Richard Howe (8 March 1726 – 5 August 1799) was an Admiral of the Fleet of the Royal Navy of Great Britain. Howe rose to fame as an admiral during the American Revolutionary War, and he would destroy the French Navy at the Glorious First of June in 1794 during the French Revolutionary Wars.
Biography[]
Richard Howe was born on 8 March 1726 to an aristocratic family in London, England, the son of Emanuel Howe and the brother of future generals William and George. Richard Howe entered the Royal Navy in 1739 and saw action in the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years' War, taking part in the Battle of Quiberon Bay in 1759 as a captain and earning the title of Viscount after George Howe was killed at the Battle of Fort Carillon that same year. Howe was promoted to Rear Admiral and was given command of the British armada that carried his brother's 32,000-strong army of British and Hessian troops to New York City in 1776 during the American Revolutionary War, and the Howe brothers (both Whigs) attempted to negotiate a lasting peace with the rebels in spite of the US Declaration of Independence already being ratified on 4 July of that year. Howe's navy was fearsome, capturing Forts Mifflin and Mercer in 1777, fighting against Charles Hector's French fleet off Newport in Rhode Island in 1778, and lifting the Great Siege of Gibraltar in 1782.
In January 1783, Howe was made First Lord of the Admiralty, but he resigned in April. In 1793, he was given command of the Channel Fleet of the Royal Navy at the start of the French Revolutionary Wars, and his fleet entered the port of Toulon in southern France after being invited in by the French royalists. Unfortunately for him, he was forced out by Napoleon Bonaparte's troops in the Siege of Toulon, but on 1 June 1794 he would have his revenge by destroying a whole French fleet in the "Glorious First of June". In 1797, he talked mutineers at Spithead out of their rebellion, and he was made a Knight of the Garter as a reward. He died in 1799 at the age of 73.