John Byng

John Byng was shot on his own quarterdeck by his own navy for failing to do his utmost, and the phrase Voltaire coined about it has outlived everything else in the case. He was the son of an admiral, made post captain young, and rose steadily through unexciting appointments to become an admiral himself without ever having fought a fleet action. In 1756 he was sent with a hastily assembled and undermanned squadron to relieve Minorca, where the French had landed and were besieging the British garrison at Fort St Philip. He met a French fleet of comparable size off the island, the engagement was mishandled by both sides, his own van was damaged and his rear never properly engaged, and after a council of war he concluded he could not relieve the garrison and returned to Gibraltar. Minorca fell. The government of the day was intensely unpopular and in need of somebody else to blame, and the newspapers obliged. He was court-martialled under the Articles of War, acquitted of cowardice and disaffection, and convicted of failing to do his utmost - an article that carried a mandatory death sentence with no discretion. The court itself recommended mercy. Pitt asked the king for it, unsuccessfully. He was shot by a party of marines aboard the Monarch at Portsmouth in March 1757, kneeling on a cushion and dropping his own handkerchief as the signal. Voltaire put the episode in Candide, with the observation that in England it is thought well to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others. The mandatory sentence was amended in 1779.

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