Admiral Sir Henry Ducie Chads: From HMS Java to the Crimean War

Admiral Sir Henry Ducie Chads had one of the longest and most eventful naval careers represented among the memorials connected with St Peter & St Paul, Fareham.

Born in 1788, Chads entered the Royal Naval College at the age of twelve and went to sea in 1803. His early service took him to the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, where he fought in operations against the French and was at one point taken prisoner.

One of the defining moments of his career came during the War of 1812. Chads was first lieutenant of HMS Java when she fought the much more powerful American frigate USS Constitution on 29 December 1812. During the battle, Java’s captain was mortally wounded and Chads, although himself seriously wounded, took command and continued the fight until the shattered British ship was forced to surrender. His conduct earned him promotion to commander in 1813.

His career then took him to Burma. From 1823 he served in the First Anglo-Burmese War, where his naval operations around Rangoon brought him repeated praise from the British authorities in India. He was promoted captain in 1825 and appointed Companion of the Order of the Bath for his service.

Chads later served in East Asia and China, but he also became important for something less dramatic: naval gunnery. From 1845 until 1854 he commanded HMS Excellent, the Royal Navy’s gunnery training establishment at Portsmouth, and helped reform the Navy’s approach to the weight and speed of gunfire.

When the Crimean War began, he returned to active operations as a rear-admiral. He served in the Baltic and took part in the campaign against Bomarsund in 1854. He later became Commander-in-Chief at Queenstown in Ireland, rose to full admiral in 1863, and was made Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath in 1865.

His connection with Fareham came through his marriage. In 1815 he married Elizabeth Townshend Pook, daughter of John Pook of Fareham, and their eldest son, Henry Chads, was born in Fareham in 1819 and later became an admiral himself.

Sir Henry died at Southsea on 7 April 1868. His own memoir records that one of his final wishes was to be buried at Fareham beside his wife, and his family honoured that request.

His memorial therefore connects the parish with an extraordinary span of naval history: the Napoleonic era, the War of 1812, Burma, China, the reform of naval gunnery and the Crimean War. Few officers served through so many different chapters of nineteenth-century Royal Navy history.