board the Rupert and Nonsuch, and cannot be correct, unless we suppose that his wife accompanied him on board the ship, which is barely possible. The sons all died young and unmarried. Martha, the eldest daughter, was twice married, and died in 1719. The youngest, Catharine, said to have been born in 1687, married in 1709 Mr. Paul Calton, of Milton, in Berkshire. Mention is also made of a sister Eleanor, born 7 July 1646, who married Samuel Hind, a grocer in Shrewsbury, and died 24 May 1724, and of another sister, Elizabeth, who married Richard Ridley, possibly a companion of Benbow in some of his early adventures.
Evelyn has entered in his diary, under date 1 June 1696, that he had let his house at Deptford 'for three years to Vice (sic) Admiral Benbow, with condition to keep up the gardens;' and in a letter of 18 Jan. 1096-7, complained that having 'let his house to Captain (sic) Benbow, he had the mortification of seeing every day much of his former labours and expense there impairing for want of a more polite tenant.' As, however, during the greater part of this time, Rear-admiral Benbow was employed looking for Jean Bart, the neglect was not due to him individually. The admiral himself is always spoken of as a man of most temperate habits, and who was never seen disguised in drink (Owen and Blakeway, ii. 393 n.). His portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller, formerly at Hampton Court, is now in the Painted Hall at Greenwich, to which it was presented by George IV in 1824. It represents a man of lithe figure, dark complexion, and clear-cut features, very different from the idea we might otherwise form of one so especially described as 'a rough seaman.'
[Official letters and other documants in the Public Record Office; Burchett's Naval History; Lediar's Naval History; Baron du Casse's L'Amiral du Casse (1876). 257; Charnock (Biog. Nav. ii, 233) contributes some interesting and original matter; but the family and early history he has merely repeated from the memoir in Campbell's Lives of the Admirals, or in the Biog. Britanica, which professes to he written from materials supplied by Benbow's son-in-law, Mr. Calton. But Mr. Carlton's information is utterly untrustworthy. The well-known letter from Du Casse to Benhow is part of this: it has been quoted and requoted times without number, but only from this copy of an alleged translation given by Mr. Calton to Dr. Campbell, and first published by him. We have no account of the original letter ; no one — except Calton — has ever pretended to have seen it. The substance of it is utterly opposed to all French history and to French culture. It may possibly be a garbled extract, although there is no reason to suppose that it is : but nothing in verbal criticism can be more certain than that a French original of the letter, as published, never existed. Catherine Benbow, who married Mr. Calton, was certainty not more than fifteen years old at the time of her father's death. From his constant service she, personally, could have known very little about him, and she did not marry for seven years afterwards; it is therefore not to be wondered at that Calton was entirely ignorant of his father-in-laws early career, or very humble antecedents. But that he should devote himself to foisting on Campbell's credulity a romance, of which the greater part has not even a substratum of fact, and that his romance should have been very generally accepted as truth, are not the least curious of the many curious things connected with Benbow's history.]
BENBOW, JOHN (1681?–1708), traveller, son of Vice-admiral John Benbow [q. v.], was, on 29 June 1696, appointed a volunteer on board their Majesties' ship Northumberland. He did not, however, remain long in
the navy, and in February 1700-1 sailed for
the East Indies as fourth mate of the Degrave merchant ship. As his father was at
this time commander-in-chief in the Downns,
and was a few months later appointed commander-in-chief in the West Indies, and thus
had it in his power to advance him in the navy,
it is difficult to avoid the concluaion that there
was some breach between the two. The Degrave, a ship of 700 tons, duly arrived in Bengal, where the captain and first mate died and
thus, in ordinary course, Benbow was second
mate when she started for her homeward
voyage. In going out of the river the ship
grounded heavily, and though she was got
off without difficulty, and, as it was believed,
without damage, she was scarcely well to
sea, with a fresh northerly monsoon, before
she was found to be leaking badly. With
the pumps going constantly they reached
Mauritius in a couple of months, but with
a singular rashness started again for the Cape
without having even discovered the leak.
The ship, coming into a more stormy sea, was
in imminent danger of sinking, and the
captain, officers, and ship's company determined to make for the nearest land, which
was the south end of Madagascar. There
they ran the ship ashore ; she became a complete wreck, little or nothing was saved, and
the men got to land with considerable difficulty. They wvre almost immediately made
prisoners by the natives. Benbow, together
with two or three of his companions, managed
to escape ; he reached Fort Dauphin, and
was eventually rescued by a Dutch ship
and brought home. The rest of the ships
company were killed, with the exception of
one boy, Robert Drury, then fifteen years
