Frigate Commander (48 page)

The following month he travelled down to join his brother John at Sandgate, where he was able to take advantage of the sea bathing:

I go into the sea every morning at day light, but I still am not recovered from some of the effects of the operation. Which, however, I believe has succeeded in removing the complaint I was troubled with.
¹³⁴

It was almost certainly whilst he was at Sandgate that the sad news came of the death of his old friend Dr Currie.

The
Fame
was launched into the Thames on 8 October and taken to the Woolwich Dockyard to be fitted out. Moore formally joined her at the end of the month, accompanied by Lieutenant John Gore from the
Indefatigable
. In January 1806, she received a draft of 100 men from HMS
Victory
[100], though Moore was disappointed as to their quality.
¹³⁵
The
Fame
was quickly ordered to join the Channel Fleet but within a few months, Moore’s health had weakened again and he realized that the operation he had undergone had not removed his complaint. He was finding walking difficult, and once again had to consider whether he should resign his command. By May the decision could be put off no longer, and he formally requested to be superseded.

There may have been another reason for his resignation; he had just purchased a new estate with the proceeds of his accumulated prize money. As he had previously indicated, and despite his brief flirtation with properties in Scotland, he wanted to live in Surrey. The estate he purchased was Brook Farm, just outside the village of Cobham. The house itself had been built in 1800 in the new ‘villa’ style, as an elegant, smaller version of the country house. It had stables, a patent water closet upstairs, and was described as

. . . commanding most delightful and extensive prospects: Pains Hill, richly embowered, forms one of the many picturesque objects on the one side.
¹³⁶

There is no doubt that Moore dearly loved the place. In June, he confessed contentedly to his journal:

I am remaining quietly at home in the beautiful part of the country which has always been a favourite spot with me. My health very indifferent . . . I have involved myself, perhaps rather imprudently in farming, of which I am totally ignorant, but I have a bailiff to whom I am obliged to trust the management of the land and of whom I have had an excellent character. I shall try how this does for a year or two when I must decide whether to go on or not. In the meantime, I certainly have had great satisfaction in this purchase.

His mother and sister were quickly brought there to live with him and also, to his great joy, his brother John, whenever he was not employed militarily.

But Moore had not altogether abandoned his naval career. In February 1807, Grenville, the First Lord of the Admiralty, offered him the command of another new 74-gun ship of the line, but Moore was still unconvinced about the strength of his health. He took to travelling to the Malvern Hills to help regain his fitness and fell in love with the area. He also spent time visiting his old friend Admiral Sir Harry Neale at his estate near Lymington. The two were to remain close friends until Neale’s death in 1840. At the end of July, Moore was again offered a ship and given the choice of several new 74-gun ships. On the advice of Sir William Rule, Surveyor to the Navy, he chose the
Marlborough
(74). Again he was joined by his old shipmate Lieutenant John Gore, and now also by the former Second Lieutenant of the
Indefatigable
. For a crew he was given the entire crew of the frigate
Mermaid
, and 136 men from the
Lancaster
(64), which had just returned from years serving in the East Indies. True to his previous form and beliefs, Moore could not simply pack them all off to sea again. He insisted on every man receiving all the pay that was due to him, and then promptly gave them all three weeks leave to go home. The fact that all bar about twenty of them returned voluntarily and on time from their leave, illustrates the extent to which old fashioned beliefs in sailors’ attitudes to service in the Navy was wrong. Moore himself knew what it meant to have to leave family and friends. The pain had not grown any less in more than twenty years of service:

I cannot leave my family and some friends, without feeling low and dejected. This has been the case with me ever since I first went to sea. I never have been able to harden myself to these separations. I believe it is better that I should remain away
[from home]
after I have once been appointed to a ship, for I find every time I go among my friends I experience the same degree of dejection at quitting them again.

Towards the end of the year, the
Marlborough
was sent to the Tagus where Portugal was being threatened by the French. Ordered to carry the Portuguese royal family to safety in Brazil, Moore found himself once again under the orders of his old commander, Sidney Smith. Smith was unchanged;

Sir Sidney is . . . , as full of business and with as much parade and stage trick . . . I know all that he is about, and what I know does not by any means improve the idea I entertain either of his judgement or his zeal for the public service . . . I always am on good terms with him, which, you know is easy enough, he is so good tempered. I believe he is not ignorant that I approve of none of his plans, and, thank God, he seldom communicates them to me so we go on smooth enough.
¹³⁷

Moore’s next posting also took him back to join another of his old commanders – Sir Richard Strachan – this time for the expedition against the Schelde. Moore still maintained the highest regard for Strachan, even after the expedition faltered and ground to a halt, at the cost of the lives of over 4,000 men from Walcheren Fever alone. By September 1809, Moore was back at Brook Farm, commenting ruefully to his friend Creevey:
‘I hope Walcheren will be evacuated before we lose any more of our invaluable men.’
¹³⁸
In fact, it was Moore himself who was employed to bring off the last British troops three months later.

In 1811 Moore was offered command of the yacht
Sovereign
, a sinecure which was often offered as a form of quiet reward to the more senior officers or perhaps those suffering from weakness caused by injury sustained in action. Moore declined the situation, fearing that it might truly put an end to his career. It was an astute move, for in 1812 he was given command of the
Chatham
and at the end of the year, promoted to the rank of Rear Admiral and made Commander-in-Chief in the Baltic. Leaving England this time may have been much harder for, in March 1812, he had married Dorothy (Dora) Eden, the daughter of Thomas Eden, auditor of the Greenwich Hospital and brother of Lord Auckland.
¹³⁹
She was twenty-two years of age, whilst Moore was now forty-eight. Moore’s health, his frequent absence and the age difference between them may have contributed to the fact that only one child survived from their union. This was John, named after Graham’s beloved brother, who was born in 1822.
¹⁴⁰

By the end of the war, Moore was serving as Captain of the Channel Fleet under the command of Admiral Lord Keith. Immediately after the war he was awarded a KCB, and when Napoleon escaped from Elba, Moore was given the
Caledonia
(120) and appointed second in command in the Mediterranean.

The post-war years continued to be fully active ones for Moore; in 1816 he was called to the Board of Admiralty and, after three years service there, was promoted to Vice Admiral and given command of the Mediterranean station. Further honours were awarded him for his role in attempting to mitigate the worst excesses of the war between Greece and Turkey. By 1837, Moore was both Admiral and a GCB (Grand Cross of the Bath), but his ever unreliable health had taken too many blows. In 1839 he accepted the appointment as Commander-in-Chief at Plymouth, in the hope that the duties would be less demanding. However, his friends had already begun to see a marked physical deterioration in him and he retired to the peace of his beloved Brook Farm, where he could rest in financial security. His will, drawn up in March 1841, reveals something of the life that he led. His servant, William Mayford, may well have served with him in the navy, following him from ship to ship. His possessions not only included the usual stuff of the country gentleman: household furniture, linen, plate and china, carriages, horses, wine and liquors, but also items that we would expect to belong to the old naval officer: books, swords, pistols, charts and maps.

Although in failing health, Moore still managed to travel and keep in touch with his old comrades. One of his last letters to Admiral Thomas Byam Martin, written from a hotel in Brighton, provides a deeply poignant illustration of Moore’s final years:

My dear Martin, Thanks for your letter from Harrowgate, which caught me at Brook Farm the day before we started for this, which was yesterday. We were obliged to leave the house to the painters for a fortnight, much against my will, as I am now degenerated to be qualified to be President of the Never Wag Society. I wish this may capture you before you see Curzon
¹⁴¹
, for whom I have always had a great esteem and regard, which you may tell him, if you like, though I fear I used to be rather more of a blackguard than he approved of when we were messmates on the old
Adamant
.

I give you carte blanche to assure him how much I am reformed since those days. I inquired after him from Bob Curzon when I was last in town. There are not many of that mess now in existence besides him and me, if any. We must be, at least, a fortnight away, and I intend to pass it here, as this place is a very favourite one of my wife, and you know that decides the matter. You are a young fellow
¹⁴²
and may go anywhere (I think) either by sea or land, but I am, in spite of your flattery, very shaky. It annoys me to feel my powers decay, mentally and bodily: but I have no right to grumble, neither do I. You are now almost my only correspondent, and I used to have many. It is half a day’s work now to write a letter . . . I had entertained some hope of finding you here, which would have cheered me up not a little . . . I write now in gratitude for your most welcome letter, and not from having any cut-and-dried matter to communicate, for I am dull and foggy this morning, which is now often the case with me, but I am as much attached to my old friends as ever, though sad to see them dropping off too fast.
¹⁴³

Moore returned to Brook Farm, but in the following year his health became noticeably worse. By the summer it was clear that his constitution had reached an irrecoverable position, and he finally died on 25 November 1843. His body was interred beneath a sturdy stone tomb near the south door of the mediaeval church at Cobham. It lies there now in the company of his beloved Dora, and his son John, beneath the trees of the quiet Surrey countryside that he loved so much.

Appendix 1

The Identity of Miss ‘M’

Even during the final proof reading of this book, the identity of Moore’s mysterious love continues to intrigue. Since another may also be tempted to look into this – and I hope they will – I feel it important to mention one strong possibility.

In the Duchess of Sermoneta’s book,
The Locks
[sic]
of Norbury,
it is claimed that between around 1794-1804, Graham Moore maintained a romance with Augusta Locke, the eldest daughter of William and Mary Locke. As the author of this book is a descendant of the Locke family, there is clearly both family tradition and, apparently, some slight evidence that Augusta Locke might be Moore’s mysterious love. This could certainly tie in with our first introduction to her in his journals (see page 90), for Augusta Locke was actually eleven years younger than Moore (near enough to his estimated nine or ten years), and the ‘friends’ which he refers to in the journal extract could well be the Lockes, since he was certainly intimate with the family before early 1791.

The problem lies in the circumstances of the end of the relationship. According to Moore’s journal, he is rejected (in June 1799) because
she
does not feel prepared to leave her parents establishment. He then learns, months later, that she has accepted a proposal from another, whereas Augusta Locke did not finally marry until 1815.

According to the Duchess of Sermoneta and her evidence – a letter written by William Locke senior in 1806 – the affair between Graham Moore and Augusta Locke had been going on for ten years, ending around 1804. We know that Moore’s second love affair ends in 1803, but it would be stretching the evidence to suggest that this might be a reference to Augusta.

However, it is curious that Moore blames the failure of this second relationship on the opposition of his betrothed’s family, especially since he also mentions the problem that ended his first relationship – that being his inability to provide a degree of comfort and lifestyle comparable to that provided by the young woman’s parents.

However, according to the Duchess of Sermoneta, it was Moore’s mother who gave the reason for the failure of the suggested relationship between Augusta and Graham: ‘
. . . the difficulties and hazards he foresaw in taking his wife with him in any service he might be called to, or the pain he should feel in leaving behind him a woman who wished to share all his fortunes . . . had prevented his marrying and would probably continue to do so as long as the war lasted.
’ (
The Lockes of Norbury’
p.241).