Admiral who took Gibraltar died in shipwreck tragedy
A distinguished admiral who in 1704 helped capture Gibraltar for England counted among his many civic appointments that of Commissioner of the London Sewers. The latter an amusingly apt role for a man whose surname was '¦ Shovell!
Sir Cloudesley Shovell also had a strong Sussex connection in that his widowed mother came to live in Hastings in a half-timbered Tudor house that still stands. The Admiral visited her there. A popular local rock band has adopted his nomenclature.
Shovell was born into a prosperous Norfolk family in 1650. Aged 13 he went to sea as a cabin boy under the tutelage of a relative, Admiral Sir Christopher Myngs. By 1673 he was a lieutenant and had seen action in the Third Anglo-Dutch War in which the English were allied with the French.
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