An Admiral for America: Sir Peter Warren, Vice Admiral of the Red, 1703-1752 (review)

Reviewed by: An Admiral for America: Sir Peter Warren, Vice Admiral of the Red, 1703-1752 Andrew Lambert An Admiral for America: Sir Peter Warren, Vice Admiral of the Red, 1703-1752. By Julian Gwyn. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004. ISBN 0-8130-2709-8. Maps. Illustrations. Glossary. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xiv, 22. $59.95. Peter Warren never received his due from the pioneers of modern naval history. His amphibious, colonial career with but one major battle, and that as second in command to the famous Lord Anson, denied him a place in the pantheon of the proto-Nelsons that emerged in the late eighteenth century. Overshadowed by Anson, overtaken by Hawke, and dying relatively young, Warren did not fit into a history dominated by fleet battle. Mahan did not mention him. Yet, as Julian Gwyn demonstrates, there was far more to eighteenth-century naval activity than "decisive battle." This is the biography of an officer who served mainly in American waters, and took an American view of Empire. Warren was an unusual Admiral. Although born an Irish Catholic, the son of an active Jacobite, Warren adopted the Protestant faith, and joined the Royal Navy under the patronage of Irish relatives. His rapid rise to command and frequent contact with the American colonies culminated in marriage into a prominent New York family, opening a fabulous career of wealth creation, which Gwyn examined thirty years ago in his ground breaking study, The Enterprising Admiral: The Personal Fortune of Admiral Sir Peter Warren. This complementary biography examines the career of an outstanding seaman, warrior, and administrator who combined service with profit, creating large estates in England, Ireland, and America. The key to Warren's success was his willingness to serve in the unhealthy West Indies and the backwater of Colonial America. Better connected officers regularly turned down such postings, but they gave Warren a combination of experience and contacts that he exploited to the full when the War of Jenkins's Ear, and the War of the Austrian Succession reached the New World. Even the failed attack on St Augustine in Spanish Florida in 1740 was a valuable lesson in co-operation with colonial forces. Once France joined the war his thoughts turned to the fortress of Louisbourg, seen as the key to Canada. In 1745 his Royal Navy Squadron combined with colonial land forces to capture the fortress. It is unlikely that any other British officer would have handled colonial sensitivities so skilfully. Rewarded and promoted he was recalled to serve under Anson in the Western Squadron. His part in the First battle of Cape Finisterre added to his financial windfall. The lingering effects of scurvy, a legacy of the Louisbourg siege, forced him ashore, leaving the Second battle of Finisterre to Sir Edward Hawke. Success in America earned Warren the patronage of the great, success off Cape Finisterre helped secure a seat in Parliament, but he remained an independent man, losing his chance for further preferment by voting against the ministers on a service issue. It is significant that his greatest ambition was to become Governor of New York. He died suddenly in Ireland, while adding to his estates. While Warren missed further employment, glory, and reward in the Seven Years' War, his achievements were already the stuff of which dreams are made. This outstanding work of scholarship, long matured, and placed in the broadest context, will reward historians of the Royal Navy, Colonial America, the War of 1740-48, and British society in the [End Page 1252] eighteenth century. Warren has received his due, he will never be ignored again. Andrew Lambert King’s College London London, England Copyright © 2004 Society for Military History

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