Francis Hosier

Francis Hosier
Born	1673
Died	1727 at sea, off Vera Cruz
Buried	St. Nicholas, Deptford
Allegiance	Kingdom of Great Britain
Service/branch	Royal Navy
Rank	Vice Admiral
Commands held	Jamaica Station
Battles/wars	Nine Years' War Anglo-Spanish War
Spouse(s)	Diana Pritchard

Vice Admiral Francis Hosier (1673–1727) was a British naval officer. He was lieutenant in Rooke's flagship at the Battle of Barfleur in 1693. He captured the Heureux off Cape Clear in 1710 and distinguished himself in action with the Spanish off Cartagena in 1711. He is chiefly remembered, however, for his role in the failure of the Blockade of Porto Bello, for which poor Government orders were largely responsible, during which he died of disease with thousands of his sailors.

Hosier was the son of the Clerk of the Cheque (and Muster-Master) to Samuel Pepys who lived at the foot of Crooms Hill, Greenwich. A certain Francis Hosier was the Storekeeper at Deptford in 1684, earning a salary of £305, the highest paid at the Depot. He became a lieutenant in the navy in 1692, when he was appointed to the Winchelsea, a 32-gun new frigate, after being in that station on board different ships for four years.

Captain Francis Hosier was only 26 years old in 1699, when he arranged for the Greenwich residence today known as The Ranger's House to be built, by which time he had commanded only one ship, the Winchelsea, of 74 guns. In 1710, he was appointed captain of the Salisbury upon a cruise off Cape Clear when, by falling in with a 6-gun French ship he was able to capture the French vessel which was then renamed the Salisbury's Prize and taken into service.

In 1719, he was appointed second captain of the Dorsetshire, advanced to be rear-admiral of the white squadron, and afterwards promoted to be vice-admiral of the blue, but the fleet was ordered to be dismantled before it was put to the sea. In 1720, he was appointed second captain of the Dorsetshire with the honorary rank of rear-admiral of the blue squadron. After the War of the Spanish Succession, he was suspended as a suspected Jacobite until 1717, but became vice-admiral in 1723.

In March 1726, Hosier was sent to command a squadron on the Jamaica Station with orders to prevent Spain from shipping its treasures home.Viscount Townshend, Secretary of State, consulted the former privateer Woodes Rogers, who was in London at the time, as to the probable means and route the Spaniards would adopt to get their treasure home. From past experience Rogers probably knew more than any other person then in England of the favoured Spanish tactics for evading detection. A report dated 10 November 1726, was delivered, in conjunction with Capt. Jonathan Denniss, to prepare Hosier for his task. At first Hosier met with success in his Blockade of Porto Bello. However, under strict orders not to attempt a capture of the town, which he could without difficulty have achieved with his 20 ships, he was forced to loiter and cruise off a mosquito infested coast. Yellow fever broke out and Hosier himself died of the fever (or as is said by some contemporary commentators "of a broken heart"), whilst on the Breda off Vera Cruz, as did between 3,000 and 4,000 of his sailors. Eventually, during the 1730s, the government appeasement policies of men like Walpole, and not Hosier personally, were blamed for the disaster. The episode is described as follows in Percy's Reliques of 1765.

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