BYNG, George, Lord Viscount Torrington, was the son of John Byng, Esq. and was born in 1663. At the age of fifteen he went to sea as a volunteer with the king’s warrant. His early engagement in this course of life gave him little opportunity of acquiring learning or cultivating the polite arts; but by his abilities and activity as a naval commander, he furnished abundant matter for the pens of others. After being several times advanced, he was in 1702 raised to the command of the Nassau, a third rate, and was at the taking and burning of the French fleet at Vigo; and the next year he was made rear-admiral of the red. In 1704 he served in the grand fleet sent to the Mediterranean under Sir Cloudsley Shovel as rear-admiral of the red; and it was he who commanded the squadron which attacked, cannonaded, and reduced Gibraltar. He was in the battle of Malaga, which followed soon afterwards; and for his behaviour in that action Queen Anne conferred on him the honour of knighthood. In 1705, in about two months time, he took twelve of the enemy’s largest privateers, with the Thetis, a French frigate of forty-four guns; and also several merchant ships, most of them richly laden. The number of men taken on board was two thousand and seventy, and of guns three hundred and thirty-four. In 1718 he was made admiral and commander-in-chief of the fleet, and was sent with a squadron into the Mediterranean for the protection of Italy, according to the obligation England was under by treaty, against the invasion of the Spaniards, who had the year before surprised Sardinia, and had this year landed an army in Sicily. In this expedition he dispatched Captain Walton in the Canterbury, with five more ships, in pursuit of six Spanish men-of-war, with galleys, fire-ships, bomb-vessels, and store-ships, which had separated from the main fleet, [7:5:756]and stood in for the Sicilian shore. The captain’s laconic epistle on this occasion, which is dated Canterbury, off Syracuse, 16th August 1718, is worthy of notice, as showing that his talent, like the admiral’s, consisted in fighting, not in writing. ¢¢ Sir,·—We have taken and destroyed all the Spanish ships and vessels which were upon the coast, as per margin. I am, &c. G. Walton.” From the account referred to, it appeared that he had taken four Spanish men-of-war, with a bomb-vessel and a ship laden with arms; and burned four, with a fire-ship and bomb-vessel. The king made the admiral a handsome present, and sent him full powers to negociate with the princes and states of Italy, as there should be occasion. He procured the emperor’s troops free access into the fortresses which still held out in Sicily, sailed afterwards to Malta, and brought out the Sicilian galleys, and a ship belonging to the Turkey company. Soon afterwards he received a gracious letter from the Emperor Charles VI. written with his own hand, accompanied with a picture of his imperial majesty, set round with large diamonds, as a mark of the grateful sense the emperor entertained of his services. It was entirely owing to his advice and assistance that the Germans retook the city of Messina in 1719, and destroyed the ships which lay in the basin; an achievement which completed the ruin of the naval power of Spain. The Spaniards being much distressed, offered to quit Sicily; but the admiral declared that the troops should never be suffered to depart from the island till the king of Spain had acceded to the quadruple alliance. And to his conduct it was entirely owing that Sicily was subdued, and his Catholic majesty forced to accept the terms prescribed him by the quadruple alliance. After performing so many signal services, the king received him with the most gracious expressions of favour and satisfaction, and made him rear-admiral of England and treasurer of the navy, one of his most honourable privy-council, Baron Byng of Southill in the county of Bedford, Viscount Torrington in Devonshire, and one of the knights companions of the bath upon the revival of that order. In 1727 George II., on his accession to the crown, placed him at the head of naval affairs, as first lord of the admiralty; in which high station he died on the 15th January 1733, in the seventieth year of his age, and was buried at Southill, in Bedfordshire.

Byng, the Honourable George, the unhappy son of the former, was bred to the sea, and rose to the rank of admiral of the blue. He gave many proofs of courage; but was at last shot, upon a questionable sentence, for neglect of duty in 1757. See Britain.