page_title: HMS Hermione (1782)
section_title: Recapture and renaming
hierarchical_section_title: HMS Hermione (1782) / Recapture and renaming
caption_attribution_description: English: British Sailors Boarding a Man of War. This print represents the recapture of the British ‘Hermione’ in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, by boats of the ‘Surprise’, two years after her crew had mutinied against the sadistic Captain Pigot, killed him and most of his officers, and handed the ship over to the Spaniards.
context_page_description: HMS Hermione was a 32-gun fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. She was notorious for having the bloodiest mutiny in British naval history, which saw her captain and most of the officers killed. The mutineers then handed the ship over to the Spanish Empire, with whom she remained for two years before being cut out and returned to Royal Navy service under the names Retaliation and later Retribution.
context_section_description: Meanwhile, news of the fate of HMS Hermione reached Admiral Sir Hyde Parker when HMS Diligence captured a Spanish schooner. Parker wrote to the governor of La Guaira, demanding the return of the ship and the surrender of the mutineers. Meanwhile, he despatched HMS Magicienne under Captain Henry Ricketts to commence negotiations. Parker also set up a system of informers and posted rewards that eventually led to the capture of 33 of the mutineers, some of whom were tried aboard HMS York, and at least one aboard HMS Gladiator. Of these, 24 were hanged and gibbetted, one was transported, and eight were acquitted or pardoned. To Parker's fury, Admiral Richard Rodney Bligh had issued pardons to several crew members. These included Pigot's elderly servant and the servant's twelve-year-old son, who Bligh concluded could not reasonably have been expected to resist armed mutineers. Acting against regulations, Parker forced Bligh to resign his command and return to Britain in the summer of 1799.
  Santa Cecilia, under the command of Captain Don Ramon de Chalas, had meanwhile sat in Puerto Cabello until Captain Edward Hamilton, aboard HMS Surprise, cut her out of the harbour on 25 October 1799. Hamilton led a boarding party to retake Hermione and, after an exceptionally bloody action, sailed her out of danger under Spanish gunfire. The Spanish casualties included 119 dead; the British took 231 Spaniards prisoner, while another fifteen jumped or fell overboard. Hamilton had eleven men injured, four seriously, but none killed. Hamilton himself was severely wounded.
  For his daring exploit, Hamilton was made a knight by letters patent, a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (2 January 1815), and eventually became a baronet (20 October 1818). The Jamaica House of Assembly awarded him a sword worth 300 guineas, and the City of London awarded him the Freedom of the City in a public dinner on 25 October 1800.  In 1847, the Admiralty awarded Hamilton a gold medal for the recapture of Hermione, and the Naval General Service Medal with the clasp, "Surprise with Hermione", to the seven surviving claimants from the action.
caption: British sailors boarding the Hermione in Puerto Cabello by John Augustus Atkinson
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