Background
James Gambier was born on the 13th of October 1756 at the Bahamas, of which his father, John Gambier, was at that time lieutenant-governor.
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James Gambier was born on the 13th of October 1756 at the Bahamas, of which his father, John Gambier, was at that time lieutenant-governor.
He entered the navy in 1767 as a midshipman on board the " Yarmouth, " under the command of his uncle; and, his family interest obtaining for him rapid promotion, he was raised in 1778 to the rank cf post-captain, and appointed to the " Raleigh, " a fine 32-gun frigate. At the peace of 1783 he was placed on half-pay; but, on the outbreak of the war of the French Revolution, he was appointed to the command of the 74-gun ship " Defence, " under Lord Howe; and in her he had an honourable share in the battle on the 16t of June 1794.
In this office he continued for six years, till, in February 1801, he, a vice-admiral of 1799, hoisted his flag on board the " Neptune, " of 98 guns, as third in command of the Channel Fleet under Admiral Cornwallis, where, however, he remained for but a year, when he was appointed governor of Newfoundland and commander-in-chief of the ships on that station. In May 1804 he returned to the admiralty, and with a short intermission in 1806, continued there during the naval administration of Lord Melville, of his uncle, Lord Barham, and of Lord Mulgrave. In November 1805 he was raised to the rank of admiral; and in the summer of 1807, whilst still a lord of the admiralty, he was appointed to the command of the fleet ordered to the Baltic, which, in concert with the army under Lord Cathcart, reduced Copenhagen, and enforced the surrender of the Danish navy, consisting of nineteen ships of the line, besides frigates, sloops, gunboats, and naval stores. This service was considered by the government as worthy of special acknowledgment; the naval and military commanders, officers, seamen and soldiers received the thanks of both Houses of Parliament, and Admiral Gambier was rewarded with a peerage.
In 1808 Gambier was appointed to command the Channel Fleet. In April 1809 he chased a squadron of French ships that had escaped from Brest into the Basque Roads. He called a council of war in which Lord Cochrane was given command of the inshore squadron, and who subsequently led the attack. Gambier refused to commit the Channel Fleet after Cochrane's attack, using explosion vessels that encouraged the French squadron to warp further into the shallows of the estuary. This action resulted in the majority of the French fleet running aground at Rochefort.
Gambier was content with the blockading role played by the offshore squadron. Admiral Sir Eliab Harvey, who had commanded "Fighting Temeraire" at the Battle of Trafalgar, believed they had missed an opportunity to inflict further damage upon the French fleet. He told Gambier "I never saw a man so unfit for the command of a fleet as Your Lordship. " Cochrane threatened to use his parliamentary vote against Gambier in retaliation for not committing the fleet to action. Gambier called for a court martial to examine his conduct. The court martial, on 26 July 1809 on Gladiator in Portsmouth, exonerated Gambier. Consequently, neither Harvey nor Cochrane were appointed by the Admiralty to command for the remainder of the war. The episode had political and personal overtones. Gambier was connected by family and politics to the Tory prime minister William Pitt. In Parliament, Cochrane represented the riding of Westminster, which tended to vote Radical. In the aftermath of Basque Roads, Cochrane and Gambier quarreled and Gambier resentfully excluded Cochrane from the battle dispatches. There is little wonder that Cochrane took the unusual move of standing in opposition to parliament's pro forma vote of thanks to Gambier.
In 1814 Gambier was part of the team negotiating the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812 between Britain and the United States. He was appointed a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath on 7 June 1815. Promoted to Admiral of the Fleet on 22 July 1830, he died at his home, Iver Grove in Buckinghamshire, on 19 April 1833 and was buried at St. Peter's churchyard in Iver.
(Mark Twain once famously said "there was but one solitary...)
In July 1788 Gambier married Louisa Matthew; they had no children.