"The Admiral Benbow" by Sam Willis

The Admiral Benbow is the name of the pub owned by Jim Hawkins and his mother where Billy Bones comes to stay before being found by Blind Pew in Treasure Island. John Benbow was also a naval legend.

Born around 1652 during the Commonwealth, there is little of certainty about John Benbow's early life. He may have worked on merchant boats on the Severn. He certainly saw some service in the Navy, fighting the corsairs of Algiers and defending the English colony of Tangiers (with Bombay, part of the dowry of Charles II's queen) becoming a skilled pilot. He may have been on of the unnamed pilots who guided William of Orange's invasion fleet through the Straits of Dover to land at Torbay at the start of the last successful naval invasion of England. Certainly his first patron, under whom he had served in the Navy, was Admiral Herbert who carried the letter signed by the seven conspirators inviting William to England.

Benbow's subsequent career was as a fighting captain who aggressively raided the French coast in 1693 and 1694 during the Nine Years' War before the Treaty of Ryswick of . He was also a skilled manager of both the Chatham dockyard and subsequently the Deptford dockyard. While at Deptford he leased John Evelyn's house at Sayes Court for three years during which period he was persuaded to sub-let it to Czar Peter the Great of Russia who was studying British dockyards as part of his grand tour of Europe. Also at this time Benbow was fast-tracked to become an Elder Brethren of Trinity House and served on the committee overseeing the construction of the great Naval Hospital at Greenwich by Christopher Wren; Newton was also on the committee and the bricks were supplied by factory owner Daniel Foe who later became famous for writing the great maritime romance of Robinson Crusoe.

Later he was sent on a reconnoitring voyage of the inadequately charted West Indies. On the outbound voyage he escorted Edmund Halley  who was himself mapping magnetic variations. Whilst cruising the Caribbean he searched for pirate Captain Kidd who was subsequently apprehended in New York and negotiated with the colonists of the doomed Scottish colony of Darien which bankrupted that country, forcing it into union with England so the Bank of England would pay their debts. (Strange how history repeats itself differently; the Scots banks have now again done their best to bankrupt England and they want their independence on the back of it!). Finally Benbow received mortal injuries in the first naval engagement of the Anglo-French War of Spanish Succession whilst his captains mutinied. The subsequent court martial became the first naval trial to be published in the newspapers, appearing a few months after the launch of the first English language regular newspaper the Daily Courant.

This was a rattling good yarn despite the frankly speculative nature of Benbow's early life and presents the story of a consummate sailor who was one of the first of a great tradition. It also mentions Hawke House in Sunbury-on-Thames!

March 2012; 318 pages