John D. Grainger - The Royal Navy in River Plate 1806-1807

edited by

JOHN D. GRAINGER

PUBLISHED BY ROUTLEDGE FOR THE NAVY RECORDS SOCIETY 1996

For help, permission to publish documents, photocopies and other assistance with problems, I wish to thank the following: the British Library, the Public Record Office, the Trustees of the National Maritime Museum, the National Army Museum, the Bodleian Library, Cambridge University Library, the Huntington Library at Los Angeles, the National Library of Scotland, the Scottish United Services Museum, the archivists of the Record Offices of Kent, Dorset, Buckingham, North Yorkshire and Scotland, and the Librarians and Archivists at the Universities of Durham, Edinburgh, Harvard, Hull, London and Michigan at Ann Arbor.

The events recorded in the documents in this collection took place over a period of less than two years, between late March 1806 and January 1808, though the heart of the matter lies between June 1806 and July 1807. In that time the Royal Navy participated, in association with the army, in five amphibious landings and three assaults on Spanish cities, two of which were successful, and one a complete failure. In an ironic reversal of the common British perception of their historical achievements, the successes came first, and the failure wiped out those previous successes. Only the last battle counts.

It was the decision of Sir Home Popham, naval commander at the Cape, to sail to the River Plate, together with the decision of the governor of the Cape, Sir David Baird, to lend him a regiment of infantry, which began the process. Popham, having collected reinforcements from St Helena (one of the East India Companys stations), successfully landed the reinforced regiment on the south shore of the Plate estuary, and Major-General Beresford bluffed his way to the capture of Buenos Aires. The city was lost again six weeks later, and all the British land forces were made prisoner. The refusal of the insurrectionary government of the city to release the captives led Popham to impose a blockade, and to capture Maldonado when reinforcements arrived from the Cape sent when news arrived of the success of the original assault. Popham was replaced by Rear-Admiral Stirling who assisted in the capture by siege of Montevideo. Rear-Admiral Murray, sent with Brigadier-General Craufurd on a voyage to Chile, by way of the Cape and Botany Bay, was diverted to the Plate, and a grand assault on Buenos Aires under the command of General Whitelocke was defeated. The subsequent agreement provided for the total evacuation of the estuary by British forces. The last British ship left in January 1808.

The campaign in the River Plate was conducted at such a distance from the British homeland that the time-lag involved in communications became an element in the events themselves. Normal transmission times for news was about three months, and the behaviour of at least two of the characters in this story extended that to five and seven months. And yet one British government tried to mount an intricate series of campaigns, encircling the world, by effectively ignoring the hampering effects of such delays.