Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Tables
- Preface
- About the Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction, Analysis and Interpretation
- 1 Spithead Mutiny: Introduction
- 2 The Delegates: A Radical Tradition
- 3 What Really Happened On Board HMS London?
- 4 The Spirit of Kempenfeldt
- 5 Voices from the Lower Deck: Petitions on the Conduct of Naval Officers during the 1797 Mutinies
- 6 Crew Management and Mutiny: The Case of Minerve, 1796–1802
- 7 The 1797 Mutinies in the Channel Fleet: A Foreign–Inspired Revolutionary Movement?
- 8 The Nore Mutiny: Introduction
- 9 The East Coast Mutinies: May–June 1797
- 10 Reporting the Mutinies in the Provincial Press
- 11 A Floating Republic? Conspiracy Theory and the Nore Mutiny of 1797
- 12 Lower Deck Life in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
- 13 ‘Launched into Eternity’ Admiralty Retribution or the Restoration of Discipline?
- 14 Discipline, Desertion and Death: HMS Trent 1796–1803
- 15 ‘We went out with Admiral Duncan, we came back without him’: Mutiny and the North Sea Squadron
- 16 The Influence of 1797 upon the Nereide Mutiny of 1809
- Select Bibliography
- Index
4 - The Spirit of Kempenfeldt
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Tables
- Preface
- About the Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction, Analysis and Interpretation
- 1 Spithead Mutiny: Introduction
- 2 The Delegates: A Radical Tradition
- 3 What Really Happened On Board HMS London?
- 4 The Spirit of Kempenfeldt
- 5 Voices from the Lower Deck: Petitions on the Conduct of Naval Officers during the 1797 Mutinies
- 6 Crew Management and Mutiny: The Case of Minerve, 1796–1802
- 7 The 1797 Mutinies in the Channel Fleet: A Foreign–Inspired Revolutionary Movement?
- 8 The Nore Mutiny: Introduction
- 9 The East Coast Mutinies: May–June 1797
- 10 Reporting the Mutinies in the Provincial Press
- 11 A Floating Republic? Conspiracy Theory and the Nore Mutiny of 1797
- 12 Lower Deck Life in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
- 13 ‘Launched into Eternity’ Admiralty Retribution or the Restoration of Discipline?
- 14 Discipline, Desertion and Death: HMS Trent 1796–1803
- 15 ‘We went out with Admiral Duncan, we came back without him’: Mutiny and the North Sea Squadron
- 16 The Influence of 1797 upon the Nereide Mutiny of 1809
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
‘A too restricted view of the truth is counter-productive.’
The mutiny came at an awkward moment for Captain Willett Payne. While he was convalescing at the George Inn in Portsmouth his ship, HMS Impétueux, mutinied with the rest of the fleet at Spithead. His unspecified maladies were rumoured to be more the product of an extravagant life ashore than the rigours of life at sea. Payne was an intimate of the Prince of Wales. According to John Knox Laughton, he was an ‘associate of the prince in his vices and a supporter in his baser intrigues’. Indulging in one of those intrigues during the Regency crisis led the captain to forget his station and make an inappropriate remark about Queen Charlotte; which, in turn, led to his public censure from Jane, Duchess of Gordon, an intimate of her Majesty: ‘You little, insignificant, good-for-nothing, upstart, pert chattering puppy, how dare you name your royal master's royal mother in that style!’ While his impertinence did not go entirely unrewarded, given his royal patron's limitations, Payne could expect little support in his time of crisis. To make matters worse, his professional patron, Lord Howe, had just retired and his successor, Lord Bridport, given his own circumstances and poor relations with Howe, was unlikely to be sympathetic to Payne's predicament.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Naval Mutinies of 1797Unity and Perseverance, pp. 79 - 97Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2011