Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Colpoys, John
COLPOYS, Sir JOHN (1742?–1821), admiral, is said to have entered the navy in 1756 and to have served at the reduction of Louisbourg in 1758, and of Martinique in 1762. In 1770, being then a lieutenant, he went to the East Indies, was there made commander, and advanced to post rank on 25 Aug. 1773. In 1774 he returned to England, and was shortly after sent again to the West Indies. In 1776 he commanded the Seaford frigate on the North American station, and in the West Indies during 1777-8. In the summer of 1779 he commanded the Royal George, bearing the flag of Rear-admiral Sir John Lockhart Ross, in the Channel, and in 1781 went to North America in command of the Orpheus frigate. He afterwards commanded the Phaeton frigate in the Mediterranean, and in 1790 was appointed to the Hannibal of 74 guns, which he commanded till 1793. He had thus an almost uninterrupted service of nearly forty years, more than twenty of them actually in command of ships of war, when on 12 April 1794 he was made a rear-admiral. No officer living had so wide an experience of the various phases of naval discipline. In October 1794 he hoisted his flag on board the London of 98 guns, one of the winter fleet under Lord Howe. Continuing in the London, in the fleet under Lord Bridport, he was promoted to be vice-admiral on 1 July 1795; was present in the action off L'Orient on 23 July 1795, in the Channel cruises of 1796, and at Spithead when the mutiny broke out on 15 April 1797. When order was to some extent restored, the greater part of the fleet, under Admiral Lord Bridport, was taken to St. Helens, the Minotaur and Marlborough, which had not yet returned to their duty, being left at Spithead with the London, whose men had throughout appeared among the most moderate.
On 7 May the mutiny again broke out in the ships at St. Helens. Colpoys, on board the London, turned the hands up and desired them to let him know their grievances. They answered they had none. Colpoys then ordered them to go below and remain quiet; the officers and marines to get under arms. When, however, the boats of the fleet drew near, the men became restless and attempted to come again on deck. This the officers at the hatchways resisted; and on the men becoming more violent, called to the admiral to know if they should prevent them 'by firing on them.' 'Yes, certainly,' answered Colpoys: 'they must not be allowed to come up till I order them.' Some shots were exchanged between the officers on deck and the men in the hatchways. The marines threw down their arms and made way for the men to come up; on which Colpoys, seeing that any further struggle was useless, desired the officers to go aft. The men clustering on deck now raised a cry for the first lieutenant, Mr. Bover, to whom they attributed the recent firing and the death of five of their comrades. Bover was seized, carried forward on to the forecastle, and immediate preparations were made for hanging him. The rope was round his neck, when the admiral, having with much difficulty obtained a hearing, said that 'if anybody was culpable for what had happened it was he himself, and that Mr. Bover had only obeyed his orders.' At the time he fully believed that the result of his interference would be to remove the rope from Bover's neck and to place it round his own; and for the next twenty-four hours he considered himself in imminent danger of being hanged. The mutineers, however, having read and considered the admiralty orders, which were given up to them, merely confined the admiral and the other principal officers separately in their cabins; and on the 11th sent them on shore. On the 14th Colpoys received an order from the admiralty to strike his flag, 'judging it expedient under existing circumstances.' The order was accompanied by a highly complimentary letter from Lord Spencer, and neither on the part of the admiralty nor of the admiral does there seem to have been any suspicion of a reprimand being intended or understood.
In the following year it was arranged for Colpoys to have command of a detached squadron, with his flag in the Bellona; but on its becoming known that there was a certain feeling against him on the Bellona's lower deck, the admiralty judged it better that he should not at that time hoist his flag. He readily accepted the decision of the board, and had no further employment till, in June 1803, he was appointed commander-in-chief at Plymouth. On 1 Jan. 1801 he had attained the rank of admiral; he had also been made a knight of the Bath; and in May 1804, at the special request of Lord Melville, he gave up his command at Plymouth to take a seat at the admiralty. A few months later he was spoken of as the probable commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean (Nelson Despatches, vi. 320); but as the vacancy did not occur, he was in the following year appointed treasurer, and on the death of Lord Hood, on 27 Jan. 1816, to be governor of Greenwich Hospital, where he died 4 April 1821.
[Naval Chronicle (with a portrait), xi. 265; Ralfe's Nav. Biog. ii. 3, andiii. 167. The original pamphlet by Rear-admiral Griffith Colpoys, which Ralfe has reprinted, is A letter to Vice-admiral Sir Thomas Byam Martin, K.C.B., containing an account of the mutiny of the fleet at Spithead in 1797, in correction of that given in Captain Brenton's Naval History of the last War (1825); it is now scarce, but there is a copy in the British Museum ; Gent. Mag. (1821), vol. xci. pt. i. p. 381.]