Birth
Charles was born on 7th Jun 1767 in Henstead, Suffolk, the second son of John Clarke and Elizabeth Welham and was baptised on the 8th day of that month.
Career
The day before yesterday I set out for Bergh Apton with Mr. [Samuel] Clarke, to come hither by the way of Beccles in Suffolk. We stopped at Mr. Charles Clarke's at Beccles, where we saw some good and sensible men, who see clearly into all the parts of the works of the 'Thunderers',[1] and whose anticipations, as to the : 'general working of events,' are such as they ought to be. ...William Cobbett
Charles hired the medic Robert Thomas Crossfield MD to fill the position of ship's surgeon on an ill-fated voyage in February. Crossfield was arrested in August 1795 and put on trial for treason against King George III.
Charles later appeared to become further involved in the radical politics of his time. The activist William Cobbett records in his journal the passage above. What might the proverbial fly on the wall have heard during these meetings?
Cobbett's Complete Collection of State Trials published from 1809 onwards contains a transcript of Crossfield's trial. One of the prosecutors was the famous barrister William Garrow. In 1805 Garrow became MP for Gatton: a rotten borough attracting some of Cobbett's heaviest scorn.
In 1809 Charles Clarke commanded a convict transport: the Ann. An entry in the diary of his son Charles states that in 1812 he received word that his father was at Dirk Hartogs Islands at the Western tip of Australia. It was an area that saw friction between Britain and the Dutch.
Encounter with Danish vessel.
The following interesting anecdote is from a Paris paper of a recent date: "About three years ago Citizen Dubuc, a superior officer of the French navy, being at Mauritius, put on board a Danish vessel, bound for India, the sum of 24,000 francs, destined for the support of his family; who, being far from him, were labouring under considerable difficulties.Jackson's Oxford Journal, 8 May 1802.
The vessel was stopped by a Captain Clarke, commanding a British man of war. The English officer found by the Dane's papers that the money belonged to Citizen Dubuc, and of course, as the property of a Frenchman, became his lawful prize.
This brave and respectable Englishman, [2] however, learning the distressed state to which Citizen Dubuc's family were reduced, asked his crew, as a favour, to allow the money to be sent to its destination; every man on board readily consented! - The officer then wrote a very polite letter to Citizen Dubuc's wife, in which he begged of her to receive the sum of 24,000 francs, which her husband had transmitted for her use, but which, by the fate of war, had fallen into his hands; he added, that he was happy in having an opportunity of giving such a proof of his esteem and gratitude for her husband, who had so frequently distinguished himself by his humanity towards the English prisoners of war."
It is uncertain that this article refers to Captain Charles Clarke. Given that in 1795 Charles had been a PoW in France, and that the Ann was making voyages to India by 1802, it seems a reasonable assumption.[3] The vessels under his command were notionally merchant ships, but could be fitted with sufficient guns to make the description 'man of war' entirely apposite. Charles was also never short of a Letter of Marque, when he might need one. OTOH, Charles seems out of character passing up the opportunity for this windfall. After the French had looted every last drop of alchohol that Charles carried on the Pomona, his forgiving mood is unexpected.
No good deed goes unpunished. In 1805 the French put Dubuc in
front of a firing squad.
Marriage
Children
Death
Photo: A.S.Clarke.