Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/417

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Gardiner
411
Gardiner

neither of them was in a position to render any aid. At last, a lady at Cheltenham having given 700l., the mission was determined on. Accompanied by Richard Williams, surgeon, Joseph Erwin, ship-carpenter, John Maidment, catechist, and three Cornish fishermen, Pearce, Badcock, and Bryant, he sailed from Liverpool 7 Sept. 1850 in the Ocean Queen, and was landed at Picton Island 5 Dec. He had with him two launches, each twenty-six feet long, in which had been stowed provisions to last for six months. The Fuegians were hostile and great thieves; the climate was severe and the country barren. Six months elapsed without the arrival of further supplies, which were detained at the Falkland Islands for want of a vessel. The unfortunate men gradually died of starvation, Gardiner, himself the last survivor, expiring, as it is believed, 6 Sept. 1851. On 21 Oct. the John Davison, sent for their succour, arrived, and on 6 Jan. 1852 H.M.S. Dido visited the place, but all they could do was to bury the bodies and bring away Gardiner's journal. Two years later, in 1854, the Allen Gardiner was sent out to Patagonia as a missionary ship, and in 1856 Captain Gardiner's only son, Allen W. Gardiner, went to that country as a missionary. Gardiner married secondly, 7 Oct. 1836, Elizabeth Lydia, eldest daughter of the Rev. Edward Garrard Marsh, vicar of Aylesford, Kent. He wrote and published: 1. ‘Outlines of a Plan for Exploring the Interior of Australia,’ 1833. 2. ‘Narrative of a Journey to the Zoolu Country in South Africa, undertaken in 1835, 1836.’ 3. ‘A Visit to the Indians on the Frontiers of Chili,’ 1840. 4. ‘A Voice from South America,’ 1847.

[Gent. Mag. July 1852, pp. 92–4; Annual Register, 1852, pp. 473–8; The Martyrs of the South (1852); Marsh's Memoir of A. F. Gardiner (1857), with portrait; Marsh and Stirling's Story of Commander A. Gardiner (1867), with portrait; Marsh's First Fruits of South American Mission (1873); Garratt's Missionaries' Grave (1852); Bullock's Corn of Wheat dying (1870); W. J. B. Moore's They have done what they could (1866); O'Byrne's Naval Biog. Dict. p. 387; Illustrated London News, 1 May 1852, p. 331, and 8 May, pp. 380–1, with three views on Picton Island.]

G. C. B.

GARDINER, ARTHUR (1716?–1758), captain in the navy, is described in his passing certificate, dated 3 Nov, 1737, as more than twenty-one years of age, and as having been at sea upwards of six years, chiefly in the Falmouth, with Captain John Byng [q.v.] On 4 July 1738 he was promoted to be lieutenant, and after serving in the Sutherland, and in the Captain with Captain Thomas Griffin [q.v.], he was promoted on 6 June 1744 to the command of the Lightning bomb, from which on 27 May 1745 he was posted to the Neptune as flag-captain to Vice-admiral Rowley. On 1 Oct. he was moved into the Feversham, which he commanded for three years in the Mediterranean, From 1749 to 1754 he commanded the Amazon on the coast of Ireland, and, on paying her off, applied on 15 May 1754 for leave to go to France for eight or ten months. In May 1755 he was appointed to the Colchester, but left her in the following September to join the Ramillies as flag-captain to his old commander, now Admiral Byng. In this capacity he accompanied Byng to the Mediterranean; and when, after the action off Minorca, Byng was recalled, Gardiner too was superseded from his command. At Byng's trial several points in Gardiner's evidence bore heavily on the accused, especially as he was a personal friend and an unwilling witness. In February 1757 he was appointed to the Monmouth of 64 guns, and again sent to the Mediterranean. In February 1758 he was with the squadron under Admiral Osborn, shutting up M. de la Clue in Cartagena, when on the 28th the Marquis Duquesne, with three ships, attempted to raise the blockade. The ships were immediately chased, and took different courses. The Foudroyant, carrying Duquesne's broad pennant, was the ship in which M. de Oalsonnière had hoisted his flag in the battle of Minorca, and, notwithstanding her enormous size, Gardiner had been heard to say that if he fell in with her, in the Monmouth, he would take her or perish in the attempt. It is, perhaps, more probable that the story was invented afterwards; for it was by the mere accident of position that the Foudroyant was chased by the Monmouth, the Swiftsure and Hampton Court, each of 70 guns, following. As night closed in, however, the Monmouth ran the chase out of sight of the other two ships, and, having partially disabled her rigging, brought her to close action about seven o'clock. In the very beginning of the fight Gardiner was wounded in the arm by a musket bullet, though not so seriously as to compel him to leave the deck. About nine o'clock, however, he fell, shot through the head, and died a fow hours afterwards. The fight was gallantly continued by the first lieutenant, Robert Carkett [q. v.], and on the Swiftsure coming up about one o'clock, the Foudroyant hauled down her colours. The great disproportion between the combatants, the Foudroyant being an unusually large and heavily armed ship of 8O guns, and the fact that the Monmouth alone had beaten her gigantic adversary almost to a standstill be-