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Andrew Douglas (d. 1725),
naval officer, was born in Glasgow but became domiciled in Ulster,
probably in Coleraine. In 1689 he was master of the merchant ship
Phoenix, which was laden with provisions and stores for the
relief of
Londonderry, besieged by the forces of James II.
For some weeks a
squadron of English ships had lain in Lough Foyle, unable or unwilling to
attempt to force the boom with which the river was blocked. Positive
orders to make the attempt were sent to Colonel Percy Kirke, who commanded
the relieving force; and two masters of merchant ships, Browning in the
Mountjoy of Londonderry and Douglas in the Phoenix(1), volunteered
for the service. With them also went Captain John Leake in the frigate
Dartmouth. As the three ships approached the boom the wind died away;
they were becalmed under the enemy's batteries, and were swept up by the
tide alone. Their position was thus one of great danger; but while the
Dartmouth engaged and silenced the batteries, the Mountjoy
first, and after her the Phoenix, crashed through the boom. The
Mountjoy ran aground and for the moment seemed to be lost. She was
exposed to a heavy fire, which killed Browning; but the concussion of her
own guns shook her off the bank, and on a rising tide she floated up to
the city. With better fortune the Phoenix had passed up without
further hindrance, and brought relief to Londonderry's starving
inhabitants, by whom Douglas was hailed as a saviour. A certificate signed
by the town's governor, George Walker, and others recommended him to the
king, and in February 1690 he was accordingly appointed to the command of
the sloop Lark.
On 30 August 1691 Douglas was promoted
captain of the frigate Sweepstakes in which, and afterwards in the
Dover, Lion, and Harwich, he served continuously
during the Nine Years' War, employed, it would appear, on the Irish and
Scottish coasts, but without any opportunity for distinction. The
Harwich was paid off in November 1697, and for the next three years
Douglas was unemployed, during which time, with no alternative profession,
he wrote repeated letters to the Admiralty, asking for his case to be
taken into consideration. At last, in February 1701, he was appointed to
the Norwich (60 guns) which he commanded for eighteen months in the
channel, and in July 1702 he sailed for the West Indies with a
considerable convoy. He arrived at Port Royal, Jamaica, in September,
where for the next eighteen months he remained senior officer; and in July
1704 he sailed for England with a large convoy. He arrived in the Thames
at the end of September, and while preparing to pay off wrote on 4 October
of his desire to be moved with his crew to the soon-to-be-launched
Plymouth. Douglas's request is curious, for at the time of his writing
many of his officers and men were combining to try him by court martial on
charges of sutling, trading, hiring out the men to merchant ships for his
private advantage, and punishing them ‘exorbitantly’. He was tried on
these charges at Deptford on 16 November 1704, and the court, holding them
to be fully proved, ‘in consideration of the meanness of his proceedings’,
sentenced him to be cashiered.
Douglas was reinstated in his rank
on 24 September 1709 (with effect from 25 January 1710) by the earl of
Pembroke, then lord high admiral, on the consideration of fresh evidence.
In March 1711 he was appointed to command the Arundel, in which he
was employed in the North Sea, and as far as Göteborg with convoy. While
in her, on 15 December 1712, he was again tried by court martial, on this
occasion for using indecent language to his officers and confining some of
them to their cabins undeservedly, and for these offences he was fined
three months' pay. He seems indeed to have been guilty, but under great
provocation, especially from the lieutenant, who was at the same time
fined six months' pay. In the following March the Arundel was paid
off, and in February 1715 Douglas was appointed to the Flamborough,
also on the home station. She was employed, mostly in the channel, in the
operations concerned with the Jacobite rising of that year. The ship was
paid off in October, and he had no further service. After several years on
half pay as a captain he died on 26 June 1725. From: Dictionary of
National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 15 Of his family we know
but little. He had with him in the Norwich and afterwards in the
Arundel a youngster, by name Gallant Rose(3), whom he speaks of as
his wife's brother, ‘whose father was captain in the army in
Cromwell's time.’ He also on different occasions applied for
leave to go to the north of Ireland on his own affairs, which
fact would seem to imply that, notwithstanding his
Scotch-sounding name, he was an Ulster Irishman. Notes:
1. The Phoenix is described as a 'ship of Coleraine',
which carried 6,000 bushels of oatmeal, possibly from Scotland. 2. A
Captain Andrew Douglas of Mains
(lineage uncertain) was involved in the slave trade of the late 17th
and early 18th centuries.
A well-known former slave was Scipio Kennedy. He had been brought to
Scotland by Captain Andrew
Douglas of Mains
in 1702
from the West Indies, where he had been transported as a young boy from
the African west coast. It is not known if this is the same officer.
This Andrew Douglas's daughter, Jean married married Sir John
Kennedy, 2nd Bt Of Culzean. 3. Possibly
Ross, not Rose?
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