At Portsmouth, the trial of Admiral John Byng concluded with a determination that appeared to contradict itself. The judges found him guilty of having failed to do his utmost to relieve Fort St. Philip, to take or destroy the French ships, and to assist such of His Majesty’s ships as were engaged. The Articles of War then prescribed death for this offense. Yet the very officers who pronounced the sentence unanimously recommended the prisoner to the King’s mercy, citing the defendant’s personal courage. The court had declared what he had omitted; it did not find that he had fled the combat.
The affair had its origin in the expedition of 1756. Byng, a vice-admiral, had been entrusted with the command of a fleet dispatched to the Mediterranean to relieve the British garrison of Minorca, then besieged by the French. He fell in with the fleet covering the enemy’s operations. The engagement did not decide the fate of the island. Byng put back to Gibraltar; Port Mahon capitulated the following month. In England, the loss of the stronghold soon assumed the character of a personal question: what ought the commander to have done, and at what cost was he warranted in hazarding the ships committed to his charge?
The court-martial convened on board the St. George, at Portsmouth. It opened on December 28, 1756; sentence was pronounced on the 27th of January following. The legal crux turned upon the Twelfth Article of War, which awarded death to every person who, through cowardice, negligence, or disaffection, should fail to do his utmost to take or destroy the enemy’s vessels which it was his duty to engage.
The trial did not merely enquire whether the French had gained the advantage. It was necessary to weigh decisions taken upon the open sea: the distance between the divisions, the sail that might have been carried, the feasibility of bringing down the rear ships to succor the van, and the hazard of throwing the line into disorder. The depositions diverged as to what a vessel could perform and what an admiral could perceive of the action around him. The judges were obliged to reconstruct a shifting engagement from the accounts of officers who had witnessed only fragments of the whole.
General Lord Blakeney, who had commanded at Minorca, declared that a landing of the troops was feasible, though perilous. He believed they might have maintained the place until the arrival of Admiral Hawke. His testimony gave tangible shape to the accusation: could Byng’s squadron have intervened in time to prolong the defense? He declined to warrant what the outcome would have been. Yet he stated that, on May 20, the French were so straitened for ammunition as to cast stones against the garrison. Reinforcements would have restored to him men then employed in repairing the breaches. The obstacles raised against a descent, he added, might have been destroyed.
Rear-Admiral West, examined upon the action, computed the distance between the Ramillies, Byng’s flagship, and the Buckingham, his own vessel, at approximately three miles. He knew of no impediment to Byng’s advance, yet could not affirm that none existed. The weather appeared to him fine and calm. He had observed smoke that might have proceeded from Byng’s ship or from his division, without being able to discern against which vessel the fire was directed. Interrogated regarding the troops embarked, he did not believe they could have saved Minorca. He confirmed, moreover, that certain ships were short of men or in need of refit. His answers carried unequal weight: smoke descried at a distance revealed neither the damages sustained nor the orders received by ships that could not be clearly distinguished.
Other officers debated the maneuver of Byng’s division. Captain Everitt and several witnesses considered that the rear might have closed with the van to support it. Everitt believed that by carrying more sail, that division would have relieved the van of a portion of the enemy’s fire. Captain Young, whose ship had lost a topmast, denied that this casualty had prevented Byng from bearing down into the fight. When the division at length passed him, three-quarters of an hour or an hour later by his reckoning, the French had already stood away. He maintained that the vessels had possessed room enough to maneuver without falling foul of one another.
Byng explained that his ships were not all in condition for action. Some lacked hands or required essential repairs. His council of war had determined that nothing further could be attempted. The elements of his defense did not prove that Minorca was beyond all succor; they displayed the limitations he claimed to have encountered. Had the squadron pressed the engagement and suffered heavy losses, Gibraltar itself might have been left defenseless. The trial set action against inaction far less than it weighed two competing responsibilities: that of hazarding more for the island, and that of preserving the vessels destined for its defense.
The testimony of Captain Gardiner further complicated the scene. He deposed that he had advised Byng to bear down with his division to sustain the van. Byng had demurred, apprehending a disaster similar to that of Admiral Mathews. This recollection enabled Gardiner to explain the motive of the decision, without resolving its operational merits. A prudence derived from precedent might be reasonable; yet in the inquest upon a defeat, it might equally appear to have paralyzed the commander at the very moment the enemy ought to have been vigorously pressed.
Several witnesses rebutted the image of a man seized with terror. Lord Robert Bertie and Colonel Smith testified that Byng delivered his orders with composure and appeared eager to engage the enemy. Bertie had caught sight of a British ship through the smoke, directly before the guns of the Ramillies. Fearing they might fire into her, he had warned Byng, who forthwith dispatched him between decks to order the firing to cease. Smith corroborated this narrative, relating that a French shot had passed between them, carried away the head of a deck beam, and plowed through the hammocks stowed in the shrouds. They had by no means remained beyond the reach of shot.
The officers of the court-martial concluded unanimously that Byng had not done his utmost to relieve Fort St. Philip, nor his utmost to take or destroy the French ships and assist those vessels he was bound to support. They did not condemn him for cowardice in the common acceptance of the word. Yet the Twelfth Article left them no discretion as to the penalty once the breach of duty was established. The court therefore condemned him to death, likewise by a unanimous voice.
Thereupon the judges subjoined an earnest, unanimous recommendation to mercy. Relying particularly upon the depositions of Bertie, Smith, and Gardiner, they did not believe his offense had proceeded from cowardice or disaffection. They petitioned the King for that clemency which the rigid letter of the law forbade them to bestow.
The King refused the pardon. On March 14, 1757, Byng was shot upon the quarterdeck of the Monarch, his former flagship, in Portsmouth harbor. Royal Museums Greenwich preserves a contemporary representation of this execution, noting that the recommendation failed to procure the royal clemency. Borrow, writing more than half a century after the event, closes his chapter with a political indictment: in his view, the ministers had sacrificed the admiral to divert public indignation from themselves. This interpretation belongs to his narrative; the trial itself establishes the sentence, the legal ground, and the petition for mercy, but does not suffice to prove a ministerial plot.
Byng thus did not pass into history as an admiral absolved by his peers. Nor was he condemned as one who had fled under fire. The court-martial recognized a failure of command, applied a law that demanded his life, and then bore witness that the condemned had shown personal courage. Between these three determinations—verdict, sentence, and recommendation—little ground remained for a justice that sought to measure the fault by any scale other than the inexorable penalty it was compelled to inflict.