Catalogue description NAVAL STATIONS - DOWNS

Correspondence of the Flag Officer commanding the Downs. The C-in-C in the Downs, who generally flew his flag in a ship in that anchorage, off Deal, was responsible for the narrows of the Channel and the adjacent coasts of France and Flanders. It was the only on the major home commands in the 18th century not be associated with a dockyard. ADM 1/648-649 are reports from Admiral Vernon commanding successively at Portsmouth and the Downs. Letters from Commodore Michell, commanding in the Downs and on the coast of Flanders, 1746-47, are in ADM /2101-2104.

In principle this sub-sub-series consists of the reports of the commanders-in-chief or port admirals at the Downs. In practice that position was not clearly established until near the end of the eighteenth century. Before the 1790s there was sometimes no commander-in-chief appointed, even to a major dockyard port in wartime, so that the command passed through a succession of temporary senior officers.

The respective responsibilities of port admirals and commanders-in-chief at sea were not clearly delineated, so that if a squadron came in to port whose flag officer outranked the port admiral, the command of the port might be transferred or shared. Conversely it was not unknown for port admirals to take squadrons to sea. For these reasons there is considerable overlap between the correspondence of port admirals and seagoing squadrons, and especially between commanders-in-chief of the Channel or Western Squadron and those at Portsmouth and Plymouth.

When using the ADM 12 indexes to search for papers in ADM 1, documents in this sub-sub-series have the reference: 'E'