Bombast And Broadsides: The Lives of George Johnstone

Bombast and Broadsides

Bombast and Broadsides

The Lives of George Johnstone

Robin F. A. Fabel

THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS

Tuscaloosa

London

Copyright © 1987 by

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fabel, Robin F. A., 1934–

   Bombast and broadsides.

   Bibliography: p.

   Includes index.

   1. Johnstone, George, 1730–1787.  2. Great Britain—History—George II, 1727–1760.  3. Legislators—Great Britain—Biography.  4. Great Britain. Royal Navy—Biography.  5. West Florida—Governors—Biography. I. Title.

DA501.J63F3    1987       941.07′3′0924 [B]       86-19348

ISBN 0-8173-0337-5

British Cataloguing-in-Publication Data is available.

0-8173-1192-0 (pbk: alk. paper)

ISBN-13: 978-0-8173-8278-0 (electronic)

Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface

Johnstone Family Tree

1. Man of War

2. Emporium of the New World

3. The Guerrilla of Leadenhall Street

4. Man of Business

5. A Philadelphia Story

6. Gunpowder and Port

7. The Broad Pendant Wavers

8. Final Appointments

9. Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

George Johnstone

Map of British West Florida

East India House, London

William Eden

Charles Jenkinson

The Curious Zebra

Sailors at Porto Praya

Charlotte Johnstone and Son

Map of Praya Bay

Preface

It has been said, probably many times, that when historical topics have been hitherto neglected, it has usually been for good reason. In the case of George Johnstone’s life the most probable reason for the lack of a biography lies in the difficulty of finding the raw materials for the study of his many-faceted career. There is no collection of George Johnstone papers. The materials pertaining to his life are scattered because his career ranged wide, taking him from his native Scotland to England, the West Indies, Portugal, North America, and South Africa. Moreover, although he never went there, his connection with the East India Company involved him closely in affairs in India, and many documents relating to him originated there.

Not only did he acquire acquaintance with a broad variety of places but also with numerous circles of society: naval and military, plebeian and noble, literary and mercantile, diplomatic and legal. He moved particularly far in the political world, working amiably, at times, with the Opposition magnificoes Rockingham, Portland, Fox, and Burke, but at others giving welcome support to the treasury bench.

There is a note of amazement in J. K. Laughton’s comment that he is, even now, sometimes described as a politician,¹ but the designation should have caused no surprise. Although he never held political office Johnstone commanded respect—fear would be more accurate in some cases—as an effective and influential backbencher of a type not unknown to the House of Commons in the 1980s. As this biography will demonstrate, his political fame rested on various types of expertise, but above all upon his forcefulness in debate.

Nothing is more ephemeral than a reputation grounded on oratorical thunder. Burke has retained something of his, partly because he made sure that his speeches were fully and accurately available in printed form. Johnstone did not, and most of his deliveries survive only through the chaotic methods of eighteenth-century reporters. Even where the words have been preserved, the fire he gave them has gone. At the time, nevertheless, it hurt grievously to be the target of a speech from Johnstone, as the testimony of Fox, Burke, North, and Townshend proves. Conversely he was an unusually welcome ally, a powerful and active . . . friend, as Wedderburn put it, who . . . does nothing feebly.² Most political memorialists of the later eighteenth century wrote of him, and none, as Laughton should have known, assessed him as a political nonentity.

Yet his celebrity faded. Except as a sailor Johnstone was forgotten. In the years following his death, few writers except the naval historians Beatson, Charnock, and Ralfe, all of whom found his conduct unforgivable, cared to remember Johnstone. His sin had been, on the basis of an unorthodox theory, publicly to denounce Admiral Howe’s failure in battle and then, when he himself obtained a similar opportunity, to do no better.

In modern times there have been three biographical essays on Johnstone. Each is part of a larger work and none is a well-balanced study of his life. The earliest of these and already mentioned is by J. K. Laughton, yet another naval historian, who was almost exclusively interested in Johnstone’s career in the Royal Navy: he accords, for example, not one line to Johnstone’s work as a colonial governor. Dunbar Rowland, by contrast, wrote of him in 1911 in a preface to a collection of documents relating to West Florida in the 1760s.³ Understandably, most of what he wrote concerned Johnstone as governor of that province. In the 1960s Ian Christie wrote an excellently researched study of Johnstone for Namier and Brooke’s The House of Commons, 1754–1790. His emphasis was naturally on Johnstone’s activities as a member of Parliament.

Nobody has attempted to trace his political work as a proprietor and director in that other pillar of eighteenth-century England, East India House, nor to plumb his role in the peace commission sent to the warring colonies in 1778. Most important of all, no historian has tried to assess the ways in which his various careers interacted upon one another and to portray the whole man.

Such a consideration is now attempted, greatly facilitated by documents unused in the existing published works on Johnstone, such as the Johnstone family correspondence in the Edinburgh University Library, Johnstone’s letters to his brother William in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, and one letter in particular in the Pennsylvania Historical Society Library, Philadelphia, which throws completely new light on Johnstone’s view of the peace commission on which he served.

George Johnstone, nevertheless, remains an elusive figure. The surviving evidence is fragmentary and does not reveal all we should like to know. Who were the mistresses by whom he had five children? What did he actually say to the woman who accused him of trying to bribe congressmen? What made him so confident that he would be given cabinet office? The evidence does not say. If lacunae fail to answer questions, discoveries too can be disconcerting; such as that Johnstone had shared quarters with his one-time secretary for thirteen years.⁴ No hint of the fact is contained elsewhere: we know next to nothing, therefore, about the relation between Johnstone and the man who was probably his best friend.

All the same, if incomplete, the surviving evidence, when pieced together, has some coherence and shows a colorful—almost polychromatic—man who had defects aplenty but also a driving force and ability which time and again made him a credible candidate for positions of responsibility to superiors who knew all about his record. Reconstructing his career also offers insight into the way in which colonies were administered, men advanced, bills passed, governments embarrassed, campaigns spoiled, as well as other processes in the bizarre, subtle, and vital society of Britain in the eighteenth century.

My debts to others in writing this biographical study are innumerable. My creditors range from William Hickey, who thought it worthwhile to record gossip about his contemporary, to my father, who helped me solidify my ideas on Johnstone by letting me chat about him. To the staffs of all the several libraries where I worked or from which I obtained research materials I am indebted. Without exception they were courteous and helpful. I ought also to say grateful prayers to those who conceived the interlibrary loan system. More specifically I wish to thank Maggie Fabel for her patience, Larry Owsley for his encouragement, Gordon Bond for his humor, Barbara Mowat for her professionalism, Joe Harrison for his erudition, and Bob Rea, who first drew attention to the need for a life of Johnstone, for his learning and wisdom. The interest of all of these in my efforts has sustained me. I also thank Auburn University for a research grant in the summer of 1975 which facilitated my quest for Johnstone material.

R.F.A.F.

1

Man of War

Like the hero of a novel by Sir Walter Scott, George Johnstone was of an ancient but impoverished family of Border gentry. An ancestor, Sir Adam Johnston, had distinguished himself under the command of the Earl of Douglas at the notable Scottish victory of Sark in 1448. An elder son of Sir Adam was the founder of the famous Annandale branch of the Johnstone family, but it was from Matthew, a younger son, that the Johnstones of Westerhall, the line to which George belonged, descended. The winged spur, the heraldic device of his family, was assumed because several members, before the union of the crowns, served the Scottish king as wardens of the West Borders attempting, as their duty, to suppress the moss-troopers who ravaged the country near the boundary with England.¹

The family moved from Lanarkshire to Dumfriesshire in the reign of James I of England, when James Johnstone, the sixth laird of Westraw, purchased the Glendinnings estate in Eskdale in 1624 and renamed it Westerhall. John Johnstone, his great-grandson, was made a baronet of Nova Scotia on April 25, 1700. Three years earlier another James Johnstone had been born. He was destined to be the third baronet and George Johnstone’s father. In 1719 the future Sir James married Barbara Murray, daughter of the fourth Lord Elibank. The marriage, which lasted fifty-three years, produced seven daughters and seven sons, of whom George was the fourth. He was probably educated at home, since Sir James seems to have employed resident tutors for his boys.² But, as a cadet with almost no chance of inheriting the family title—although, against long odds, his son eventually did—George had to make his own way in the world and, at an early but not abnormally young age for the day, became a sailor. Many years later he was to tell the House of Commons that he first went to sea in 1744, but it could have been earlier.³ When he took his lieutenant’s examination on December 5, 1749, he offered evidence that he had served six years, fifteen weeks, and two days at sea in the king’s vessels, and a certificate proving service in the merchant marine as well. Thus he could not have begun his official naval career later than 1743 when he was thirteen years old.⁴ His first ship was a man-of-war commanded, we are told, by a relative. Almost certainly this kinsman was his uncle George, one of the Elibank Murrays, who at that time held the rank of captain, and who offered a place to his nephew, the first of many instances in which Johnstone’s blood relationships with the Murrays served him well.⁵ The wealthiest and most influential of the family was Patrick, the fifth Lord Elibank, who became rich through marriage to a Dutch nobleman’s daughter who was ten years older than he but who owned large estates. Elibank liked his nephew George, knew many useful and distinguished men, and later worked closely with him in connection with Indian and Floridian affairs. All of this lay in the future. Initially, far from associating with the great, Johnstone served his naval apprenticeship in a series of humble positions—although he was lucky enough, according to an implausible rumor current in the later eighteenth century, to earn sufficient prize money on his first voyage to make himself independent of his father.⁶

During his first six years on royal ships he served as able seaman, midshipman, and, on the Edinburgh, captain’s servant; he saw much action and demonstrated the rash bravery which was to distinguish him throughout his life. He is supposed, for example, after serving on the Lark, to have been refused a certificate by her commander, John Crookshanks, and in consequence to have challenged him to a duel. The captain accepted and received a ball in the neck.⁷ The truth of this tale cannot be substantiated, but it is a fact that Johnstone served on the Lark as a midshipman for over a year and that, whereas other captains under whom he served provided certificates testifying to his competence and diligence, which Johnstone offered in support of his application for a lieutenancy, Captain Crookshanks of the Lark did not.

More creditable was the bravery which Johnstone is supposed to have shown while serving under Captain Brodie on the Canterbury during the attack on Port Louis, Hispaniola, on March 8, 1747/8. It is said that he boarded and attached a chain to an enemy fireship, thus enabling it to be towed clear of the British squadron.⁸ Ships’ logs are customarily laconic on such subjects, and the deed is not mentioned in the log of the Canterbury for that date.⁹ It did occur, however, and required courage of the highest order. The boats detached to neutralize the fireship had to ply within the shadow of the fort at Port Louis. All involved ran the risk of extinction from the guns of the garrison or from small arms, for musketry played very smartly upon them, but none would attract more fire than the individual who hauled himself aboard the fireship. His identity was not specified in the official report of Admiral Knowles, the commander of the expedition. Knowles was, however, on Johnstone’s ship, the Canterbury, throughout the action, and would have known if the hero of the day was not Johnstone, who could probably not have acquired a reputation for this gallantry if the credit belonged elsewhere.¹⁰

The navy was reduced after peace was made with France in 1748. Although Johnstone passed his lieutenant’s examination in 1749, he was not given a lieutenant’s appointment until war drums began to beat again in 1755, the prelude to the Seven Years War. Of his activities in the years between little is known. As a young man in his early twenties various social diversions no doubt occupied part of his time. In 1751 he used them as an excuse for not replying to a letter from a lady of rank in Scotland and referred, in his letter of apology, to his reading in both French and English as well as to his own attempts to write.¹¹ It was probably at this time that, in place of formal schooling, he acquired that acquaintance with literature and history which later affected his gubernatorial reports and parliamentary speeches.¹²

It is likely that he spent some if not most of his leisure time at Ballencrieff, the country seat of my adopted father, Lord Elibank, in preference to Westerhall and the company of his true parents, of whose eccentricities Johnstone was well aware; his father was obsessed with speculation and his mother was highly temperamental.

For Elibank, by contrast, he felt such affection that he could not resist copying and sending to his brother William a long panegyrical passage from his reading which he considered descriptive of his uncle.¹³ Patrick Murray was indeed a talented man. Witty and original, he was keenly interested in intellectual questions and as much at his ease in the company of women as of men. He was also extremely knowledgeable: even erudite Samuel Johnson told Boswell that he was never with Elibank without learning something from him.¹⁴

Elibank possessed every qualification to be a successful author except one—application. But, although he lacked industry, he loved literature and was rich, and made himself a noted patron of men of literary and oratorical promise, particularly of young clergymen. The liveliest company in Scotland met at the house of Elibank, who made it an outpost of the Enlightenment by encouraging unconventional theorizing and liberal sentiments. In matters of literary taste and composition Scotland was supposedly controlled by a triumvirate consisting of David Hume and Lords Elibank and Kames.¹⁵ For Johnstone, acceptance into the Ballencrieff sphere, if he spent much time in it, would have been a more than adequate intellectual substitute, given the standard of universities then, for the formal education which he lacked. The young sailor never penetrated the inner circle of Scottish intellectual life, comprising the thirty members of the aptly named Select Society, which his uncle helped to found in 1754. Perhaps he might have done so had he been more firmly anchored in Scotland. But seafaring expeditions apart, he also involved himself in complicated amatory ventures in London.

Passing three days in the capital after an appointment in Woodford, Johnstone had met at the Mile End Assembly the twenty-two-year-old widow de Cour. He detailed her charms to an unnamed confidante, using the cliché-ridden vocabulary of eighteenth-century erotic literature, and asked for assistance. Perhaps it was as well, he added confusingly, that his heart was already given to a Miss Pratville.¹⁶ Although the incident raises many questions which are not answered, it does confirm that he was of an amorous complexion, a claim made by an anonymous writer of a biographical sketch of Johnstone which appeared in a gossip magazine in 1781.¹⁷ It is a reminder too that among the fashionable in those days, a commitment to a lady of equal social class by no means barred a man from dalliance with a woman of inferior class: that Mistress de Cour had no elevated position in society is suggested by the location both of the assembly rooms and of her home, which was in Hackney.¹⁸

Diversion, however, was not Johnstone’s sole concern at this stage of his career. A legal document of 1753 referred to him as "captain of The Grace bound for Jamaica."¹⁹ This was, presumably, a mercantile interlude preceding his return to the king’s service. The Admiralty appointed Johnstone lieutenant of the Sutherland in October 1755 but transferred him to the Biddeford, on which his younger brother Gideon was serving, in March 1756. Johnstone voyaged on the Biddeford once more to the West Indies where, not the only time in his naval career, he was court-martialed.²⁰ The incidents which led to his trial were trivial but illustrated Johnstone’s penchant for quarreling and his concern for the rights of office to the detriment of more important considerations, both of which were to characterize his later career.

At four in the afternoon of February 20, 1757, the acting master of the Biddeford, George Roberts, took over the watch from Johnstone, who had been on duty with the starboard watch. The crew was depleted by sickness, a squall was brewing, and Roberts told Johnstone that William Preston of the starboard watch was, by order of Captain Digby, to be transferred to Roberts’ own, the larboard watch. Johnstone refused to permit the transfer. He would obey an order from Digby in person or from what he called a proper officer but not from Digby through Roberts. Roberts simply repeated that these were the captain’s orders. When Digby heard of Johnstone’s pettifoggery, not, perhaps, the first example he had experienced of such uncooperative quibbling, he decided to court-martial him.

The trial took place on board the Dreadnought in Port Royal harbor, Jamaica, on February 22, and despite favorable evidence from the acting mate, Gideon Johnstone, the court found against his older brother.²¹ Johnstone was guilty of disobedience, but in consideration of his former gallant behavior in the service, the officers sitting in judgment sentenced him merely to be reprimanded by the president of the court and to be returned to duty. This insignificant incident was subsequently used as a textbook example of unmixed disobedience, in that there was no admixture of insolence or drunkenness.²²

Although Johnstone was transferred from the Biddeford on the day after his court-martial, his condemnation did not prevent his further advance in the naval profession. His next major appointment came late in October 1757, when he joined the Augusta, a 60-gun vessel of the line based at Jamaica. Her captain, Arthur Forrest, had obtained his first command in 1741, but years of experience had not dulled his dash. On October 21, 1757, the Augusta was cruising off the coast of Hispaniola in company with two other vessels of equal size, the Dreadnought and the Edinburgh, when the Dreadnought’s lookout spied a large French convoy near Cape François. It was escorted by four enemy ships of the line and three frigates. Despite an obvious disparity in fighting force, Forrest, the senior officer, after the scantiest of consultations with his fellow commanders, decided to attack. The British took no prizes, but it was the French who had to break off the engagement after their flagship signalled that she would have to be towed out of the battle line. On both sides the warships had been badly mauled and had to retire to port to refit. Johnstone took part in this battle, which is remembered as the action off Cape François, in the Dreadnought, to which he seems to have been temporarily attached and which had led the attack. Her captain, Maurice Suckling, wrote that Johnstone had distinguished himself in the action.²³

Only afterward, and probably because one of the nine Augusta sailors killed in the battle was the first lieutenant, did he transfer to Forrest’s vessel and consequently, in December, take part in a much more successful exploit. Prisoners from a captured French privateer had reported that a rich fleet of armed merchantmen was preparing to leave Port-au-Prince in Haiti for Europe. The commanding admiral at Jamaica detached the Augusta under Forrest to cruise off Hispaniola for two days before rejoining the rest of the squadron, which consisted of the admiral’s flagship, the 90-gun Marlborough, and the 60-gun Princess Mary. Forrest sailed between Hispaniola and the island of Gonave, which was daringly close to the main island. He flew Dutch colors and disguised the Augusta’s identity with tarpaulins. Passing up opportunities to make minor captures, he concentrated on finding and isolating the sloop escorting the awaited convoy after it left Port-au-Prince. He succeeded in taking her at night without an exchange of cannonfire, which would have alarmed other French vessels. Aboard this sloop, Forrest placed a lieutenant and thirty-five men. Their job was to prevent any fleeing Frenchmen from reentering the shelter of Port-au-Prince. Forrest then sailed through the night and caught up with the enemy convoy at dawn. Augusta went along its length, firing at each of its ships in turn. It sounds an easier maneuver than it was, for the convoy was not without defense. Between them the enemy vessels carried 112 guns. Nevertheless, before long three of the ships struck their flags and, with British prize crews aboard, were used by Forrest to subdue the remainder and to shepherd them back to Jamaica.²⁴

Johnstone impressed Forrest as a brave, active, diligent and capable officer,²⁵ but he appeared in a quite different light to the rear admiral of the White, Thomas Cotes, who commanded all British naval forces on the Jamaica station. The trouble, as trouble often did, concerned the distribution of prize money. Under the Convoys and Cruisers Act of 1708, which was still in force in the 1750s, after the value of a prize had been assessed by an Admiralty court, the sum was divided into eighths. The commander of a captor ship received three-eighths, his commissioned officers, his warrant officers, and the flag officer over him received an eighth each, while the remaining two-eighths were shared by the crew members. It seems that Johnstone became incensed that Admiral Cotes had intervened to secure a share of the prize money earned by the Augusta off Port-au-Prince for her sister ships. Marlborough and Princess Mary, which were certainly part of the same squadron, but which had not been present when the convoy was captured.

When Johnstone was angry he had a tendency to use indecorous language, and the circumstances in which he used it matched his words on this occasion. He had attended a concert in Port Royal, Jamaica, on June 9, 1758, during which he had been obliged to go to the privy. There he fortuitously met a lawyer, George Lewis. They started to discuss prize money. The Augusta had initiated a case contesting the claims of the Marlborough and the Princess Mary to any share of the prize money arising from the affair off Port-au-Prince. Lewis represented the Augusta in the case, and Johnstone must have supposed himself safe when he told the lawyer that the intervention of Admiral Cotes in the business was impertinent and that he deserved to have his arse kicked. He was mistaken. Cotes was in a position to intimidate Lewis into betraying Johnstone’s indiscretions and must have done so extremely quickly, for on June 12, three days after his meeting with Lewis, Johnstone was summoned to Cotes’ flagship. On arrival he found that the admiral had also called together all the captains under his command at Port Royal to inquire into Johnstone’s behavior.

The occasion did not reduce Johnstone to deference. He stood with arms akimbo, which irritated the flag officer. He then placed them behind his back, but Cotes was not satisfied until the young officer was at attention with arms at his sides. The treacherous Lewis then presented a paper which revealed in full his conversation with Johnstone and included a list of questions compiled by Johnstone for Lewis’ use in court in the prize-money case. The upshot was that Admiral Cotes suspended Johnstone from his duties as a naval officer: it was possibly the prelude to a court-martial.²⁶

Forrest was disappointed that the Admiralty in London failed to share his belief that the Augusta alone was entitled to prize money for the captures off Port-au-Prince²⁷ and he regretted that, in suspending Johnstone, Cotes had deprived him of a good officer.²⁸ In the long run, though, he came to the judicious conclusion that the young Scot was incapable of subordination.²⁹

Johnstone was long embroiled in a tussle over the legality of his behavior respecting Cotes. Ultimately he did not have to endure another court-martial but neither was he reinstated on the Augusta which, on July 16, 1758, exchanged lieutenants with the sloop Tryal. Johnstone, and perhaps this was the purpose of the exchange, which was no doubt ordered by Cotes, found himself serving under a martinet.³⁰

Captain Thomas Cookson did not get on well with Johnstone nor, it seems, with any of his officers. The only evidence that he enjoyed any popularity with the ship’s company is that once, when he ordered the issue of grog to sick men contrary to the instructions of the ship’s doctor, the men cheered him. The long, uncomfortable, and dangerous journey which the Tryal made in 1758 from the West Indies to Plymouth engendered great bitterness between Cookson and those under him. If Johnstone’s word is to be believed, the captain, while engaged in fraud himself, accused the innocent purser of the same offense, calling him Dog, Rascal and Scoundrell. He caused the death of the mate by making him sleep in stifling heat when he was sick. In addition he flogged men without mercy for no reason, deprived the ship’s surgeon of all assistance, intimidated sailors into spying on the officers and, once the Tryal was back in England, refused to allow his men, who were dying of scurvy, to go ashore or to receive fresh provisions. Incompetence was added to cruelty. The ship ran out of candles and oil and Cookson would not allow Johnstone to obtain any from friends in the fleet; when the Tryal, its maindeck awash, lost the convoy it was supposed to accompany, Cookson had the mate falsify the log. Johnstone’s remonstrances were ignored. The whole of Cookson’s conduct to his officers and men, wrote Johnstone in charges against his captain, hath been one continual scene of meanness, avarice, ignorance, cruelty and scandalous behaviour, unbecoming the character of an officer & gentlemen. Cookson, however, took the initiative. Immediately upon arrival in England in December 1758, it seems, he lodged a complaint against William Thompson, the purser. The Admiralty ordered a court-martial on January 1, 1759, as a result of which Thompson was reprimanded for imprudence. In spite of a press report that Cookson, too, would be tried, for some reason he never was, and Johnstone, no doubt burning with unappeased resentment and with his reputation for trouble-making enhanced, was unemployed.³¹

Thus opened the year 1759, annus miserabilis for Johnstone. Perhaps because of privations endured on the Tryal, he was in poor health, to the distress of his mother who grieved for my dutiful, my more than dutiful son.³² This was scarcely how the Admiralty regarded him, and for some months he was kicking his heels in London. The philosopher Hume wrote his friend Lord Elibank in the spring to say: I have seen pretty often your Nephew, Mr. Johnstone; & I think him a very gallant sensible young fellow. By the accounts I hear, he will soon be provided for, & have the Reward of his services.³³ Hume was too optimistic, but he was right in suggesting that Johnstone had patrons; without them he would have looked in vain for advancement.

One such patron was Hume’s correspondent. Elibank had a link with a courtier, the earl of Guildford, who was close to Lord Anson, the first lord of the Admiralty. When Johnstone wrote a letter to Guildford, setting out the reasons that he should be granted preferment, he was able to enclose a supporting letter from Elibank. It is clear that the warmth of Guildford’s reply to Johnstone derived from Elibank’s endorsement of his application. He promised to speak to Anson in the lieutenant’s favor.³⁴ Perhaps Johnstone also used as an intermediary that other uncle, now Vice-Admiral Murray, who had commanded one of Anson’s ships on his most famous voyage. Whichever means were used, they proved effective. From a letter written by Sir Gilbert Elliot in November 1759, it appears that Johnstone had been given a promise of a command by Anson.

Elliot, another lord of the Admiralty, was inclined to help George because he was a friend of his brother James. His advice was that the lieutenant should ensure that Anson keep his promise by extending his convalescence and staying in England until he had secured his command. Even so, Sir Gilbert thought little of Johnstone’s chances for promotion thereafter unless he got well away from Britain and rehabilitated his reputation through acts of gallantry in distant theaters.³⁵

Johnstone’s letters to his brother William from this period reflect boredom, worry, and the frustrated ambition of a young officer frantic for the command of a sizable vessel. Instead, the year 1759 saw him employed in a series of odd jobs. In July, under the direction of Commodore Boys, he was given temporary charge of an armed cutter, the Prince of Wales, operating in the Downs, one of several vessels on which he served at this time. Another was the 50-gun Preston.³⁶ In October he was shuttling between Dover and Deal. Mortified to learn that William had suffered a difference of opinion with Gilbert Elliot, he envisioned his patron’s becoming his enemy. Although quite unconcerned for his mother, whose spleen, he coolly opined, would destroy her, he grieved for his sisters’ prospects on hearing that his father was engaged in a speculative venture. With time on his hands, he summarized for his brother the plot of a novel which he had written, interesting only for its (limited) parallels with his own life: he foresaw that the hero would rise from lieutenant to admiral and end up being made an alderman and speaking nonsense in Parliament.³⁷ During this frustrating interval he managed only one coup of significance: the capture, while serving on the sloop Viper, of a Dutch ship carrying indigo and cotton.³⁸

Finally on February 6, 1760, Lord Anson fulfilled his promise and Johnstone was given his long-awaited command, the sloop Hornet of 14 guns. Its main duties initially were as an escort vessel, first of a transport, the Anne, and a tender, the Industry, to Newcastle-on-Tyne, then of troop transports to and from Germany. It was while the Hornet was subsequently stationed at Yarmouth to protect the mackerel fleet that Johnstone first obtained promising opportunities to capture prizes. The French privateers which preyed on the fishing boats could usually outsail the Hornet, but her commander was able to report in June that he had captured the Free Mason of Dunkirk, a cutter equipped with a crew of fifteen hands and four swivel guns.³⁹

Most of the difficulties with which Johnstone had to cope during this period were routine: the Hornet went aground off Yarmouth; several members of the crew deserted, while others fell sick. In