Robert Tilliard

Posted by Albert Parker on Wednesday 23rd of September 2020 04:18

On April 27, 1747, in a dispatch to Vice-Adm. Henry Medley, British c-in-c in the Mediterranean, Rear-Adm. Hon. John Byng mentioned "Lieutenant Tilliad of the Bedford, who was appointed some time ago by Mr. [Adm. Thomas] Mathews, in an armed vessel, to cruise upon the coast of Provence, and who is well acquainted with the coast."* This must have been one of the several small craft that Mathews bought or converted from prizes for inshore work; it might never have been named or registered as a warship with the Admiralty. Mathews was recalled in the middle of 1744. It looks like the recall and cashiering of Mathews left Tilliard without a patron. He apparently did not impress Mathews' successors in the Mediterranean fleet, Joshua Rowley, Medley, and Byng, at least not sufficiently for them to promote him to a vacancy in an unrated ship that needed a commanding officer (which would have made him a commander and in line for promotion to post captain when command of a rated ship became vacant). Since he died only three years after the war ended and only ten years after his lieutenant's commission, he either died young or was old for a lieutenant, having spent a long time as a midshipman or having been recruited into the navy as an adult during the officer shortage during the great expansion of the navy between 1739 and 1743 after the declaration of war on Spain.
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* Great Britain, Historical Manuscripts Commission, _Report on the Manuscripts of Lady du Cane,_ Cd. 2367 (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1905), p. 175/211.