Some records I found strongly suggest Joseph Wilkes was a private in the Royal Navy on board the HMS Queen Charlotte, between May 1813 and July 1814.
I tried to find out what Joe might have experienced during that time, and so I spent many hours researching the Queen Charlotte and her movements.
It wasn’t easy, partially due to the fact that there were several vessels that carried the name in honour of King George III’s wife.
After scouring the internet and the UK National Archives, I was still left wondering which of the ships called Queen Charlotte Joe might have been on and where she might have taken him in the course of Joe’s fairly short service. This was going to be another puzzle, and all I had was a few pieces here and there.
I knew that Joe’s service ceased at the end of July 1814, a few months after Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated and exiled to Elba. That was also when a 110-gun ship called Queen Charlotte, sailing under der command of Captain Robert Jackson returned to England, and Lord Keith, who had spent a lot of time on board that same vessel, retired. By the way, it was (at least according to this eulogy) Lord Keith who escorted Napoleon to Elba, although on another ship, the HMS Undaunted.
I found hundreds of potentially relevant references in the British Newspaper Archive, mainly mentions of arrivals and departures, and I also found a few references in The Keith Papers.
The only way to really get on top of this was to create a timeline, so I entered all references into a spreadsheet in date order. After a while it became clear that at that time there were at least five, and potentially six ships that carried the name Queen Charlotte. Apart from the 110-gun warship on which Joe served, there was a smaller ship that regularly conveyed goods and mail between Lisbon and England. Another one went back and forth to the West Indies – that was probably also the Queen Charlotte that was involved in a conflict at Lake Erie in Canada. There was a yacht by that name, and also a cargo ship, steered by captain George Jackson, which at one point was meant to travel to the Cape of Good Hope but only got as far as St. Helen’s on the Isle of Wight where she ran aground. A fleeting reference suggests a sixth Queen Charlotte operated in the Mediterranean.
After weeding out the records that were not in relation to the 110-gun ship, I had a timeline (which you can download below) that finally made sense and which allowed me to trace at least part of Joe’s journey on board the 110-gun HMS Queen Charlotte.
Joe left Plymouth aboard the HMS Queen Charlotte on 1 May 1813, and his first journey was to Greenock, west of Glasgow, Scotland. But Joe’s ship was part of the Channel fleet which was in fact under Lord Keith’s command, and so from about 7 May, the war ship was for the most part located at sea or in ports in the English Channel or along the north-west coast of France, helping to keep the French in check until hostilities ended.
Little of note happened. One newspaper entry suggested that Joe’s ship may have taken Louis XVIII back to France around the 8 April 1814; however, the French King actually left Dover for Calais on 24 April aboard the yacht ‘Royal Sovereign’.
The HMS Queen Charlotte ended her war service at Portsmouth on 29 July 1814. Joe had been released at Plymouth 4 days earlier; he returned to his home town of Birmingham.
