Many of my friends have often asked of me what, or rather who, is the Earl of St. Vincent that frequents my online persona and email addresses. Put simply he is Sir John Jervis, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Bath, Admiral of the Fleet, and the First Earl of St. Vincent, and member of Historic Members Privy Council. Your right, that isn't quite as simply put as you may have expected. But in my opinion it is a list of titles which reflects the character of the man, once described as saint, once as tyrant.
Upon inspection he holds the bearing of a man of great arrogance and contempt, and of this I would be inclined to agree but only with the knowledge of his accomplishment can a true interpretation be made. It also shows a thou
ghtfulness not often shared by many naval portraits of the great leaders.
For me Lord St. Vincent will remain my greatest hero of the historical past. A titan amongst his counterparts such as Sir George Rodney, Lord Hood and Lord Melville. As the First Lord of the Admiralty he oversaw unparalleled reforms in the Royal Navy, the likes of which would not be seen again until Lord Fisher took the helm of the Admiralty in the early 20th Century nearly one hundred years later. The success of these reforms cannot be underestimated. It is commonly thought that one infamous Lord Nelson was the reason the British Empire came out the victor in the twenty year struggle with first revolutionary then Napoleonic France, by defeating and therefore removing the naval threat of invasion at Trafalgar, it was not. Another commonly unknown fact is that Lord Nelson was the protégé of Lord St. Vincent. One could argue that Lord Nelson owed this selfless man everything, including his legacy.
It was during Lord St. Vincent's reign as the First Lord of the Admiralty that the blundering bureaucracy and festering corruption that was the naval dockyards of the empire came under intense scrutiny. Lord St. Vincent exposed massive corruption within the naval dockyard systems that had been delaying the efficiency and risking the safety
of the ships of the Royal Navy's fleets at sea. Shoddy workmanship, immoral pursers and corruption at every level is what faced Lord St. Vincent and he methodically and relentlessly went about his reform of the naval dockyards, and without going into too much detail created a massive public scandal in his exposure of high ranking officials involved in the
corruption. It was a breath of fresh air sweeping through the worlds largest and wealthiest organisations in the world. Nelson is credited with his victory at Trafalgar. Had it not been for Lord St. Vincents patronage of this headstrong often arrogant officer Nelson may not have been at Trafalgar. But more importantly had it not been for Lord St. Vincents reforms the Royal Navy would not have been ready for the combined Franco-Spanish Fleets that met them at Trafalgar.
Lord St. Vincents reforms left his public reputation in tatters in many ways, he had his friends and supporters of course. But his enemies were vocal in their condemnation the
n his friends were and until his death he was a character often viewed with contempt, but only the men at sea truly appreciated the changes he made. The ultimate testament to his reforms was that his personal flagship the HMS Victory, over 27 years old at the time, was infighting condition when Lord Nelson sailed her in the line of battle at Trafalgar. He allowed Nelson to exercise his tactical brilliance, he also prevented Napoleon from invading the British isles, his is a life of his duty, as he saw it it, before everything else, in defence of his country and for the improvement of the Royal Navy.
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