling the coast of West Africa. Formed in 1808 after the British Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act 1807 and based out of Portsmouth, England, it remained an independent command until 1856 and then again from 1866 to 1867.
Captain George William Manby FRS was an English author and inventor. He designed an apparatus for saving life from shipwrecks and also the "Pelican Gun", the first modern form of fire extinguisher.
The 1807 United Kingdom general election was the third general election to be held after the Union of Great Britain and Ireland.
Events from the year 1809 in the United Kingdom.
Events from the year 1808 in the United Kingdom.
Events from the year 1791 in Great Britain.
Events from the year 1797 in Great Britain.
The Java campaign of 1806–1807 was a minor campaign during the Napoleonic Wars by British Royal Navy forces against a naval squadron of the Kingdom of Holland, a client state of the French Empire, based on the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies. Seeking to eliminate any threat to valuable British merchant convoys passing through the Malacca Straits, Rear-Admiral Sir Edward Pellew determined in early 1806 that the Dutch naval forces based at Java, which included several ships of the line and three frigates, had to be defeated to ensure British dominance in the region. Lacking the forces to effect an invasion of the Dutch colony, Pellew instead sought to isolate and blockade the Dutch squadron based at Batavia in preparation for raids specifically targeting the Dutch ships with his main force.
The Raid on Griessie was a British attack on the Dutch port of Griessie on Java in the Dutch East Indies in December 1807 during the Napoleonic Wars. The raid was the final action in a series of engagements fought by the British squadron based in the Indian Ocean against the Dutch naval forces in Java. It completed the destruction of the Dutch squadron with the scuttling of three ships of the line, the last Dutch warships in the region. The British squadron—under the command of Rear-Admiral Sir Edward Pellew—sought to eliminate the Dutch to safeguard the trade route with China, which ran through the Straits of Malacca and were in the range of Dutch raiders operating from the principal Javan port of Batavia. In the summer of 1806, British frigates reconnoitred Javan waters and captured two Dutch frigates, encouraging Pellew to lead a major attack on Batavia that destroyed the last Dutch frigate and several smaller warships. Before the Batavia raid, however, Dutch Rear-Admiral Hartsinck had ordered his ships of the line to sail eastwards, where they took shelter at Griessie, near Sourabaya.
Thomas Moore Manby was a British naval officer who fought in the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars and later rose to the rank of rear admiral. He sailed with George Vancouver on his voyages of exploration, captained Bordelais, Africaine and Thalia, and was the chief suspect in the "delicate investigation" into the morals of Caroline, Princess of Wales.
HMS Snipe was a gun-brig and the first Royal Navy ship to bear the name Snipe. Her grounding in 1807 inspired the invention of the Manby Mortar, an important development in maritime lifesaving equipment.
