James Gambier, 1st Baron Gambier

Born the second son of John Gambier, the Lieutenant Governor of the Bahamas and Bermudian Deborah Stiles, Gambier was brought up in England by his aunt, Margaret Gambier, and her husband, Admiral Charles Middleton, 1st Baron Barham.{{cite ODNB|url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10321?docPos=2|title=James Gambier, 1st Baron Gambier|date=2004 |doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/10321 |access-date=11 April 2015}} He was a nephew of Vice-Admiral James Gambier and of Admiral Lord BarhamTracy, 2006, p. 148 and became an uncle of the novelist and travel writer Georgiana Chatterton.{{cite ODNB|url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/5187|title=Chatterton, Henrietta Georgiana Marcia Lascelles, Lady Chatterton|date=2004 |doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/5187 |access-date=11 April 2015}}

File:Pocock Glorious First of June1.jpg in 1794]]

Gambier entered the Navy in 1767 as a midshipman on board the third-rate {{HMS|Yarmouth|1745|6}}, commanded by his uncle, which was serving as a guardship in the Medway, and followed him to serve on board the 60-gun fourth-rate {{HMS|Salisbury|1769|6}} in 1769 where he served on the North American Station. He transferred to the 50-gun fourth-rate {{HMS|Chatham|1758|6}} under Rear Admiral Parry, in 1772, in the Leeward Islands. Gambier was placed on the sloop {{HMS|Spy}} and was then posted to England to serve on the 74-gun third-rate {{HMS|Royal Oak|1769|6}}, a guardship at Spithead. He was commissioned as a lieutenant on 12 February 1777, in which rank he served successively in the sloop {{HMS|Shark|1776|2}}, the 24-gun frigate {{HMS|Hind|1749|6}}, the third-rate {{HMS|Sultan|1775|6}} under Vice-Admiral Lord Shuldham, and then in {{HMS|Ardent|1764|6}} under his uncle's flag.{{cite web|url=https://morethannelson.com/officer/lord-james-gambier/|title=James Gambier 1st Baron|publisher=More than Nelson|access-date=30 March 2025}}

Lord Howe promoted Gambier to commander on 9 March 1778 and gave him command of the bomb ship {{HMS|Thunder|1771|6}}, which was promptly dismasted and surrendered to the French.Heathcote, p. 94 He was taken prisoner for a short period and, after having been exchanged, he was made a post captain on 9 October 1778 and appointed to the 32-gun fifth-rate HMS Raleigh and saw action at the capture of Charleston in May 1780 during the American Revolutionary War. He was appointed commander of fifth-rate {{HMS|Endymion|1779|6}}, cruising in British waters, later in the year.Tracy, N, 2006, p. 149 In 1783, at the end of the War, he was placed on half-pay.

In February 1793 following the start of the French Revolutionary Wars, Gambier was appointed to command the 74-gun third-rate {{HMS|Defence|1763|6}} under Lord Howe. By faith an evangelical, he was regarded as an intensely religious man, nicknamed Dismal Jimmy, by the men under his command. As captain of the Defence Gambier saw action at the battle of the Glorious First of June in 1794, gaining the distinction of commanding the first ship to break through the enemy line and subsequently receiving the Naval Gold Medal.Heathcote, p. 95

File:Iver Grove, Buckinghamshire.jpg, Gambier's home in Buckinghamshire]]

Gambier was appointed to the Board of Admiralty led by Earl Spencer in March 1795.{{cite web|title=Sainty, JC, Lord High Admiral and Commissioners of the Admiralty 1660–1870, Office-Holders in Modern Britain: Volume 4: Admiralty Officials 1660–1870 (1975)|pages=18–31|url=http://british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=16652|access-date=11 April 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141007025436/http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=16652|archive-date=7 October 2014|url-status=dead}}Rodger, p. 69 Promoted to rear-admiral on 1 June 1795, he became First Naval Lord in November 1795. Promoted to vice-admiral on 14 February 1799,{{London Gazette|issue=15107|page=147|date=12 February 1799}} Gambier left the Admiralty after the fall of the first Pitt ministry in February 1801 and became third-in-command of the Channel Fleet under Admiral William Cornwallis, with his flag in the 98-gun second-rate {{HMS|Neptune|1797|6}}. He went on to be governor and commander-in-chief of Newfoundland Station in March 1802. In that capacity he gave property rights over arable land to local people allowing them to graze sheep and cattle there and also ensured that vacant properties along the shore could be leased to local people.{{cite web|url=http://www.heritage.nf.ca/govhouse/governors/g35.html|title=James Gambier, 1st Baron Gambier|publisher=Government House, Newfoundland|access-date=11 April 2015}} It was around that time that he also bought Iver Grove in Buckinghamshire.{{cite web|url=http://www.parksandgardens.org/places-and-people/site/4843|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150924064807/http://www.parksandgardens.org/places-and-people/site/4843|url-status=dead|archive-date=24 September 2015|title=Iver Grove|publisher=Parksand Gardens|access-date=4 July 2015}}

Gambier then returned to the Admiralty as a Lord Commissioner of the Admiralty and First Naval Lord on the Admiralty Board led by Viscount Melville when the second Pitt ministry was formed in May 1804. Promoted to full admiral on 9 November 1805,{{London Gazette|issue=15859|page=1373|date=5 November 1805}} Gambier left the Admiralty in February 1806. He returned briefly for a third tour as First Naval Lord on the Admiralty Board led by Lord Mulgrave when the Second Portland Ministry was formed in April 1807.Rodger, p. 69

In May 1807 Gambier volunteered to command the naval forces, with his flag in the second-rate HMS Prince of Wales, sent as part of the campaign against Copenhagen during the Napoleonic Wars. Together with General Lord Cathcart, he oversaw the bombardment of Copenhagen from 2 September until the Danes capitulated after three days (an incident that brought Gambier some notoriety in that the assault included a bombardment of the civilian quarter). Prizes included eighteen ships of the line, twenty-one frigates and brigs and twenty-five gunboats together with a large quantity of naval storesTracy, N, 2006, pp. 149–50. for which he received official thanks from Parliament, and on 3 November 1807 a peerage, becoming Baron Gambier, of Iver in the County of Buckingham.{{London Gazette|issue=16083 |date=3 November 1807 |page=1457}}

{{Main|Battle of the Basque Roads}}

{{see also|Court-martial of James, Lord Gambier}}

File:Sternhold and Hopkins at Sea or a Stave out of Time (caricature) RMG PW3945.tiff’s request to pursue the French fleet]]

In 1808 Gambier was appointed to command the Channel Fleet. In April 1809 he chased a squadron of French ships that had escaped from Brest into the Basque Roads. He called a council of war in which Lord Cochrane was given command of the inshore squadron, and who subsequently led the attack. Gambier refused to commit the Channel Fleet after Cochrane's attack, using explosion vessels that encouraged the French squadron to warp further into the shallows of the estuary. This action resulted in the majority of the French fleet running aground at Rochefort.

Gambier was content with the blockading role played by the offshore squadron. Rear-Admiral Sir Eliab Harvey, who had commanded "Fighting Temeraire" at the Battle of Trafalgar, believed they had missed an opportunity to inflict further damage upon the French fleet. He told Gambier "I never saw a man so unfit for the command of a fleet as Your Lordship." Cochrane threatened to use his parliamentary vote against Gambier in retaliation for not committing the fleet to action. Gambier called for a court martial to examine his conduct. The court martial, on 26 July 1809 on Gladiator in Portsmouth, exonerated Gambier. Consequently, neither Harvey nor Cochrane were appointed by the Admiralty to command for the remainder of the war.Tracy, N, 2006, p. 150 The episode had political and personal overtones. Gambier was connected by family and politics to the Tory prime minister William Pitt. In Parliament, Cochrane represented the constituency of Westminster, which tended to vote Radical. In the aftermath of Basque Roads, Cochrane and Gambier quarreled and Gambier excluded Cochrane from the battle dispatches. Cochrane took the unusual move of standing in opposition to parliament's pro forma vote of thanks to Gambier.Blake, p. 213Hall, p. 40

In 1814 Gambier was part of the team negotiating the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812 between Britain and the United States.Heathcote, p. 96 He was appointed a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath on 7 June 1815.{{London Gazette|issue=17004|page=725|date=18 April 1815}} Promoted to Admiral of the Fleet on 22 July 1830,{{London Gazette|issue=18709|page=1539|date=23 July 1830}} he died at his home, Iver Grove in Buckinghamshire, on 19 April 1833 and was buried at St. Peter's churchyard in Iver.

Gambier was a founding benefactor of Kenyon College in the United States, and the town that was founded with it,{{cite web|url=http://www2.kenyon.edu/Khistory/chase/biography/biography.htm|title= Biography of Philander Chase|publisher= Kenyon College|access-date=11 April 2015}} Gambier, Ohio, is named after him,Gannett, p. 134. as is Mount Gambier, the city and dormant volcano in South Australia,Grant, p. 68. and Gambier Island in British Columbia,Walbran, p. 197 . as well as the Gambier Islands in French Polynesia.{{cite web|url=https://justalittlefurther.com/gambier|title=The Gambiers – Pearls, Pearls, Pearls|access-date=24 December 2023}} Gambier appears as a minor character near the end of Flying Colours, a 1938 Horatio Hornblower novel by C. S. Forester.Forester, pp. 214–22.

In July 1788 Gambier married Louisa Mathew, daughter of Daniel Mathew, 1718–1777, of Felix Hall, Kelvedon, Essex and St Kitts, West Indies, and Mary Elizabeth Byam, 1729–1814; they had no children.

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|motto = Fide Non Armis{{cite book|title=Burke's Peerage |date=1830}}}}

• List of governors of Newfoundland and Labrador
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{{Reflist}}

• {{cite book|last=Blake|first= Richard|title=Evangelicals in the Royal Navy, 1775–1815: Blue Lights and Psalm-singers|publisher=The Boydell Press|year= 2008|isbn=978-1843833598}}
• {{cite book |last=Forester |first=Cecil|title=Flying Colours |author-link=C. S. Forester |year=2011 |orig-year=1938|publisher=Penguin |isbn=978-0-241-95549-9 }}
• {{cite book |last=Gannett|first= Henry| url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_9V1IAAAAMAAJ |page=[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_9V1IAAAAMAAJ/page/n133 134]| title=The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States | publisher=Government Printing Office | year=1905}}
• {{cite book|last=Grant|first=James|author-link=James Grant (navigator)|title=The narrative of a voyage of discovery, performed in His Majesty's vessel the Lady Nelson, of sixty tons burthen: with sliding keels, in the years 1800, 1801, and 1802, to New South Wales|url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_PZAvAAAAMAAJ

|year=1803|publisher=C. Roworth for T. Egerton|isbn=978-0-7243-0036-5}}

• {{cite book|last= Hall|first= Christopher David|title=British Strategy in the Napoleonic War, 1803–15|publisher= Manchester University Press|year= 1992|isbn=978-0719036064}}
• {{cite book|last= Hattendorf|first= John B.| title="Admiral of the Fleet James, First Baron Gambier, G.C.B" in Reflections on Naval History|publisher= Naval War College Press|year= 2023|isbn=978-1-935352-81-5}}
• {{citebook|last=Heathcote|first=Tony|title=The British Admirals of the Fleet 1734–1995|publisher=Pen & Sword|year=2002 |isbn=0-85052-835-6}}
• {{cite book|last=Rodger|first=N.A.M. |year=1979|title=The Admiralty. Offices of State|publisher= Lavenham: T. Dalton Ltd|isbn=0900963948}}
• {{cite book|last=Tracy|first= Nicholas|title=Who's Who in Nelson's Navy: Two Hundred Heroes|publisher=Chatham Publishing|year= 2006|isbn=978-1861762443}}
• {{cite book | last =Walbran | first =Captain John T. | title =British Columbia Place Names, Their Origin and History | url =http://www.nosracines.ca/e/toc.aspx?id=3545 | place =Vancouver/Toronto | publisher =Douglas & McIntyre | year =1971 | edition =Facsimile reprint of 1909 | isbn =0-88894-143-9 | url-status =dead | archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20160303220337/http://www.nosracines.ca/e/toc.aspx?id=3545 | archive-date =3 March 2016 }}

• {{DictCanbio|ID=2881}}
• {{Cite EB1911|wstitle=Gambier, James Gambier, Baron|volume=11|page=439}}

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Category:1756 births

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Category:People from Nassau, Bahamas

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Category:Governors of Newfoundland Colony

Category:Royal Navy officers who were court-martialled

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