Thomas Pitt, 2nd Baron Camelford

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Thomas Pitt, 2nd Baron Camelford

Thomas Pitt, 2nd Baron Camelford (born February 19, 1775 in Boconnoc , Cornwall , † March 10, 1804 in London ) was a British peer and naval officer .

Youth and education

Thomas Pitt was the only son of Thomas Pitt, 1st Baron Camelford and his wife Anne, daughter of a wealthy London merchant. His family belonged to the rich and influential upper class; he counted three prime ministers among his relatives. Pitt grew up in isolation on the family's lonely country estate in Cornwall . At the age of eleven, he came to a private school in the Swiss Neuchatel (Neuchatel), where he remained for three years, which he later than called the happiest of his life. At 14, he was in the Charterhouse School in England Godalming in Surrey sent from which he ran away soon. With his father's permission, he became a midshipman under Captain Edward Riou on the Guardian , which struck an iceberg near the Cape of Good Hope . Most of the crew left the ship, but with Pitt's help and supported by the rest of the crew and passengers, including convicts, Riou managed to get the ship to Table Bay .

The Vancouver Expedition

The Caneing on Conduit Street by James Gillray (1796), a caricature from Pitt's raid on George Vancouver

On March 13, 1791, Pitt went on board the Discovery to take part in George Vancouver's expedition to explore the Pacific coast of North America from California via Oregon , Washington and British Columbia to Alaska , with a journey to Hawaii and Australia ; he hoped for a career leap and a good education. Since the officers' berths were all occupied, he was hired as an able seaman . A family friend was officially put in charge of the stubborn 16-year-old.

In Tahiti , Pitt was flogged for violating a Vancouver ban: Pitt had given a local resident a piece of a barrel hoop ; Metal was very popular on the island. Relations with natives were strictly forbidden after these led to the mutiny on the Bounty in 1787 . In addition, the captains were instructed to severely punish theft. In Port Stewart , Pitt was flogged again for trafficking and again for breaking a compass in mischief . He was eventually put in chains because he fell asleep while on watch. These repeated humiliations by a man of "low birth" created a growing grudge against Vancouver in the classy Pitt. At that time, not a member of the team and he himself not think Pitt by the death of his father on June 19, 1793 now its title knew Baron Camelford had inherited, of Boconnoc in the County of Cornwall, and a member of the House of Lords had become .

When the HMS Daedalus left the expedition to return to England, Vancouver Pitt, now Lord Camelford, also sent home by ship, along with a letter to the Under-Secretary of State for War Evan Nepean , in which he inquired about the Pitt lamented behavior. Pitt left the Daedalus in Hawaii and made it from there to Malacca , where he was hired on December 7, 1794 as an able seaman on the HMS Resistance . He was promoted to lieutenant on duty , but discharged in November 1795 and had to leave the ship. He traveled on with the Union , which was stranded on the Ceylon coast ; Pitt made it home after all.

Meanwhile, Vancouver had returned to England after his expedition was over. There he was attacked by friends and the Pitts family, including his cousin, Prime Minister William Pitt . In August 1796, Pitt sent a letter full of insults to Vancouver demanding him to duel . Vancouver replied that he was unable to defend his conduct in office on a private level (that he was unable "in a private capacity to answer for his public conduct in his official duty"). Instead, he offered to have his behavior officially checked by the Navy. Pitt turned down this offer and instead attacked Vancouver on the street in London with a stick. Vancouver's brother Charles threw himself in between and began beating Pitt until passers-by parted the men. Vancouver had been on his way to see Lord Chancellor Lord Loughborough to consult with him on the dispute with Pitt. After the raid, he and his brother continued on their way and reported it to Loughborough; he convinced Pitt to give up for a year.

A few days later a cartoon by James Gillray , a friend of the Pitts, appeared in a newspaper in which George Vancouver was defamed as a weakling and a coward. Vancouver, meanwhile seriously ill, withdrew from the public and edited the reports of his voyage; he died in 1798. After the publication of these reports and maps, he received posthumously the recognition that he had previously been denied.

Last years

In 1797, Thomas Pitt was promoted to lieutenant and serving in command of the HMS Favorite . This happened over the head of their previous commanding lieutenant Charles Peterson, who was senior than Pitt. There was considerable tension between the two men. On January 13, 1798, Pitt shot and killed Peterson in Antigua for refusing to give an order; he was brought to court, but acquitted, presumably because the mutinies of Spithead and Nore broke out around the time and the naval leadership was therefore extremely nervous. In October 1797, Pitt commanded a ship near Grenada and attacked a supposedly hostile but in fact English fortress. In Barbados he tried to force men to serve at sea, which in itself was legal, but Pitt shot two men who opposed him. His family and rank once again protected him from the consequences of his actions. However, the Commander in Chief of the West Indian Fleet sent Pitt back to England.

There, Thomas Pitt attracted attention because of his increasingly wild and violent behavior. He was soon called a half-mad lord in the press . In May 1799 he was convicted of throwing a man down a flight of stairs in an argument; that was just one of many brawls he was involved in. In January 1802, an angry crowd broke the windows of his house because he refused to illuminate the building in celebration of the peace treaty with France. In 1804 he quarreled with his friend Captain Best over allegedly making a derogatory remark about Pitt as his lover; the woman, a high-class prostitute, had previously been in a relationship with Best. Pitt challenged Best to a duel and later refused Best's efforts to find a reconciliation. On March 7, 1804, the two met on the grounds of Holland House . Thomas Pitt missed the opponent, but Best hit and shot Pitt in the chest. He died of his injuries three days later at the age of 29.

Legacy

In his will, which he wrote the night before the duel, Pitt demanded that Best should not be held responsible for his eventual death. His embalmed corpse was laid in a magnificent silver-clad coffin and this was brought to the crypt of St. Anne's Church in Soho. Pitt had determined in his will that he wanted to be buried on St. Petersinsel in Lake Biel in Switzerland, "in the cheapest manner" (German: "cheapest way"). He wanted to find his final resting place under three particular oaks under which he had often sat and read during his boarding school days, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau had done in 1765 . The reason for his wish was: "Others adorn their abode while living, and it is my fancy to adorn mine when dead." when I'm dead. ”) A bush or some such thing should be planted on his grave , but no stone should be placed. To this end, Pitt left the Bern Burgerspital , which owned the island, the sum of £ 1,000 .

However, due to the ongoing war on the continent, it was not possible to transport the body to Switzerland. After the end of the war, representatives of the Anglican Church refused to remove the coffin from the vault. During World War II , St. Anne's Church was bombed and finally demolished. A parking garage was later built on the property, under which the preserved vaults of the church and inside the sarcophagus with Lord Camelford's remains are.

Shortly after his death, the book Life, Adventures, and Eccentricities of the late Lord Camelford was published .

Personal

Lord Camelford has been described by those who knew him well personally as one who had the gifts to lead a full life. He was extremely well read and interested in math , chemistry, and theology . He has been described as generous and helpful. He was "a singular compound of virtues and vices, some of which were directly opposed, yet ruled him by turns" (German "a peculiar mixture of virtues and vices, some of which were in direct opposition to each other and yet dominated him alternately") .

Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery , who was related to the Pitt family, wrote of Thomas Pitt:

“Its existence was turbulent, rampant, crazy [...]. In his person all the evils and shameful acts of the Mohawks [London street gang who named themselves after the Iroquois ] came to life again. Bull terriers , clubs, all kinds of fights have been associated with him. Riots of all kinds were his elixir of life, especially high-profile riots. "

- Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery : Chatham. His Early Life and Connections . 1910

Pitt was unmarried and died childless. The title Baron Camelford expired on his death. His only sister, Anne, was married to William Grenville, 1st Baron Grenville .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Sample Table of His Majesties Sloop The Discovery . Admiralty Records in the Public Record Office, UK 1791. Retrieved August 2, 2013.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Stephen Ruttan: "The Vancouver / Camelford Affair" on Greater Victoria Public Library , January 2001 ( Memento from August 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ a b Nikolai Tolstoy: Half Mad Lord: Thomas Pitt, 2nd Baron Camelford, 1775-1804 . P. 11 f.
  4. ^ John Naish :: The Interwoven Lives of George Vancouver, Archibald Menzies, Joseph Whidbey and Peter Puget: The Vancouver Voyage of 1791-1795 . The Edward Mellen Press, Ltd., 1996, ISBN 0-7734-8857-X .
  5. ↑ 1798: The murder of Lord Camelford on home.arcor.de. From: The European magazine, and London review . Volume 33/1798, pp. 279 ff.
  6. ↑ a b c d Nikolai Tolstoy: Half Mad Lord: Thomas Pitt, 2nd Baron Camelford, 1775-1804 . P. 190 f.
  7. ^ A b Anthony Lambert: Switzerland. Rail. Road. Lake . Brad Travel Guides 2005. p. 137
  8. ↑ Rousseau on St. Peter's Island on biel-seeland.ch
  9. ^ Charles Reade: "What has become of Lord Camelford's body?" On digitalpixels.org ( Memento from June 22, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
  10. ↑ English text: “His was a turbulent, rakehelly, demented existence [...]. He revived in his person all the pranks and outrage of the Mohawks. Bull terriers, bludgeons, fighting of all kinds were associated with him; riots of all kinds were as the breath of his nostrils, more especially theatrical tumults. "
predecessor Office successor
Thomas Pitt Baron Camelford
1793-1804 		Title expired
personal data
SURNAME Pitt, Thomas, 2nd Baron Camelford
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pitt, Thomas, 2nd Baron Camelford of Boconnoc (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British nobleman and naval officer
DATE OF BIRTH February 19, 1775
PLACE OF BIRTH Boconnoc , Cornwall
DATE OF DEATH March 10, 1804
Place of death London