Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 50.djvu/446

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

in May Nelson sent the Pegasus to Jamaica, with a private note to Commodore Gardner explaining the business. Gardner judged it best to supersede Schomberg (10 June 1787) and to send him to England, where he arrived on 22 July. He was then put on half pay; but in October he was appointed first lieutenant of the Barfleur, guardship at Portsmouth, and carrying the flag of Lord Hood.

In January 1789 he was appointed to the Crown, going out to the East Indies, with the broad pennant of his old captain, Cornwallis; and on 3 March 1790, when the captain of the Crown invalided, he was promoted to be commander of the Atalanta sloop, and ordered to command the Crown till her new captain, promoted from the Atalanta, joined. At the Andaman Islands on 10 July he took command of the sloop. Two months afterwards, on 13 Sept., coming into Madras roads, the Fort, by some inexplicable negligence, neither hoisted the flag nor saluted, as was the custom of the station. Cornwallis was at Calcutta. Sir Richard John Strachan [q. v.], the senior officer at Madras, told Schomberg to do as he thought proper. Schomberg accordingly, conceiving that the matter ought to be set right at once, wrote a very strong letter to the governor, complaining of the insult to the flag. The governor referred the letter to Strachan, commenting on its impropriety as proceeding from a junior officer. This view Cornwallis, on his arrival a few days later, also took, and suspended Schomberg from the command of the sloop, intending to try him by court-martial. Afterwards, as there was no possibility of holding a court-martial on the station, Cornwallis gave him leave to return to England for the benefit of his health, at the same time acquainting the admiralty with what had occurred, but suggesting that the matter might be allowed to drop (Cornwallis to Admiralty, 4 Oct. 1790).

Schomberg arrived in England in the summer of 1791, having meantime been promoted to post rank by the admiralty on 22 Nov. 1790, from which date he was accordingly put on half pay as a captain. In December 1793 he was appointed to the Vanguard, but for a few weeks only. In April 1794 he took command of the Culloden, and in her was present in the battle of 1 June, where the Vengeur, after being pounded into a wreck by the Brunswick [see Harvey, John, (1740–1784)] and the Ramillies [see Harvey, Sir Henry], was finally taken possession of by a party from the Culloden [see Rotheram, Edward], and the Vengeur's captain was actually on board the Culloden when his ship sank (Carlyle, Miscell. Essays, ‘The Sinking of the Vengeur’). Owing to the unbusinesslike way in which the medals and swords were awarded [see Howe, Richard, Earl], Schomberg's services passed without recognition. He resigned the command in the autumn, and had no further service afloat.

During the following years he resided principally at Seend in Wiltshire, occupied in the compilation of the ‘Naval Chronology,’ which was published in 1802 (5 vols. 8vo), a work still valuable as a book of reference, more especially for the lists of ships and officials in volumes iv. and v. On the renewal of the war in 1803 he was appointed to the command of the sea-fencibles of the Hastings district, which he held till September 1808. He was then appointed commissioner and deputy-comptroller of the navy, in which office he remained till his death at Chelsea on 20 Jan. 1813. He was buried in a vault, belonging to the family, in the church of St. George-in-the-East, London. He married, in 1793, Amelia, daughter of the Rev. Laurence Brodrick of Stradbally, Ireland, and left issue four sons. A portrait, attributed to Booth, is at Seend.

[Information from Mr. Arthur Schomberg of Seend (Schomberg's grandson); Journals and Letter-books, now in the possession of Mr. Arthur Schomberg; pay-books, list-books, &c., in the Public Record Office; Nicolas's Nelson Despatches, i. 208–37; O'Byrne's Nav. Biogr. Dict.; Gent. Mag. 1813, i. 93.]

J. K. L.


SCHOMBERG, MEINHARD, Duke of Leinster and third Duke of Schomberg (1641–1719), third son of Frederick Herman, duke of Schomberg [q. v.], was born at Cologne on 30 June 1641. He served with his father in Portugal as lieutenant-colonel from 1660 to 1668, and on his return to France was naturalised a French subject. He attained the rank of brigadier and afterwards of marechal-de-camp in the wars against Holland, and, under Marshal Créqui, distinguished himself at Kochersburg on 7 Oct. 1677, before Freiburg on 14 Nov., at Rheinfelden on 6 July 1678, and at Kinzing on the 23rd. He married, on 4 Jan. 1683, Caroline Elizabeth, daughter of Charles Lewis, elector palatine (cf. Dangeau, Journal, xviii. 92), and after the revocation of the edict of Nantes he served against the Turks in Hungary during the campaign of 1686. But, afterwards joining his father at Berlin, he entered the service of the Elector Frederick William, by whom he was appointed general of cavalry and colonel of a corps of dragoons.

Coming to England after the revolution, about March 1689, Schomberg was sent by William with despatches to his father in Ire-