A great deal has been written about the British Royal Navy frigate hms Indefatigable and her first captain, Sir Edward Pellew, including three biographies, many accounts of actions in which the ship engaged and a number of works of historical fiction. In this last category the best-known example is the series of Hornblower novels by the twentieth-century author C. S. Forester, who chose Pellew's Indefatigable as the ship on which his eponymous antihero, Horatio Hornblower, served the majority of his time as a midshipman. This book presents an examination of the lives and careers of seventeen of the young gentlemen who would have been Hornblower's historical shipmates aboard hms Indefatigable; the volunteers, midshipmen and mates alongside whom he would have lived, berthed and fought.

Captain Sir Edward Pellew, later Admiral Lord Exmouth, is still highly regarded as a gifted and audacious sea officer. In a long and successful career he served as Commander in Chief of both the East Indies station and the Mediterranean Fleet, was feted as the victor of the Bombardment of Algiers and rose to the rank of Admiral of the Red and Vice Admiral of the United Kingdom. Notwithstanding these notable achievements, Pellew is most widely remembered as the quintessential frigate commander and captain of the 44-gun rasée hms Indefatigable.

Pellew captained the Indefatigable for just over three years, from December 1795 to March 1799. It was a successful command by any measure and during this time the ship took numerous prizes and fought several notable engagements. The Indefatigable's most famous action was unquestionably the dramatic Droits de L'Homme engagement when, on 13 January 1797, the Indefatigable, together with her consort the 36-gun frigate Amazon, took on a French 74-gun ship of the line and ran her on shore following a brutal twelve-hour engagement fought at night in the teeth of a ferocious storm on the lee shore of Audierne Bay on the Breton coast.

The Droits de L'Homme engagement is regarded as one of the most emblematic frigate engagements of the French Revolutionary Wars, but, despite being cited in almost every contemporary and modern naval history of this period, little has been written about the Indefatigable's officers and crew.

The young gentlemen who served under Pellew's command aboard hms Indefatigable in 1797 are in many ways indicative of the countless men and boys who benefited from his patronage throughout his long career. Three individuals, George Cadogan, the son of an earl, Jeremiah Coghlan, a brave and capable merchant seaman, and William Kempthorne, the son of a Falmouth packet captain, are particularly illustrative of the breadth of Pellew's patronage and the wide range of young officers whose careers he nurtured and promoted. Irrespective of their widely varying family backgrounds and social standing, all benefited from Pellew's support, particularly during their formative years in the service. These young gentlemen highlight the nature of Pellew's patronage, his enduring friendship and the ongoing, sometimes dogged, support he provided to those who ran foul of the vicissitudes of naval service.

The Honourable George Cadogan is unique among the young gentlemen of hms Indefatigable in that he was the only one of the seventeen who came to the ship bearing his own aristocratic title. On the evidence of contemporary naval biographies, Cadogan's naval career bears all the hallmarks of privilege and patronage. The eighth son of Earl Cadogan joined the navy at the age of twelve, following a recommendation from the First Lord of the Admiralty, he made lieutenant at nineteen, commander at twenty-one, post captain at twenty-four, achieved the rank of Admiral of the Red in retirement and served as naval aide-de-camp to two monarchs.

While Cadogan's achievements appear respectable by any measure, archival evidence reveals a troubling picture of a man who had a turbulent naval career and an unsettled family life. By the time he retired from active service, George Cadogan had survived two mutinies, lost one ship, served time as a prisoner of war, been investigated by two courts of inquiry following accusations of cruelty and brutality, and been court martialled on charges relating to the death of a young midshipman. Though honourably acquitted of all charges, accusations of tyranny and brutality dogged George Cadogan throughout his career . Cadogan's personal life was also marred by a series of scandals. His parents and his sister were involved in acrimonious and very public divorce cases, which resulted in Cadogan fighting a duel in an attempt to restore the family's honour.

Since his death in 1833, Admiral Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth, has been the subject of three biographies and numerous character studies, both contemporary and modern, which have shaped the perception of the man, his reputation and his legacy. While Pellew's reputation as a gifted sea officer and the foremost frigate commander of his era is beyond dispute, the picture of the man that emerges from his biographies is both complex and contradictory. N. A. M. Rodger's brief but balanced assessment of Pellew as ‘tough, brave, skilful, lucky and unscrupulous’ illustrates the ambiguous nature of his character. From his earliest days as a midshipman, Pellew's courage, activity and zeal were recognised and rewarded, but he was also criticised for being volatile, intemperate and antagonistic. At a time when naval captains were celebrated for their ability to earn enormous fortunes in prize money, Pellew was feted for his success in capturing prizes but gained a reputation for avarice and cupidity. In a system that favoured interest and patronage, Pellew was a generous and steadfast patron who nurtured the careers of many young officers and men, but at the same time he was criticised for taking nepotism to extreme lengths by over-promoting his own sons. Pellew was celebrated by the press and public for rising through the ranks on his own merits, but there were persistent sneers from some of his contemporaries that his eager pursuit of honours was undignified at best. Many of these contradictory attitudes towards Pellew arose from the social and political mores of the period, while others have resulted from the vagaries of Pellew's biographers.

Pellew's first biography, The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth, was written in 1835, immediately after his death, by Edward Osler. While Osler's work was sanctioned by Pellew's eldest brother Samuel, the rest of the family vehemently objected to its publication and refused to allow Osler access to Pellew's archive. Osler's primary aim in writing the biography was clearly to glorify Pellew's reputation and that of his family; however, much of what he wrote is ambiguous or just plain wrong, particularly with regard to the details of Pellew's naval service. This is perhaps unsurprising as his primary source was Samuel who, although he had served briefly as a naval surgeon, spent most of his life ashore as a customs official and had little experience of life at sea.

The remarkable exchange of letters between Sir Edward Pellew and Lord Spencer, First Lord of the Admiralty, relating to Pellew's appointment to the Impetueux, has been published in whole and part in many places. It is reproduced in its entirety here as it stands as an eloquent testimony to Pellew's devotion to hms Indefatigable and her crew, the ‘faithful, and attached Companions, grown from boys to manhood under him’.

Sir Ed Pellew Bart.

Dear Sir

The extensive Promotion of Flag Officers which His Majesty has been pleased to authorize me to make brings you so high on the Captains List, that it is no longer consistent with the ordinary Practice of the Service that you should continue to serve in a Frigate: I have therefore given you an Appointment to the Impetueux as being the most active and desirable Line of Battle Ship which the Arrangement on this occasion enabled me to select for you, and I have no doubt but that you will in this new Line of Service continue to gain as much Credit as you have already, by the Acknowledgement of every one who knows you, obtained.

Believe me Dear Sir

your very faithful

humble Servant

Spencer

Pellew to Spencer, no date

My Lord,

I know not how to express my surprize on the receipt of your lordships’ very unexpected letter; and had I conceived the intended arrangement of Promotion could have affected my situation in the command of the Indefatigable I should have most earnestly entreated your forebearance, and shall now feel myself highly gratified if your lordship will permit me to continue in my present situation, amidst officers, and men who have served under thro’ the war and who look up to me for protection I cannot at the same time that I express my wishes, but feel very sensible of your Lordship's attention to me in the selection you have been pleased to make and if my request should not meet your approbation I indulge myself with the expectation of being permitted to remove with me such officers and young gentlemen as I shall point out and I confide in your lordships goodness for throwing me as much into active service as possible.

Hms Indefatigable, the ship with which Pellew's name is most closely associated, was built by Master Shipbuilder Henry Adams at Bucklers Hard shipyard on the Beaulieu River in Hampshire in 1781. She was one of five Ardent class 64-gun third-class ships of the line ordered by the Royal Navy over a five-year period from 1777 to 1782. The Ardent class had been designed by Sir Thomas Slade well over a decade earlier and was based on the lines of the French ship Le Fougueux, built at Brest in 1747 and captured and bought into the Royal Navy in 1748. Two Ardent class ships were built in Slade's own lifetime, hms Ardent, in 1761, and hms Raisonnable, in 1765. Although the Raisonnable had a long and successful history, and remained in service until 1810, the Ardent class was already becoming obsolete by the time the Indefatigable was completed and launched in 1784. Sixty-four-gun ships were increasingly regarded as too small to serve in the line of battle, where their place was being taken by larger, heavily armed 74s, and too slow and heavy to take on frigates, despite the fact that the French were building ever larger ships in this class. At a time when some notions of honourable conduct in battle still prevailed, it was regarded as somewhat disreputable for a ship to take on an opponent of a lesser class. The outcome of such an engagement might have been assured, but the victory would hardly have been regarded as gallant. Consequently the Indefatigable was never commissioned as a ship of the line and she remained for ten years at Portsmouth Dockyard, where she had been transferred for completion.

At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War in 1793 concerns were growing that the French possessed a number of large, heavily armed frigates that were superior to anything in the service of the Royal Navy. Some of these frigates, such as Brutus, were old, cut down, or raséed 74-gun ships of the line, and Gardiner has argued that the threat posed by these aged and unstable ships was more imaginary than real. Others such as the Pomone, launched at Rochefort in 1785, and captured by Pellew in the Arethusa in 1794, were frigates of conventional layout but increased size, which carried an armament of twenty-six 24-pound guns.

This book has its origins in a wider research project that initially arose from the authors’ shared love of hms Indefatigable's most famous fictional midshipman, Horatio Hornblower, and a mutual fascination with the career of his historical captain, Sir Edward Pellew. Despite the honours Pellew earned during his long and distinguished naval career, the Droits de L'Homme engagement still stands as the apotheosis of his career as a fighting captain so it was perhaps unsurprising that we were drawn to this iconic frigate action as the starting point for our archival research. Our original intention was to explore the lives and careers of the commissioned officers of all three ships that fought through the night and the storm off the lee shore of Hodierne Bay on 13 January 1797; the Indefatigable, the Amazon and the Droits de L'Homme. However it did not take us long to realise that any one of these officers warranted extensive biographical research in their own right and consequently we narrowed the scope of our research to concentrate on a single ship.

The first young gentleman we focused our attention on was the Honourable George Cadogan. Cadogan had already been the subject of an authoritative biography written in 1989; however, we were intrigued to discover that he had been subjected to three courts martial during the early years of his career, none of which were mentioned in the otherwise comprehensive biography. Cadogan became the subject of our first research paper, ‘The Honourable George Cadogan: A Career in Courts Martial’, which we presented at the New Researchers in Maritime History Conference in Glasgow in 2012. It was as a result of this paper that we were approached by Peter Sowden of Boydell & Brewer who invited us to submit the proposal for this book.

One theme that emerged early in our research was the high regard, mutual affection and lasting friendship that bound Pellew and the young gentlemen of the Indefatigable together throughout their careers and later civilian lives. The parallels with the fictional Pellew's affection and concern for Hornblower were clear. This should not have been a surprise, of course – Pellew was renowned for his patronage of junior officers; however he also had a reputation for avarice and nepotism that arose partially from C. Northcote Parkinson's influential but flawed biography.

One factor affecting the Indefatigables, which they shared with the majority of officers and men who served at sea during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was the toll that their naval careers took on their health. In addition to those who lost their lives as a result of shipwreck, disease and wounds sustained in action, a number of them, including Nicholas Pateshall, George Cadogan, Thomas Groube and Henry Hart, suffered from health problems that resulted in them being sent ashore to recuperate for periods of weeks or months. Like many sea officers and men, many of the Indefatigables suffered from the severe rheumatic pains that frequently resulted from years spent in wet clothes and freezing conditions, as well as long-term complications brought on by the destructive nature of earlier wounds. For those that had the means, taking the waters at fashionable spas such as Cheltenham was regarded as a beneficial treatment to alleviate the arthritic and rheumatic pains that were the legacy of the tough living conditions they had endured, and which often became magnified in later life.

In the letter that William Kempthorne wrote to his friend Nicholas Pateshall in 1816 with news of the Bombardment of Algiers, he signed off with the suggestion that they meet at Cheltenham: ‘Should I spend a few weeks at Cheltenham as my side sometimes tells me I should, it will give me very much pleasure to meet you.’

Pellew himself spent time in Cheltenham in the late autumn following his return from Algiers, when he was not attending numerous engagements in London. He arrived in the town on 24 October 1816 and was welcomed in grand fashion; The Morning Post reported in great detail how his carriage was drawn into the town by a team of beribboned men, preceded by a cheering crowd who escorted him to his town house. The Post also noted: ‘We are anticipating a crowded ball on the 6th November, under the patronage of Lord and Lady Exmouth at the solicitation of all the naval officers.’ It seems quite likely that among the officers making the solicitation there were one or more former Indefatigables, perhaps even Kempthorne and Pateshall.

Cheltenham continued to be a popular retreat for naval officers throughout the 1820s and 1830s.

Pellew's engagement with the Cléopatre in June 1793, at the very outbreak of the war, had already brought him public honours and huge popular acclaim; he was knighted for his services, awarded an annuity from the Privy Purse to cover the expenditure associated with his new title, and feted by the King, George III, the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Chatham, and the Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger. However it is the engagement with the French 74, Les Droits de L'Homme, five years later, that has gone down in history as the most iconic frigate action of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and which sealed Pellew's reputation as the quintessential frigate captain.

Les Droits de L'Homme was one of the remnants of the ill-fated expedition to Ireland, a joint military and naval endeavour that proved to be a resounding disaster for the French, and an embarrassment for the British. The Admiralty had been monitoring the build-up of the French fleet at Brest for months, and although they had sufficient intelligence to know that an expedition of considerable force was imminent, they had no knowledge of the destination. Ireland, Portugal, Gibraltar and England itself were all speculative targets. In order to counteract the threat of invasion, the Admiralty instigated a system of close blockade under the command of Admiral Lord Bridport, Commander in Chief of the Channel Fleet. The main complement of the fleet was based at Spithead under the command of Bridport himself, while a squadron of fifteen sail of the line under Admiral Colpoys was stationed off Ushant. An additional inshore squadron of detached frigates commanded by Pellew in the Indefatigable patrolled the inner reaches of Brest, often peering right into the roads to watch the activity of the fleet at anchor.

The destination of the planned expedition was Ireland, the seeds having been planted in Basel the previous year when Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Arthur O'Conor of the banned republican Society of United Irishmen met with General Hoche to discuss support for their cause.

In his comprehensive work on frigate command in the Napoleonic Wars, The Star Captains, Wareham has explored the close affinity and camaraderie that often developed among frigate crews, particularly when they served together across multiple commands under the leadership of gifted and charismatic captains. Through independent cruising, crewing and taking prizes, undertaking cutting out expeditions and shore-based operations, frigate service allowed young officers to gain considerable experience at a young age and to forge a shared identity that often persisted long after crews were paid off and dispersed to other ships of the fleet. Wareham quotes Captain Abraham Crawford's reminiscence that ‘those of the frigate school’ differed widely from crews of ships of the line, sloops and gun brigs: ‘Of this they seemed themselves aware, avoiding as much as they could an intimacy with the others and forming as much as possible, a society apart.’

There is no doubt that the officers and men who served under Pellew's command aboard the Nymphe, the Arethusa, and the Indefatigable developed a strong shared identity that bound them together, even after Pellew was forced to relinquish command of his beloved frigate and the crew were scattered across the fleet. Unfortunately no personal correspondence dating from this period has been found from the young gentlemen who followed Pellew from the Indefatigable to the insubordinate ship of the line Impetueux. Even Nicholas Pateshall, who wrote so enthusiastically when he joined Pellew's crew, is silent. However it is not hard to imagine that the Indefatigables would indeed have formed a society apart from the mutinous crew of the Impetueux. Certainly one of the Indefatigables, Henry Hart, was a witness for the prosecution at the court martial of the Impetueux mutineers, and Osler tells a, possibly apocryphal, tale that when the hour came to execute the condemned men, Pellew distinguished the conduct of the Indefatigables from that of their shipmates.

During his own lifetime Pellew was regarded not only as one of the outstanding frigate captains of the era but also as a consummate and versatile sea officer. These were qualities that he looked for in his own officers and men, and they were often to be found in young men who came to the Royal Navy from the merchant service. The navy attracted skilled merchant recruits as it offered them the possibility of honour, gentility, wealth and a chance of bettering themselves. The advantage was not all one way; the navy also benefited significantly from the recruitment of officer candidates from the merchant service. In the case of the Indefatigable, merchant recruits leavened the frigate's cohort of midshipmen with adaptable and experienced sea officers who had valuable practical and navigational experience. Such recruits were ideally suited to service with detached frigate squadrons where their flexibility, resourcefulness, and knowledge of coastal waters and harbours could be exploited to the full during shore operations, cutting out expeditions and taking and crewing prizes. Regardless of their background, Pellew nurtured many merchant recruits throughout his lifetime and supported their careers as they progressed through the commissioned and warrant ranks of the service. Of those that served aboard the Indefatigable, several were to become his lifelong friends, and one a member of his extended family.

Alexander McVicar is unusual among the Indefatigable's merchant recruits as he transferred between the Royal Navy and the merchant service several times throughout his career. By the time he joined the Indefatigable, McVicar was already an experienced and versatile seaman whose skills were recognised and valued by Pellew. During the Peace of Amiens, McVicar returned to the merchant service before rejoining the navy when hostilities resumed. He went on to serve at Trafalgar, in the North Sea and the Baltic. After retiring from active service McVicar continued to engage in maritime commerce and served as Admiralty Commissioner for the Harbour and Docks of Leith.

Another versatile merchant recruit was John McKerlie; in addition to holding the rank of midshipman, at various periods McKerlie served as the Indefatigable's quarter gunner, boatswain and schoolmaster. Despite losing his arm during the Droits de L'Homme engagement, McKerlie had a distinguished naval career, serving at Trafalgar, off Heligoland, and on the Scheldt.

A wide range of original source materials have been used to identify the young gentlemen present aboard His Majesty's Ship Indefatigable on the night of the Droits de L'Homme engagement and to trace their naval careers, civilian lives and ongoing personal relationships. These sources include the Indefatigable's muster and pay books, which have been cross-referenced with captains’ and masters’ logs. Musters and pay books generally contain much the same information, but on occasion one will record a detail that is missing from the other, while captains’ and masters’ logs can be used to broaden the picture. For example, entries in the muster which record that crew members despatched in a prize ship have been captured, can be cross-referenced with logs of the appropriate date to reveal the name and provenance of the prize. Lieutenants’ passing certificates also provide a useful overview of young officers’ early careers; however, these particular documents should be treated with caution as some of the data they contain, particularly age and years of service, often appears to have been falsified. Additional invaluable source materials include Admiralty service records, personal correspondence from serving officers and published service biographies such as Marshall's Naval Biography.

Where available, non-naval sources have also been used to provide an accurate picture of the lives of the Indefatigable's young gentlemen outwith the service. These can be broadly divided into two categories: genealogical sources, including birth, marriage and death records, wills, tax records and property deeds; and publications and manuscripts, including articles from local and national newspapers and contemporary journals and manuscript letters from a variety of public archives and private collections.

The primary source used to identify this distinct cohort of young gentlemen is the Indefatigable's muster book for January–February 1797. Ships’ musters normally cover two-month periods, with occasional variations, for instance when a ship is paid off. Although the information contained in the double-page entries of muster books appears sparse on first sight, these bald facts provide a solid basis for investigating the lives and careers of individual officers and men. Most of the relevant details appear on the verso page of the muster in columns recording date of first joining, age on joining ship, birthplace, name, rating and discharge. The columns of the recto page, which concern payments for tobacco, clothing etc., are less likely to be filled in consistently.

Like many sea captains of the age, Pellew drew heavily on his home community and a wide circle of family and friends in order to man his ships. Although Pellew was born in Dover, his roots were planted firmly in Cornwall where his family originated and where he himself grew up. In the earlier part of his career, Pellew had particularly strong connections to Falmouth where the Western Squadron was based and where his own young family were born and raised. Although Pellew famously resorted to recruiting a band of Cornish tin miners to crew his first frigate, the Nymphe, he was able to draw many more promising recruits from the thriving port town of Falmouth.

The final cohort of the Indefatigable's young gentlemen fall roughly into two groups: those who were related to friends and family of Pellew, and those who belonged to the close-knit Falmouth maritime community. Like William Kempthorne, James Bray's father earned his living in the Falmouth packet service, though their family backgrounds could not have been more different. Bray's father, a surgeon in the packet service, belonged to a family of prominent Catholic clergy and scholars who held influential positions in both Ireland and France. William Warden's connection to Falmouth is rather more tangential; however, as he was the son of a Lisbon merchant, it is possible that his connection to Pellew came about via the Falmouth–Lisbon packet and the trade links it supported.

Throughout his life, Pellew had a reputation for promoting the sons of family, friends and influential patrons, often beyond their abilities, and in this regard the young gentlemen of the Indefatigable were no exception. In addition to carrying the names of his own two sons on the ship's books, he also accepted on board the son of his friend and fellow Cornish frigate commander, Robert Carthew Reynolds, along with a young relative of his wife, Susan Frowd, and another youngster with family connections to his closest friend and confidant, Alex Broughton. There is no question that Robert Reynolds junior and Philip Frowd were deserving of the confidence Pellew placed in them; both were gallant and enterprising young officers. Richard Delves Broughton, however, was a rather different kettle of fish; described by Pellew himself as an ‘odd fellow’, young Broughton had a short and turbulent naval career which ended with him being court martialled and dismissed the service.