Edward Vernon

Edward Vernon ("Old Grog") (12 November 1684 – 30 October 1757) was an English naval officer. Vernon was born in Westminster, England and went to Westminster School. He joined the Navy in 1700 and was promoted to Lieutenant in 1702 and served on several different ships for the next five years. He was appointed Captain in 1706, taking command of HMS Rye (1696), part of the fleet of Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell. With HMS Rye he narrowly escaped the Scilly naval disaster of 1707 in which Shovell and nearly 2,000 sailors were lost. In the next ten years Vernon was on half pay for half of this time. In May 1728 he took up parliamentary duties and the case of Robert Jenkins, who was alleged to have had his ear cut off by Spanish coastguards in the Caribbean. This led to the War of Jenkins' Ear in 1739 in which Vice Admiral Vernon led a fleet along with Major General Thomas Wentworth. Vernon captured Porto Bello a Spanish colonial possession, as a result of which, he was granted the Freedom of the City of London. However, Vernon's next campaign against the Spanish, a large-scale assault on Cartagena de Indias in 1741 ended in disaster. This was the biggest amphibious attack until the Invasion of Normandy in 1944: in Cartagena the British fleet of 186 ships and almost 27,000 men was defeated by a garrison of 3,500 men and 6 ships of the line commanded by the one-eyed, one-armed Spanish admiral Blas de Lezo. The strategic defense of the colonial port of Cartagena led to heavy British casualties and eventually a retreat to Jamaica. Following the disease outbreak and quarrels with Wentworth, Vernon returned to the UK to find he had been elected MP for Ipswich. However, the news of the Cartagena defeat eventually led to the collapse of Robert Walpole's government. Vernon maintained his Naval career for another four years before retiring in 1746. In an active Parliamentary career Vernon advocated an improvement in naval procedures and he continued to hold an interest in naval affairs until his death in 1757.

Early life
Born in Westminster, London, Vernon was the second son of James Vernon, secretary of state to William III. Edward had one other sibling, James who became British envoy to Denmark and served as a member of parliament and Clerk of the Privy Council. Vernon briefly attended Westminster School, then joined the Royal Navy on 10 May 1700 as a Volunteer per order on board HMS Shrewsbury (1695). It is important to note that Vernon's secondary education was sharply at odds with the norm for Royal Navy officers of his day, most of whom received only an elementary education before they were sent to sea at about the age of twelve.

War of the Spanish Succession
In March 1701, he was transferred to HMS Ipswich (1694) and three months later, joined HMS Mary (1704). On 16 September 1702, Vernon was promoted Lieutenant and appointed to HMS Lennox (1678) serving in the Channel Squadron. The ship was later transferred to the Mediterranean and finally paid off in March 1704. He was then appointed to HMS Barfleur (1697), which at the time was the flagship of Admiral Cloudesley Shovell in the Mediterranean. The ship was present at the capture of Gibraltar and the Battle of Málaga. In December, with Shovell, he transferred to HMS Britannia (1682) and was present at the capture of Barcelona in 1705.

On 22 January 1706 he was promoted Captain and appointed to HMS Dolphin. However, he was moved ten days later into HMS Rye (1696) and remained in the Mediterranean until 1707. With the rest of Shovell’s fleet, he returned to England, but was fortunate to escape the disaster that befell Shovell’s flagship, HMS Association (1697) at the Isles of Scilly. In November, he joined HMS Jersey (1698) and in April 1708, took command of the West Indies station. In 1710, he successfully broke up a Spanish squadron off Cartegena. At the end of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1712, he returned to Britain.

Peace, promotion and parliament
In March 1715, he was appointed to HMS Assistance (1650), in which he served in the Baltic until 1717 when the ship was paid off. After this, he was put on half pay for the next eighteen months. In March 1719, he was appointed to HMS Mary and returned to the Baltic. Vernon was the commodore of Port Royal in Jamaica in 1720. In 1721, he again went on half pay for five years. During this period, he became the member of Parliament for Penryn and took a leading part in naval debates. In 1726, he was re-appointed to active service in HMS Grafton (1709). This ship served in the Baltic until the winter of 1727 when it was transferred to the fleet at Gibraltar, after Spain had declared war on Britain. In May 1728, peace was made with Spain and Vernon returned to Britain and resumed his Parliamentary duties. He took up the case of Robert Jenkins, a merchant seaman who claimed to have had his ear cut off after his vessel was boarded by Spanish guardacostas in 1731.

War of Jenkins' Ear
During the ensuing War of Jenkins' Ear, Vernon was promoted Vice-Admiral (of the Blue) on 9 July 1739 and, as he had prominently spoken for both the war and the Navy, he was given the command of a squadron of six ships. The Gentleman's Magazine reported England's preparations for war against Spain in July 1739, noting that: Vernon had been recalled to active duty and promoted; that, on 10 July King George II had instructed the Lords of the Admiralty to prepare Letters of Marque; and (a week after the fact) it reported Vernon and his squadron had sailed for the West Indies on 20 July.

Despite the unmistakable signs of Great Britain preparing for a naval war in the summer of 1739, the formal declaration of war against Spain was not announced in London until Saturday 23 October 1739.

Porto Bello
On 21 November 1739 Vernon captured the Spanish colonial possession of Porto Bello (now in Panama) using just six ships (against the 90 men Spanish garrison). Vernon was subsequently granted the Freedom of the City of London and commemorative medals were produced. The Portobello areas in London, Dublin and Edinburgh (see Portobello Road and Portobello, Dublin) are named for his victory, and "Rule Britannia" was composed by Thomas Arne during the celebratory frenzy of 1740. A tower commemorating his victory was erected by members of the Vernon family living at Hilton Hall outside Wolverhampton.



Addressed by Hosier's Ghost
Vernon's action was seen by the "Patriots", or pro-war party opposed to Walpole, as just vengeance for  Admiral Hosier's disastrous Blockade of Porto Bello during 1726-28 where with a greater force of 20 ships, and Porto Bello inadequately defended,  government orders forbade him from firing a shot, leaving him and some 4,000 sailors to linger ineffectually off the shore and to die of tropical diseases. The ballad Admiral Hosier's Ghost was written by Richard Glover following Vernon's triumph, as an attempt to remind Walpole of his previous failed policy of inaction, and to check any basking in Vernon's glory on his part. In the ballad, the Ghost of Hosier appears to Vernon as he rests at anchor following his successful engagement, and congratulates him: Unrepining at thy glory

Thy successful arms we hail.

He then charges him to let Hosier's wrongs prevail when he returns to England, upon which he and his fellow ghosts can finally rest, their reputations restored. The first half of verse 7 is thus: For resistance I could fear none

But with twenty ships had done

What thou brave and happy Vernon

Hast atchiev'd with six alone.

Cartagena de Indias


In April 1741, with a much larger fleet and land forces under Major General Thomas Wentworth, 26,600 men and 186 ships, Vernon turned his attention to Cartagena de Indias in Nueva Granada (now Colombia). Vernon was so self-confident that he sent a message to his King assuring he had conquered the city, generating a euphoria in England bigger than the capture of Portbelo produced the year before. Previously he tried to bombard Cartagena with his huge squadron without success. Vernon and Wentworth did not get on and time was wasted in deciding where to land the army. When the army finally attacked at the battle of Cartagena, it was badly beaten and repelled by the garrison of less than 2,000 men and 6 ships commanded by the bravest Spanish commander, the one-eyed, one-armed and one-legged Blas de Lezo. An epidemic of yellow fever, typhus, scurvy and dysentery which ravaged the crews of the ships and the soldiers ashore, compounded the problems and the force returned to Port Royal. Great Britain still does not recognizes the defeat. George Washington's half-brother, Lawrence Washington, served on Vernon's flagship HMS "Princess Caroline" (an 80 gun three-decker) as a Captain of the Marines in 1741 and named his estate Mount Vernon in honour of his commander. At the end of May 1741, the British forces in the Caribbean decided to attack Cuba. Vernon captured Guantánamo Bay, briefly renaming it Cumberland Bay. He arrived with a force of eight warships and 4,000 soldiers with plans to march on Santiago de Cuba, but was resisted by local guerilla forces and finally abandoned the attempt in December after sickness broke out again. Vernon could no longer hold back his anger at what he perceived as Wentworth’s ineptitude and a bitter quarrel ensued ending in the recall of both parties to Britain at the end of 1742.

Further political career
While he had been away, Vernon had been elected MP for Ipswich, after having purchased the Nacton estate in Suffolk. Vernon returned to Parliament and continued to harass the government on naval affairs. At this time, many anonymous pamphlets criticising the Admiralty appeared and although Vernon denied he was the author, some have been attributed to him. In 1745, Vernon was promoted to Admiral and appointed to command the North Sea Fleet in response to the threat from the French forces in support of Charles Edward Stuart, "Bonnie Prince Charlie". This was his last operational command. When the Admiralty refused to grant him the status of Commander-in-Chief, he asked to be relieved on 1 December 1745, and the Admiralty removed him from the list of flag officers in 1746.

Naval innovation and health
Throughout his career, Vernon had tried to improve naval procedures and encouraged his captains to improve manoeuvres and gun drill. He introduced new instructions to aid the flexibility of handling fleets in battle and formed the basis of continuing improvement to Admiralty fighting instructions by subsequent naval commanders. Vernon continued to serve in Parliament and remained active in the interest of naval affairs until his death at Nacton on 30 October 1757. Many of his proposals were subsequently adopted and contributed to Britain's victory in the Seven Years War.

His enduring claim to fame was his 1740 order that his sailors' rum should be diluted with water. In 1740, citrus juice (usually lemon or lime juice) was added to the recipe of the traditional daily ration of watered-down rum known to cut down on the water's foulness. Although they did not know the reason at the time, Admiral Edward Vernon's sailors were healthier than the rest of the navy, due to the daily doses of vitamin C the sailors received. However, it was not until 1747 that James Lind formally proved that scurvy could be treated and prevented by supplementing the diet with citrus fruit such as limes or lemons. The rest of the Royal Navy rapidly followed Vernon's lead, supposedly calling the new drink "grog" after Vernon's nickname "Old Grog", attributed to his habitual wearing of a grogram coat. The tradition of a provision to each seaman of a tot of rum per day continued until "Black Tot Day" on 31 July 1970 when the last pipe of "Up Spirits" was heard throughout the ships and shore establishments of the Royal Navy.

Mount Vernon, the estate of George Washington, was named for the Admiral. Washington's older half-brother Lawrence Washington had served under Vernon in the War of Jenkins' Ear, and named his estate for his former commander.