Richard Hancorn (Royal Navy officer)

For other people named Richard Hancorn, see Richard Hancorn.

Richard Hancorn
Other name(s)	Richard Hancorne
Born	c. 1754
Died	21 July 1792(1792-07-21) (aged 37–38) Bulama (now Bolama Island, Guinea-Bissau)
Allegiance	Kingdom of Great Britain
Service / branch	Royal Navy
Years of service	1783–1792
Rank	Lieutenant
Commands	HMS Calypso

Richard Hancorn (c. 1754 – 1792) was a British Royal Navy officer, serving during the late eighteenth century.

Naval career

On 15 February 1783, Hancorn was commissioned to the rank of lieutenant aboard the Bonetta-class sloop under the command of William Henry Ricketts.[1] Soon after, he joined HMS Melampus, under the command of Sir Charles Pole, 1st Baronet, who was appointed to the frigate in May 1790 as a result of the Nootka Crisis.[2]

Hancorn v. Butterfield

Upon joining HMS Melampus, Hancorn provoked the anger of the midshipmen by handing out "harsh and unfair" punishments for minor transgressions. Of particular grievance was his response to the misdemeanour of Midshipman William Butterfield, who was lashed to a grating and pulled to the top of the mizzen in a public display, because he had engaged in his ordinary duties without express permission from a senior officer. As Hancorn expressed, he was "getting under way before he had received his sailing orders."[3] An explosive incident occurred soon after when Hancorn entered the Star & Garter Inn in Portsmouth and was followed by Butterfield and four other midshipmen: Hannam, Hamlin, Parkinson and Trollop, the latter three being from HMS Melampus. Hannam, who was informed of the incident and believed Hancorn a tyrant, immediately initiated in verbally abusing him. The others followed and Hancorn soon found himself challenged to five separate fights. He responded by reminding them of their Naval traditions and that, as a superior officer, such behaviour was "totally reprehensible". Labelled a "rascal", "scoundrel" and "coward", he vacated the situation, prompting a further torrent of insults and hisses.[2]

Hancorn reported the incident to Pole, who reported it to Vice-Admiral Robert Roddam, from whom it was then referred to the Attorney-General. In June 1791, the offending midshipmen were brought to the Winchester Assizes to stand trial. The judge ruled in favour of Hancorn and referred their punishment to the Admiralty, stipulating that the five men deliver a sincere apology to Hancorn, as much to his liking. Although the Navy took no further action, Butterfield quit the Navy in the interim and returned only in 1794, once his superior was dead.[2]

Bulama Association

In 1792, a group of officers of the Royal Navy led an attempt to resettle Black former slaves from the Americas on the island of Bulama off the coast of Portuguese Guinea.[4] The Bulama Association, a philanthropic and financial organisation of which Hancorn was a member, hoped to create a colony that would remove the need for slave plantations in the Caribbean.[2]

The expedition, which consisted of two ships and two hundred and seventy-five colonists, set sail from England on 14 April 1792. Lieutenant Philip Beaver, president of the council of the colonization society, was commander of HMS Hankey; Hancorn, vice-president, was commander of HMS Calypso. Most of the settlers died and the survivors abandoned the colony in November 1793.[5] Hancorn died on the island weeks after the other leaders had decided to return home, on 21 July 1792.[6][7]

References

1. A LIST OF THE Flag-Officers of His Majesty's Fleet (PDF). RPJCB. p. 141.
2. Hiscocks, Richard (9 October 2018). "The Case of the Tyrannical Lieutenant Hancorn of the Melampus – June 1790". More than Nelson. Web and Prosper. Retrieved 12 August 2023.
3.  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Royal Naval Biography/Butterfield, William". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
4. Humphries, Will (4 November 2020). "How Britain's colony without slaves ended in bloodshed". The Times. London.
5. Hiscocks, Richard (3 January 2019). "Lieutenant Beaver and the Colonisation of Bulama 1792-4". More than Nelson. Web and Prosper. Retrieved 12 August 2023.
6. Extracts describing the abortive colonization of Bulama island, in the mouth of the Rio Grande river (now Bolama island, Corubala river, Guinea Bissau), in 1792 at Glamorgan Archives
7. Beaver, Philip (1805). African Memoranda: Relative to an Attempt to Establish a British Settlement on the Island of Bulama, on the Western Coast of Africa, in the Year 1792. With a Brief Notice of the Neighbouring Tribes, Soil, Productions, &c. and Some Observations on the Facility of Colonizing that Part of Africa, with a View to Cultivation; and the Introduction of Letters and Religion to Its Inhabitants: But More Particularly as the Means of Gradually Abolishing African Slavery. C. and R. Baldwin. p. 433 – via Google Books.