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Rh iii. 338) wrongly asserts that he retired from the service between 1731 and 1740. He was actually in command of a ship during the whole time.

In the West Indies Lestock was authorised to fly a broad pennant as commodore and third in command of the fleet under Vice-admiral Edward Vernon (1684–1757) [q. v.], and took part in the operations against Cartagena, actually commanding in the attack on Fort San Luis on 23 March, when the Boyne suffered severely and had to be warped out of action. On the return of the fleet to Jamaica Lestock was ordered home, with most of the larger ships. With his broad pennant in the Royal Caroline he arrived in England in the end of August, and was shortly afterwards appointed to the Neptune, to command a large reinforcement going out to the Mediterranean. His sailing was, however, delayed for several weeks, and he did not join Haddock till the end of January 1742, and then with the ships so shattered by bad weather, and the crews so disabled by sickness and death, that the long-expected reinforcement was of no immediate use (, Letters, Cunningham's ed., i. 95; see ). ‘The Neptune arrived with a jury foremast and bowsprit, 250 people sick on board, and had buried 54 in the passage’ (Haddock to Duke of Newcastle, 1 Feb. 1741–2). On 13 March 1741–2 Lestock was promoted to be rear-admiral of the white. When, a couple of months later, Haddock was compelled by his weak health to return to England, Lestock succeeded temporarily to the command, and he both hoped and expected to be appointed to it from England. Other officers—notably Vernon and Mathews—who had been passed over for their flag, had been restored with their original seniority; he applied to have the same favour shown to him (Lestock to Duke of Newcastle, 8 May 1742), and was bitterly disappointed when he learned that Mathews was on his way out to supersede him [see ].

It has been said that between Lestock and Mathews there was a quarrel of long standing, and that Mathews, in accepting the command, had stipulated that Lestock should be recalled (, i. 153). On their first meeting, when Lestock went on board Mathews's flagship, he was publicly reprimanded in a very blunt manner for not having sent a frigate to meet the admiral at Gibraltar (ib.) During the next eighteen months, however, the two were seldom together, Mathews being much occupied by his diplomatic duties away from the fleet, though from time to time he wrote complaining of the responsibility which Lestock's bad health threw on him (Mathews to Duke of Newcastle, 2 Aug.–1 Oct. 1743). Honest and hearty co-operation between the two seemed impossible. Accordingly in the action off Toulon on 11 Feb. 1743–4, when Lestock, who on 29 Nov. 1743 had been promoted to be vice-admiral of the white, commanded the rear of the fleet, he was determined to do nothing to help Mathews, whose orders were confused and signals faulty. He obeyed the letter of the signals and of the ‘Fighting Instructions,’ careless, it would seem, of the disgrace which fell on the British flag. On the night of the 10th the rear division was a long way astern and to windward of its station; but when Mathews made the signal to ‘bring to’ for the night, Lestock, ignoring the signal for the line of battle, at once brought to, and, allowing his squadron to drift, was at daybreak on the 11th some five or six miles astern. Repeated signals were made to him to close the line; he could not or would not obey them, and remained astern during the whole day. When Mathews made the signal to engage, he argued that, as the signal for the line was still flying, he was bound primarily to keep the line, and to engage only when he could do so in the line. After the action, Mathews, dissatisfied with his conduct and his explanation of it, suspended him from his command and sent him to England, where, on the request of the House of Commons, he was tried by court-martial in May 1746. The trial lasted through the whole month, and ended in a unanimous acquittal. The finding has often been spoken of as a gross miscarriage of justice; the meaning of the signals was clear, and in presence of the enemy, when battle was once joined, it was the duty of every ship to be alongside one of the enemy's. But the court, considering the regulations in force at the time, could come to no other decision on the technical, as distinct from the moral question.

Two days after his acquittal Lestock was promoted to be admiral of the blue, 5 June 1746, and appointed to command a squadron destined, in the first instance, to operate against Quebec, but diverted from that end to an expedition against Lorient. This proved a miserable failure, and the troops were brought back after an ignominious repulse (Vie privée de Louis XV, ii. 290;, i. 308; Gent. Mag. 1746, p. 601). But beyond convoying them there and back again the fleet had little share in the work, and it does not appear that Lestock was responsible for this fiasco. On his return to Portsmouth he was ordered to strike his flag, which he did, meekly protest-