Thomas Graves, 1st Baron Graves

Template:Short description Template:For Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox military person Admiral Thomas Graves, 1st Baron Graves, KB (23 October 1725 – 9 February 1802) was a Royal Navy officer, politician and colonial administrator who served in the Seven Years' War and the American War of Independence. He was also the Commodore-Governor of Newfoundland for a period of time.<ref name=odnb>Article by Kenneth Breen, ‘Graves, Thomas, first Baron Graves (1725–1802)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Jan 2008; Retrieved 4 June 2008.</ref>

Military career

Born in England in October 1725, Graves was the second son of Rear-Admiral Thomas Graves of Thanckes in Cornwall.<ref>Historic Cornwall website: Thanckes estate near Torpoint.</ref>

Graves' first military experience was as a volunteer with Commodore Henry Medley's crew around 1740. He was promoted to lieutenant in 1743, and captain in 1755. In the first year of the Seven Years' War, Graves failed to confront a French ship which gave challenge.<ref name=odnb/> He was tried by court-martial for not engaging his ship, and reprimanded.<ref name=odnb/> Graves became Commodore-Governor of Newfoundland in 1761<ref name=odnb/> and given the duty of convoying the seasonal fishing fleet from England to the island. In 1762 he learned that French ships had captured St. John's. Graves, Admiral Alexander Colville and Colonel William Amherst retook the port city.<ref name=odnb/>

With the end of the Seven Years' War, Labrador came under his responsibility as French fishing fleets returned to the French Shore and St. Pierre and Miquelon. Graves strictly enforced the treaties to the extent that the French government protested. Graves' governorship ended in 1764. He returned to active service during the American War of Independence and became commander-in-chief of the North American Squadron in 1781.<ref name=odnb/> when Mariot Arbuthnot returned home.

During the American Revolution, his fleet was defeated by the Comte de Grasse in the Battle of the Chesapeake at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay on 5 September 1781, leading to the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown.

In September 1782, a fleet under his command was caught in a violent storm off the banks of Newfoundland. The captured French ships from the Battle of the Saintes Template:Ship (110 guns) and Template:HMS (74 guns), and the British ships Template:HMS (74 guns) and Template:HMS (74 guns) foundered, along with other merchant ships, with the loss of 3,500 lives. In 1786 Graves became Commander-in-Chief, Plymouth.<ref name=odnb/><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

With the French Revolutionary Wars, Graves was second in command to Admiral Richard Howe at the Glorious First of June on 1 June 1794. Graves became a full admiral and was awarded an Irish peerage as Baron Graves, of Gravesend in the County of Londonderry.<ref>London Gazette no. 13727. p. 1178</ref>

Personal life

Lord Graves married Elizabeth, daughter of William Peere Williams, in 1771. The couple had a son, Thomas, in 1775. Following several battle injuries, Graves retired to his Devon estate in 1794, and died in February 1802, aged 76.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

See also

• Governors of Newfoundland
• List of people of Newfoundland and Labrador

References

• Kidd, Charles, Williamson, David (editors). Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage (1990 edition). New York: St Martin's Press, 1990, Template:Page needed
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External links

• Biography at Government House The Governorship of Newfoundland and Labrador
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