Adam Duncan(1731–1804)

Adam Duncan was born in Dundee on 1 July 1731, the son of Alexander Duncan of Lundie, a provost of the burgh, and Helen Haldane. He went to sea in 1746 at fifteen, rated midshipman aboard HMS Shoreham under his kinsman Robert Haldane, and learned his trade in the long mid-century wars against France and Spain. He was made lieutenant in 1755 and saw service at the capture of Goree off the African coast in 1758 and at the reduction of Havana in 1762, the largest amphibious operation of the Seven Years War, where he commanded a division of the storming party. He was a man of remarkable physical presence, well over six feet tall, even-tempered, trusted by the lower deck, and slow to be promoted in a navy that rewarded interest as much as merit.

He was made post-captain in 1761 but, like many capable officers in the long peace, spent much of the next thirty years ashore on half-pay. He married Henrietta Dundas in 1777, a connection that placed him close to the political family then rising to control Scottish patronage. Promotion came at last with age: rear-admiral in 1787, vice-admiral in 1793 on the outbreak of the war with revolutionary France, and in 1795, at sixty-four, the command of the North Sea fleet, the unglamorous but vital station charged with watching the Dutch fleet of the new Batavian Republic in its anchorage behind the island of Texel and guarding the eastern approaches to Britain against invasion.

In the spring of 1797 the seamen of the Channel and North Sea fleets rose in the mutinies of Spithead and the Nore over pay, provisions and the brutality of certain officers. Duncan's own ships at Yarmouth went over to the mutineers one by one until he was left with two loyal vessels, his flagship HMS Venerable and HMS Adamant. With these two ships he sailed for the Texel and lay off the Dutch coast through the crisis, signalling to an imaginary fleet over the horizon to persuade the Dutch admiral that the British line of battle was still at sea and in strength. The bluff held. The Dutch did not come out, and the invasion did not sail. By the autumn the mutinies were settled and the fleet returned to his command.

On 11 October 1797 the Dutch fleet under Vice-Admiral Jan de Winter, sixteen ships of the line, finally put to sea off the village of Kamperduin between Texel and the Hague. Duncan came down on them in two columns, cutting the Dutch line and forcing the close, ship-against-ship action in shoal water at which the heavier British gunnery told. The fighting was among the most savage of the whole French war: the Dutch, kinsmen of the British in seamanship and stubbornness, did not strike easily. After three hours eleven Dutch ships were taken, including De Winter's flagship Vrijheid, and De Winter himself was a prisoner aboard the Venerable, where Duncan received his surrendered sword with courtesy and remarked that he was sorry to take the sword of so brave a man. The threat of a Dutch invasion of Britain or Ireland was ended. He was created Viscount Duncan of Camperdown, and the victory is kept in the Duncan name as the day a Dundee captain, left with two ships in the middle of a mutiny, came back to break a battle fleet.

He hauled down his flag in 1800 and retired to Scotland. He died suddenly at Cornhill-on-Tweed on 4 August 1804, on the road home from London, and was buried in the family vault at Lundie in Angus. The Duncan name today carries the memory of the tall, patient admiral of Dundee who guarded the North Sea through the worst crisis the Royal Navy had known, and then fought and won at Camperdown the action that secured the eastern sea against invasion for the rest of the war.