User:Ficaia/John Hamill (officer)

John Hamill (died 1808) was an Anglo-Irish officer in the British Army who saw service in the Mediterranean during the Napoleonic Wars. He was killed in action during the British attempt to resist the French invasion of Capri in October 1808. Hamill was a personal friend of Colonel Hudson Lowe, as is in evidence in letters in the British Library.

Life
John Hamill came from County Antrim in Ireland. He was commissioned ensign in the 2nd Regiment, Irish Brigade, in October 1794 and was promoted to lieutenant on 25 December 1795.

Calabria
At the Battle of Maida, fought on 4 July 1806, Hamill received what he described as "a trifling wound". With regard to the battle, Hamill in a letter to Lowe from Messina, written on 20 July 1806, says "A criticising pen might find employment from the late proceedings in Calabria. … Nothing could surpass the intrepidity and steadiness of our soldiers, and to them is solely due the defeat of the enemy in the above engagement, and not to any previous arrangement or manoeuvre performed during the action. Strange to relate, although we marched to attack the enemy, there was no order of battle determined on: every brigade formed line on the preceding one, as it approached the enemy." And, in another letter to Lowe at Capri, written from Malta on 8 September 1806, he writes: "Hitherto, all has been confusion—no system whatever, and what has been attained was owing to good fortune and chance. If I was Sir J[ohn] S[tuart]'s friend, I would advise him never to prompt an enquiry into conduct whilst in Calabria, but particularly into the affair at Maida—an action that the ignorant and unthinking give him so unbounded praise (for). What greater proof can there be of his total incapacity to command than going into action without any previous order of battle? This was literally the case, of which Kempt and every field-officer can bear testimony."

Capri and death
In October 1808, during the French invasion of Capri, Colonel Hudson Lowe was in command of a regiment of Corsican riflemen in Capri, while Major Hamill was in command of a regiment of Maltese in Anacapri. The two regiments made a force of about 1,800 men. There was no artillery in Anacapri, and the French, scaling the precipitous cliffs, which rise straight up from deep water, by means of hooks and ladders, effected the landing of 1,500 men, who finally drove inland the Maltese. Under cover of night, the French Corsican troops landed near the celebrated Blue Grotto, on the north of the island, between Capri and Anacapri, and, guided by a deserter, climbed up the old and steep Phoenician rock-steps, and cut off the retreat to Capri of Hamill's men. The French Corsicans then attacked the Maltese in the rear, and it was during this attack that Hamill was killed. Finally, on October 16th, 1808, Colonel Hudson Lowe surrendered. The British marched out of Capri with colours flying, arms and baggage, having obtained favourable terms; and, an hour or so afterwards, a large British Fleet hove in sight and carried them off to Sicily.

Hamill and his adjutant fell close to Tuoro Street in Anacapri, on land that belonged to Salvatore Farace, and three days later they were buried near together.

Character
The personality of Major Hamill is described in the notes. He is said to have been courteous and charitable towards everyone, alike towards the military and the peasants. Once, when two peasants asked from him, as Commander of the Piazza of Anacapri, permission to shoot, he granted it immediately in writing, saying that he would buy all the game that they shot. Not finding any game on the particular day, the peasants asked pardon for being able to produce only a beccafico (lit. 'fig-pecker': properly, a garden-warbler). Hamill took it, and made them the gift of half a Spanish five-lire piece (mezza pezza di Spagna).

Grave
Near the entrance to the Cemetery of Anacapri, behind a memorial-tablet on the wall, in the right-hand corner on entering the Protestant portion, is the burial-place of Major Hamill. There is a grave before the tablet, with portions of a railing, which by the early twentieth century had fallen into great decay and was almost completely hidden by ivy, and the spot generally in great disrepair. Sir Lees Knowles had it cleaned and restored in 1914, and arranged for its future care. Behind the tablet could then be seen a small box, apparently of chestnut wood, in a niche, no doubt containing the remains. The inscription is as follows: "To the memory of JOHN HAMILL, a native of the County Antrim in Ireland, and Major in His Britannic Majesty's late Regiment of Malta, who fell while bravely resisting the French invasion of Anacapri on the 4th of October, 1808, and whose mortal remains are deposited near to this place. This tribute of affection and respect has been placed by his Kinsman and Namesake, October 3rd, 1831. Requiescat in pace."

Memorials
Knowles mentions having in his possession a small book entitled La Presa di Capri (lit. 'The Taking of Capri'), described as a poemetto, or small poem, by Francesco Alberino, with a preface by Raffaello Flaminio, dated 1892. This poem, Knowles understands, was composed by Antonio Farace, a priest of Anacapri, between the years 1840 and 1850, and then copied from the original, in the possession of Michele Alberino, a priest of Anacapri and a nephew of Antonio Farace, and printed, as his own composition, by Francesco Alberino, a carpenter of Anacapri. The 25th stanza of the first canto is as follows:

In the copy of the book about the taking of Capri, lent Knowles by Signor Giovanni Maresca, of Villa della Torre, Anacapri, are some manuscript notes in Italian, which Knowles believes to be in the hand-writing of the Capri historian, J. C. MacKowen. From them it appears that relations of Major Hamill (John and Catherine Hamill, son and daughter of Roger Hamill) visited Anacapri twenty-three years after his death, and that they removed his bones. Only fifty-two, large and small, were found, the rest having been scattered in the cultivation of the land. Not even the skull was found. They were to have been deposited in the church; but, because a document was lacking to prove that the Major was a true Roman and Apostolic Catholic, the then Bishop, Monsignor Don Gabriele Papa, would not allow it, and they were placed in a small box in the wall of the garden of the monastery, with a marble tablet and an inscription, in front of the church.

Dr. Cerio told Knowles that he remembered the Hamill memorial when it was in this wall, which is a continuation westward of the south wall of the church at Anacapri, bounding the Piazza. It was a slab of white statuary Carrara marble, and it was broken up when the wall was removed to enlarge the Piazza, a small open space before the church, and the present slab of white marble was substituted for it. Dr. Cerio remembered meeting, when he came to Capri about forty-four years prior, men of eighty and ninety years of age who well remembered the attack of the French.

Grecian vase
Major Hamill was presented for his bravery at Maida with a silver-vase, designed by Flaxman, which by 1918 was in the possession of A. H. Ford, who supplied the photograph of it (right).

The inscription is the following:

"From the Patriotic Fund at Lloyds. To Major John Hamill of the Royal Regiment of Malta. In testimony of his Gallant Conduct at the Battle of Maida in Calabria on the 4th of July, 1806, in which the Pride of the Presumptuous Enemy was Severely Humbled, and the Superiority of the British Troops most Gloriously Proved."

A Grecian-style volute krater made by London silversmith Benjamin Smith and hallmarked 1807–1808 was commissioned by Lloyd's Patriotic Fund and awarded to Hamill for service at the Battle of Maida in 1806. It is inscribed: "From the Patriotic Fund at Lloyds to Major John Hamill of the Royal Regiment of Malta. In testimony of his gallant conduct at the Battle of Maida in Calabria on the 4th of July 1806, in which the pride of the presumptuous enemy was severely humbled, and the superiority of the British troops most gloriously proved."

Family
The Hamills are mostly in the north of Ireland, and a certain map of the clans, or tribes, of Ireland, gives the Hamill Clan a portion of Donegal. However, John Hamill's branch of the family was traced back by Hugh Hamill of Dominick Street, Dublin, to the Hamills of Roughwood in Ayrshire, whence they emigrated to the north of Ireland in 1643. As this branch seems to have been always Roman Catholic, it must be remembered that the penal laws affected its status in many ways. They are to be traced in Belfast, Drogheda, and Dublin; principally in the linen-trade.

Hugh Hamill, of Ann Street, Dublin, the uncle of Major John Hamill, described himself in his will as "Merchant". However, Andrew Hamill Ford believes he was a brewer (or distiller). He married Miss Walsh, a daughter of Count Walsh, of Faningstown. Count Walsh fitted out a brigantine with guns which landed (or tried to land) the Young Pretender in Scotland: the brigantine sailed from Dunkerque. Another daughter married the 3rd Viscount Southwell. Hugh Hamill died without living issue, and is buried with his wife and son in the cemetery of St. James's, Dublin, far from the church on the banks of the Liffy. Ford saw the vault with the tumble-down big stone some time before 1917: the whole cemetery overgrown, and a mass of ruin. In 1917 Ford had in his possession two large portraits of Hugh and his wife, which Hugh left, with most of his property, to his nephew, also named Hugh, Knowles' great-grandfather. He was a man of wealth and position, engaged in the commerce of Dublin; but he fell on bad times and had to pay a large sum to the Bellew and Norris families, to replace money wrongfully used by his two co-trustees: he was virtually ruined, with his two sons Hugh and Edward. Hugh Hamill, of Dominick Street, Dublin, had money with his cousin Alice, whom he married. Their house in Dominick Street, opposite the Duke of Leinster's, is very large, and later became a tenement-house. Hugh had rebel-sympathies in 1798, and, unlike most Roman Catholics, took a strong position against the Union. For this, he incurred the displeasure of Archbishop Troy, which only terminated at the christening of his daughter, Jane (Ford's mother), the wife of James Ford, by the Archbishop in 1813. In 1808, there was a member of the family, Dr. Hamill, a cousin of Major John Hamill, who was dean and vicar-general of the Catholic Diocese of Dublin.

Major John Hamill was either Hugh Hamill's brother, or a brother of Alice Hamill, Hugh's wife. John Hamill must have been a great-uncle to John and Catherine. Edward Dames Hamill, Ford's uncle, said that the Hamill Stewarts, one a general in Egypt in the 1880s, were relations. The Russells of Belfast were connected by marriage. Edward Hamill, who was a Lieutenant in the 2nd Dragoon Guards (Bays) was at the Battle of Waterloo. Ford once had his miniature which shows the Waterloo medal, but this was lost or stolen. After Waterloo, Edward joined the 37th (Foot?), and died somewhere in Scotland.

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