1. Homepage
2. Life of Henry Cort
3. Cort's processes in iron manufacture
4. Cort's patents
5. Refutation of allegations of conspiracies against Cort
6. Adam Jellicoe's death
7. Henry Cort's birth
8. A navy agent's business
9. Early life of John Becher
10. Attwick & Burges families
11. "Cortship" of second wife
12. Thomas Morgan
13. Henry Cort's hoops contract
14. 1856 Accolade
15. Generosity of friends 1789-94
16. James Watson
17. Illness of Cort's son
18. Main sources of information
19. Contemporary sources
20. Navy sources
21. Chancery files
22. Publications about Cort
23. Assessment of Cort's character
24. Images of Henry Cort

25. Impeach-tranferred to 05

26. Parliamentary inquiry 1811-2
27. The furore of the 1850s
28. Society of Arts
29. Cort's first marriage
30. Henry Cort's children
31. Cort family pensions
32. Henry Cort's Hertfordshire property
33. 1791 signatories
34. Guiana and the Cort-Gladstone connection
35. Cort's twilight years
36. Memorials to Henry Cort


37. Smelting of iron
38. Fining before Cort
39. Shropshire & Staffordshire ironmasters
40. Cumbrians: Wilkinson etc
41. Early works at Merthyr Tydfil
42. The Crowley business
43. London ironmongers
44. Scottish iron
45. Cort's promotion efforts 1783-6
46. Later Merthyr connections
47. Puddling after Henry Cort


48. Gosport in Cort's day
49. Gosport administration
50. Gosport worthies
51. The Amherst-Porter network
52. James Hackman, murderer
53. Samuel Marshall
54. Samuel Jellicoe's legacy
55. Links with Titchfield
56. Links with Fareham


57. Fact, error and conjecture
58. 18th century politics
59. Law in the 18th century
60. 18th century finance
61. Religion and sexual mores
62. Calendar change of 1752
63. Shelburne, Parry and associates
64. John Becher's family
65. The Becher-Thackeray lineage
66. Thomas Lyttelton: a fantastic narrative
67. Eighteenth-century London
68. Abolition and the Corts
69. The Burges will tangle


70. Navy connections
71. Navy agent's business
72. Cort's clients
73. Ships' pursers
74. History of Adam Jellicoe
75. Dundas & Trotter
76. Cort's navy office associates
77. Toulmin & other agents
78. Sandwich & Middleton
79. The Arethusa
80. John Becher's war
81. Thomas Morgan's war
82. The 1782 Jamaica convoy
83. Sinking of the Royal George

84. Rickman & Scott: two contrasting naval careers-Missing



85. Visitors 2006-2009
86. Developement of the site 2006-2009

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87. Daniel Guion and family
88. Extremely bad academic work and extremely bad journalism

NAVY SOURCES

All information at National Archives (PRO) unless otherwise notified.

Contract information

Contract information, Cort & Jellicoe etc: ADM49/120,121 etc

Some detail on earlier Attwick contracts: ADM106/912,939,943,1118,1126,1145

Additional contract information at Caird Library, National Maritime Museum:

POR/A/26-35 warrant books

POR/F/19 Navy Board letter book

Naval service: pay, agents etc

ADM25, ADM22 and ADM32-35 all include a column to record the name of an agent.

Half-pay records: ADM25. Between or after spells of service, officers and some lower ranks go on "half pay" (not always half of full pay). Payment twice a year. You can trace how clients of Thomas Bell proceed via Thomas Batty (1761) to Henry Cort (1763). Note how the half-pay roll expands as crews are laid off following Seven Years War end in 1763.

Widows' pension books: ADM22.
Payment once a year. Remittances small compared with officers', hence collected by agent's clerk. Earliest record for Henry Cort in ADM22/75.

Ship's records

Most useful in following navy careers...

John Becher: Jersey/Ambuscade 1758, St Albans 1776, Eagle (ADM51/293), Ariel 1778, Camilla (ADM52/1633), Nautilus 1778.

Michael Becher: Centurion 1749, Torbay 1757, Goree (ADM51/4200).

James Hackman (murderer's uncle): Hazard 1755, Mermaid 1758, Launceston 1762.

William Hackman (murderer's father): Devonshire 1747, Fougeux 1749.

George Hamilton: Porcupine 1758, Squirrel/Richmond 1759.

Thomas Morgan: Launceston 1766, Russell 1777, Alfred 1781, Ville de Paris 1782.

Valentine Neville: Orford 1755, Namur 1760, Yarmouth 1764.

Coningsby Norbury: Furnace 1742, Gibraltar 1744, Looe 1745, Hampshire 1755.

Ship's pay: ADM33(32,34,35)

Shows agent. Each volume covers several ships. Pages dilapidated.

Ship's company musters: ADM36-37

Covers shorter period than ADM33.

Ship's logs: ADM51 (captain), ADM52 (master)

Plenty of information on location and action.

Extracts from Stores Reports: ADM30/44

Useful information about the activities of ship's pursers. Page 173 reveals an early link between Cort and the Becher family.

Navy bills: ADM18

Particularly useful for following the careers of Navy Office employees like Adam Jellicoe.

Other archives of interest

For accounts of naval battles, intelligence, etc, admiralty records ADM1-3 may hold useful information.

The early careers of some navy officers can be traced through the details of their lieutenant's examination (a relic of Samuel Pepys), ADM107.

Reference books

Most of these can be found both in the PRO library and in the Caird Library at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, UK.

The Commissioned Sea Officers of the Royal Navy 1660-1815 (3 volumes, authorship not acknowledged) is a list which probably succeeds in covering all officers over the period. Each entry quotes name, date of commissioning, and dates for advancement in rank. Date of death is included if known.

More detailed information on the careers of some naval officers can sometimes be obtained from Charnock, Biographia Navalis (1798) and Marshall, Royal Naval Biography (1823).

Much of the information about the Navy's part in the American War has been obtained from James, The British Navy in Adversity: A Study of the War of American Independence (1926) and Syrett's two books The Royal Navy in American Waters (1989) and The Royal Navy in European Waters (1998). Coverage of the war in James's book is greater in breadth, but less in depth, than in the two by Syrett. Written so much earlier, it is both less accurate and less helpful in quoting its sources.

N.A.M. Rodger, The Wooden World, gives useful insights into the way the Navy was run in the eighteenth century.

The pages on this site are copied from the original site of Eric Alexander (henrycort.net) with his allowance.
Eric passed away abt 2012
If you use/copy information from this site, please include a link to the page where you found the information.