BENBOW, John, English admiral: h. Shrewsbury, England, 1653; d. Jamaica, 4 Nov_ 1702. After serving for some time in the navy he entered the merchant service, and fouRht so desperately. against a pirate from Sallee, in one of his tnps to the Mediterranean, about the year 1686, as to beat her off, though greatly his superior in men and metal. He the navy after the Revolution, and was em ployed in protecting the English trade in the channel, which he did with great effect. His valor and activity secured him the confidence of the nation, and he was soon promoted to the lank of rear-admiral, and charged with opera tions against Dunkirk and the French coasts. In 1698 he was sent to put down the pirates in the West Indies, and not long after returning, he again sailed to the West Indies with a small fleet, having accepted a command previously de clined by several of his seniors, from the sup posed superiority of the enemy's force in that quarter. On 19 Aug. 1702, he fell in with the French fleet under Du Casse, and for five days maintained a running fight with them, when he at length succeeded in bringing the enemy's stemmost ship to close quarters. In the heat of
the action a chain-shot carried away one of his legs. His officers offered their sympathy. 'I had rather have lost them both,) he replied, have seen this dishonor brought upon the English nation. But, harkye — if another shot should take me off, behave like men, and fight it out? He was taken below; but the moment the dressing had been applied to the wound he caused himself to be brought again on deck, and continued the action. At this critical in stant, being most disgracefully abandoned by several of the captains under his command, who signed a paper expressing their opinion that •nothing more was to be done," the whole fleet effected its escape. Benbow, on his return to Jamaica, brought the delinquents to a court martial, by which two of them were convicted of cowardice and disobedience of orders, and condemned to be shot; which sentence, on their arrival in England, was carried into execution at Plymouth. Consult Clowes, 'Royal Navy' (Vol. II, London 1897) ; Fletcher, (Admiral Benbow' in Macmillan's Magazine (Vol. LXXXIV, London 1901).