Thomas Baillie | |
|---|---|
| Captain Thomas Baillie, by Nathaniel Hone the Elder, 1779 | |
| Born | c.1725 |
| Died | 15 December 1802 |
| Allegiance | |
| Service | |
| Years of service | c.1740 – 1802 |
| Rank | Post captain |
| Commands | |
| Battles / wars | |
Thomas Baillie (c.1725 – 15 December 1802) was a Royal Navy officer. He saw service in the Seven Years' War, rising to the rank of captain. He was later appointed to the office of Lieutenant-Governor of Greenwich Hospital, but became involved in the celebrated libel case R v Baillie after he made accusations of mismanagement in the running of the hospital. He was later appointed to the post of Clerk of the Deliveries of the Ordnance, which he held until his death in 1802.
Baillie was the son of Robert Baillie, Celbridge, Co. Kildare, Ireland. One of his brothers was Captain William Baillie; another, Robert, became archdeacon of Cashel. [1]
Baillie entered the navy about 1740, and was made lieutenant on 29 March 1745. In 1756 he was serving on board the 60-gun HMS Deptford, and was present at the action near Minorca on 20 May. He was shortly afterwards promoted to the command of the 12-gun sloop HMS Alderney, and early in the following year, whilst acting captain of the 28-gun HMS Tartar, captured a French privateer of 24 guns and 240 men, which was purchased into the service as HMS Tartar's Prize. Baillie was promoted to post captain and appointed to command her on 30 March 1757. In this ship he continued, engaged for the most part in convoy service, till she was lost in 1760; and in the following year, 1761, he was appointed to Greenwich Hospital, through the interest, it is said, of the Earl of Bute; he certainly had no claim to the benefits of the hospital by either age, or service, or wounds. [2]
In 1774 he was advanced to be lieutenant-governor of the hospital, and in March 1778 published a work of 116 pages in quarto, the best account of which is its title. It runs; "The Case of the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich, containing a comprehensive view of the internal government, in which are stated the several abuses that have been introduced into that great national establishment, wherein landsmen have been appointed to offices contrary to charter; the ample revenues wasted in useless works, and money obtained by petition to parliament to make good deficiencies; the wards torn down and converted into elegant apartments for clerks and their deputies; the pensioners fed with bull-beef and sour small-beer mixed with water, and the contractors, after having been convicted of the most enormous frauds, suffered to compound their penalties and renew their contract". [2]
Baillie provided proof for his accusations, and though he had not put his name on the title-page, he made no attempt to conceal it. The book both directly and indirectly called in question the conduct of Lord Sandwich who at once deprived him of his office, and prompted the inferior officials of the hospital to bring an action for libel against him. The trial which followed, R v Baillie , in November 1778, is principally noticeable for the speech with which his lawyer Thomas Erskine, afterwards Lord Chancellor, but then just called to the bar, wound up the defence, and cleared Baillie of the charge. [3] From the purely naval point of view, however, Baillie was ruined; he was acquitted of all legal blame; but Lord Sandwich had deprived him of his post, and refused to reinstate him, or to appoint him to a ship for active service. The question was raised in the House of Lords; [4] but the interest of the ministry was sufficient to decide it against Captain Baillie, who during the next three years made several fruitless applications both to the Secretary to the Admiralty and to Lord Sandwich himself. His lordship had publicly declared that he knew nothing against Captain Baillie's character as a sea-officer, and also that he did not feel disposed to act vindictively against him; but Baillie's claims were, nevertheless, persistently ignored, and he was left unemployed under the current administration. [5]
On the change of ministry in 1782, the Duke of Richmond, who became Master-General of the Ordnance, appointed Baillie to the lucrative office of clerk of the deliveries. [5]
A legacy of £500 which fell to him two years later served rather to mark the current of public feeling in the city. Mr. John Barnard, son of former Lord Mayor of London Sir John Barnard, had left him this "as a small token of my approbation of his worthy and disinterested, though ineffectual, endeavours to rescue that noble national charity [sc. Greenwich Hospital] from the rapacious hands of the basest and most wicked of mankind". Captain Baillie spent his old age in the quiet enjoyment of his office under the Ordnance, which he held until his death, on 15 December 1802. [6]
Vice Admiral John Hunter was an officer of the Royal Navy, who succeeded Arthur Phillip as the second Governor of New South Wales, serving from 1795 to 1800.
Vice-Admiral Sir John Lockhart-Ross, 6th Baronet, known as John Lockhart from 1721 to 1760, was an officer of the Royal Navy who saw service during the War of the Austrian Succession, Seven Years' War, and the American War of Independence, and served for a time as a Member of Parliament.
Admiral Sir James Whitley Deans Dundas, GCB was a Royal Navy officer. He took part in the Napoleonic Wars, first as a junior officer when he took part in the Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland in Autumn 1799 and later as a commander when he was in action at Copenhagen Dockyard shortly after the capture of that City in August 1807. He also served as Whig Member of Parliament for Greenwich and then for Devizes and became First Naval Lord in the First Russell ministry in July 1847 and in that role his service was dominated by the needs of Whig party. He was appointed Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean in 1852 and led all naval operations in the Black Sea including the bombardment of Sevastopol in October 1854 during the Crimean War.
Admiral Arthur William Acland Hood, 1st Baron Hood of Avalon, was an officer of the Royal Navy. As a junior officer he took part in the capture of Acre during the Oriental Crisis in 1840 and went ashore with the naval brigade at the defence of Eupatoria in November 1854 during the Crimean War. He became First Naval Lord in June 1885 and in that role was primarily concerned with enshrining into law the recommendations contained in a report on the disposition of the ships of the Royal Navy many of which were unarmoured and together incapable of meeting the combined threat from any two of the other naval powers : these recommendations were contained in the Naval Defence Act 1889.
Vice-Admiral Sir Thomas Francis Fremantle, 1st Baron Fremantle, was a British Royal Navy officer and nobleman whose accolades include three separate fleet actions, a close friendship with Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson and being granted an Austrian barony. He was the father of Admiral Sir Charles Fremantle, after whom the city Fremantle in Western Australia is named.
Admiral of the Fleet Matthew Aylmer, 1st Baron Aylmer, of Covent Garden, Westminster, and Westcliffe, near Dover, was an Anglo-Irish Royal Navy officer and Whig politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons between 1695 and 1720.
Edward Riou FRS was an officer of the Royal Navy who served during the French Revolutionary Wars under several of the most distinguished naval officers of his age and won fame and honour for two incidents in particular.
Admiral Sir Robert Stopford was a British Royal Navy officer and politician whose career spanned over 60 years, from the French Revolutionary Wars to the Egyptian–Ottoman War.
Admiral Sir Sydney Colpoys Dacres, was an officer of the Royal Navy who saw service during the Greek War of Independence, when he was involved in an attack on the Turkish forces at Morea, and later during the Crimean War. Born into a substantial naval dynasty during the Napoleonic Wars, he eventually rose to the rank of Admiral and became First Naval Lord. His only significant action as First Naval Lord was to press for the abolition of masts. He went on to be Visitor and Governor of Greenwich Hospital.
Admiral George Edgcumbe, 1st Earl of Mount Edgcumbe, PC was a British peer, naval officer and politician.
Vice Admiral Sir William Johnstone Hope, GCB was a prominent and controversial British Royal Navy officer and politician in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Britain, whose career experienced fleet actions, disputes with royalty, party politics and entry to both Russian and British orders of chivalry. A popular officer, Hope served with Nelson, Duncan and Lord Keith through several campaigns, making connections which enabled him to secure a lengthy political career after his retirement from the Royal Navy in 1804 due to ill-health. After 26 years in Parliament, Hope was largely inactive and instead served as a Lord of the Admiralty and commissioner of Greenwich Naval Hospital. Hope died in 1832 after 55 years of naval and political service and was buried in the family plot in Scotland.
Philip Beaver was an officer of the Royal Navy, serving during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He played a varied and active role in several notable engagements, and served under a number of the most notable figures of the Navy of the age.
Admiral Sir John Jennings was a Royal Navy officer and Whig politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons between 1705 and 1734. He commanded HMS Kent at Cadiz and Vigo in 1702 during the War of the Spanish Succession. He went on to be Commander-in-Chief of the Jamaica Station, then Senior Naval Lord and finally Governor of Greenwich Hospital.
Admiral Sir Joseph Sydney Yorke KCB was an officer of the Royal Navy. As a junior officer he saw action at the Battle of the Saintes in April 1782 during the American Revolutionary War. He commanded HMS Stag at the defeat of the Dutch fleet in August 1795 during the French Revolutionary Wars and went on to be First Naval Lord during the closing stages of the Napoleonic Wars.
John Perkins, nicknamed Jack Punch, was a British Royal Navy officer. Perkins was perhaps the first mixed race commissioned officer in the Royal Navy. He rose from obscurity to be a successful ship's captain in the Georgian Royal Navy. He captained a 10-gun schooner during the American War of Independence and in a two-year period captured at least 315 enemy ships.
R v Baillie, also known as the Greenwich Hospital Case, was a 1778 prosecution of Thomas Baillie for criminal libel. The case initiated the legal career of Thomas Erskine. Baillie, the Lieutenant-Governor of the Greenwich Hospital for Seamen, a facility for injured or pensioned off seamen, had noted irregularities and corruption in the hospital, which was formally run by the Earl of Sandwich. After his official reporting of the problems failed to bring about reform in the hospital, Baillie published a pamphlet that was critical of the hospital's officers, alleging that Sandwich had given appointments to pay off political debts; Sandwich ignored the pamphlet but ensured that Baillie was indicted for criminal libel. Baillie hired five barristers, including Erskine, then newly called to the Bar, and appeared before Lord Mansfield in the Court of King's Bench on 23 November 1778.
Sir Samuel Warren KCB, KCH was an officer of the Royal Navy who served during the American War of Independence, and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
James Luttrell was an officer in the Royal Navy who served during the American War of Independence and a politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1775 to 1788.
George Frederick Ryves was an officer of the Royal Navy who saw service during the American War of Independence, and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, rising to the rank of rear-admiral.
HMS Tartar's Prize was a 24-gun sixth-rate of the Royal Navy, which saw active service between 1756 and 1760, during the Seven Years' War.
Attribution