for neglect of duty. They were all acquitted, but on the minutes being submitted to Lord Howe, the commander-in-chief, he at once pointed out the gross irregularity of trying and acquitting a number of men who were not once named; and of omitting from the charge the very important clause ‘for causing the death of five men.’ He therefore ordered a new court to be assembled ‘to try by name the several persons described for the capital offence, added to the charge of neglect of duty.’ The captains summoned to sit on this second court-martial declined to do so, ‘because the persons charged had been already tried and honourably acquitted,’ on which Howe again wrote to the commodore at Rhode Island, repeating the order, and now naming the several persons; and with a further order that, in case the refusal to constitute a court-martial was persisted in, he should cause ‘every captain refusing to perform his required duty in that respect to be forthwith suspended from his command’ (Howe to Sir Peter Parker, 17 and 20 April 1777). To this order a nominal obedience was yielded; the court was constituted, but the proceedings were merely formal; the minutes of the former trial were read and ‘maturely considered;’ and the court pronounced that these men ‘having been acquitted of neglect of duty, are in consequence thereof acquitted of murder or any other crime or crimes alleged against them’ (Minutes of the Court-martial). The Diamond afterwards joined Admiral Byron's flag in the West Indies, and in March 1779 Duckworth was transferred to Byron's own ship, the Princess Royal, in which he was present in the action off Grenada on 6 July [see Byron, John 1723–1786]. Ten days later he was promoted to be commander of the Rover, and on 16 June 1780 was posted into the Terrible, from which he was moved back to the Princess Royal as flag-captain to Rear-admiral Rowley, with whom he went to Jamaica. In February 1781 he was moved into the Bristol, and returned to England with the trade (Beatson, vi. 229, 268).
On the outbreak of the war with France in 1793, Duckworth was appointed to the Orion of 74 guns, which formed part of the Channel fleet under Lord Howe, and in the action off Ushant on 1 June 1794, when Duckworth was one of the comparatively few [see Caldwell, Sir Benjamin; Collingwood, Cuthbert, Lord] whose merits Howe felt called on to mention officially, and who, consequently, received the gold medal. Early in the following year he was transferred to the Leviathan of 74 guns, in which he joined the flag of Rear-admiral Parker in the West Indies, where, in August 1796, he was ordered to wear a broad pennant. He returned to England in 1797, and during that and in the early part of the following year, still in the Leviathan, commanded on the coast of Ireland. He was then sent out to join Lord St. Vincent in the Mediterranean, and was shortly afterwards detached in command of the squadron appointed to convoy the troops to Minorca, and to cover the operations in that island (7–15 Nov. 1798), which capitulated on the eighth day. The general in command of the land forces was made a K.B., and Duckworth conceived that he was entitled to a baronetcy, a pretension on which Lord St. Vincent, in representing the matter to Lord Spencer, threw a sufficiency of cold water (Brenton, Nav. Hist. ii. 348; James, Nav. Hist. (edit. 1860), ii. 222).
On 14 Feb. 1799 Duckworth was promoted to be rear-admiral of the white; and after remaining some months as senior officer at Port Mahon, he joined Lord St. Vincent (22 May) in his unsuccessful pursuit of the French fleet under Admiral Bruix. In June he was again detached to reinforce Lord Nelson at Naples, and in August was back at Minorca. He was next ordered to take command of the blockading squadron off Cadiz; and there, on 5 April 1800, he fell in with a large and rich Spanish convoy, nearly the whole of which was captured. Duckworth's share of the prize-money is said, though possibly with some exaggeration, to have amounted to 75,000l. In the June following he went out to the West Indies as commander-in-chief on the Leeward Islands station; and in March and April 1801, during the short period of hostilities against the northern powers, he took possession of St. Bartholomew, St. Thomas, and the other islands belonging to Sweden or Denmark. They were all restored on the dissolution of ‘the armed neutrality;’ but Duckworth, in recognition of his prompt service, was made a K.B. 6 June 1801. In the end of the year he returned to England; but, on the renewal of the war in 1803, was sent out as commander-in-chief at Jamaica, in which capacity he directed the operations which led to the surrender of General Rochambeau and the French army in San Domingo. He was promoted to be a vice-admiral on 23 April 1804; and in April 1805 he returned to England in the Acasta frigate. Immediately after his arrival, on 25 April, he was tried by court-martial on charges preferred by Captain Wood, who had been superseded from the command of the Acasta, in what he alleged to be an oppressive manner, in order that, under a captain of Duckworth's own choosing, the frigate
