The Westmorland or Westmoreland was a 26-gun British privateer

Privateer

A privateer is a private person or ship authorized by a government by letters of marque to attack foreign shipping during wartime. Privateering was a way of mobilizing armed ships and sailors without having to spend public money or commit naval officers...

 frigate

Frigate

A frigate is any of several types of warship, the term having been used for ships of various sizes and roles over the last few centuries.In the 17th century, the term was used for any warship built for speed and maneuverability, the description often used being "frigate-built"...

, operating in the Mediterranean Sea

Mediterranean Sea

The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Anatolia and Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant...

 against French shipping in retaliation for France's opposition to Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War

American Revolutionary War

The American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...

.

Service history

The most notable incident in her life occurred shortly after she sailed for Britain from Livorno

Livorno

Livorno , traditionally Leghorn , is a port city on the Tyrrhenian Sea on the western edge of Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Livorno, having a population of approximately 160,000 residents in 2009.- History :...

 under Captain Michael Wallace in December 1778, carrying a large monetary payment for her inbound cargo of salt cod from Newfoundland (Livorno was a trade hub for this commodity), food goods
, and 57 crates of artistic objects collected by Grand Tour

Grand Tour

The Grand Tour was the traditional trip of Europe undertaken by mainly upper-class European young men of means. The custom flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transit in the 1840s, and was associated with a standard itinerary. It served as an educational rite of passage...

ists such as the Duke of Gloucester

Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh

Prince William, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh was a member of the British Royal Family, a grandson of George II and a younger brother of George III.-Early life:...

, Sir John Henderson and the Duke of Norfolk

Charles Howard, 10th Duke of Norfolk

Charles Howard, 10th Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal , the son of Henry Charles Howard and Mary Aylward . He married Catherine Brockholes , daughter of John Brockholes, on 8 November 1739...

. She was chased by four French ships, made up of two men-of-war, the Caton (64) and the Destin (74), and two smaller vessels. Wallace attempted to outrun them but, outgunned as he was, soon felt he had little option but to allow the French to board his ship. She was then allowed by Spain (then friendly with France though not yet — in formal terms at least — at war with Britain) to continue to Malaga

Málaga

Málaga is a city and a municipality in the Autonomous Community of Andalusia, Spain. With a population of 568,507 in 2010, it is the second most populous city of Andalusia and the sixth largest in Spain. This is the southernmost large city in Europe...

.
At Malaga her artistic contents was passed on from the French government to two trading companies with links to Ireland, despite Wallace's protests that the ship was full of "extremely precious goods" (the French had already seized the Westmorland 's cash cargo), and the Spanish king was informed by his prime minister, the Count of Floridablanca, of the art's arrival. On Spain's declaration of war, king Charles III

Charles III of Spain

Charles III was the King of Spain and the Spanish Indies from 1759 to 1788. He was the eldest son of Philip V of Spain and his second wife, the Princess Elisabeth Farnese...

 secretly bought the art from a syndicate of Madrid merchants for 360,000 silver reales

Spanish real

The real was a unit of currency in Spain for several centuries after the mid-14th century, but changed in value relative to other units introduced...

 (a reduction from their original asking price of 600,000 gold doubloon

Doubloon

The doubloon , was a two-escudo or 32-reales gold coin, weighing 6.77 grams . Doubloons were minted in Spain, Mexico, Peru, and Nueva Granada...

s, but still a sizeable sum) and had it brought by cart to the capital. (However, the portraits of Basset and Lord Lewisham

William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth

William Legge 2nd Earl of Dartmouth PC, FRS , styled as Viscount Lewisham from 1732 to 1750, was a British statesman who is most remembered for his part in the government before and during the American Revolution....

 were acquired by the Spanish Prime Minister.)

Though the British consul at Cadiz

Cádiz

Cadiz is a city and port in southwestern Spain. It is the capital of the homonymous province, one of eight which make up the autonomous community of Andalusia....

 had initially informed the British Admiralty that the Westmorland and her cargo had been seized as legitimate 'prizes'

Prize Ship

Prize Ship is a science fiction short story by Philip K. Dick, first published in 1954 in Thrilling Wonder Stories and later in The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick...

, there followed demands by the British ambassador for the repatriation of the art and (in a prisoner exchange for French and Spanish prisoners taken by the Royal Navy

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

) the Westmorland 's crew and the 10-year correspondence at prime-ministerial level that followed. They all still remain in the Prado Museum, the Real Academia

Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando

The Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando , located on the Calle de Alcalá in the heart of Madrid, currently functions as a museum and gallery....

 and other Spanish national collections, with only a few exceptions — a package of Catholic relics intended for the Duke of Norfolk, which the Spanish returned unopened to the Vatican

Holy See

The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...

; and Sir Watkin Williams Wynn's Perseus and Andromeda by Mengs

Anton Raphael Mengs

Anton Raphael Mengs was a German painter, active in Rome, Madrid and Saxony, who became one of the precursors to Neoclassical painting.- Biography :Mengs was born in 1728 at Ústí nad Labem in Bohemia...

, which has ended up in the collection of Catherine the Great at the Hermitage Museum

Hermitage Museum

The State Hermitage is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. One of the largest and oldest museums of the world, it was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great and has been opened to the public since 1852. Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display,...

. Meanwhile, in London in 1784, the £100,000 for which the art had been insured at Livorno was paid out. The Westmorland was renamed, re-commissioned into the Spanish fleet but eventually re-captured in the Caribbean

Caribbean

The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

 by the British.

In 2012 an exhibition of many of the art works will be held at the Ashmolean Museum

Ashmolean Museum

The Ashmolean Museum on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is the world's first university museum...

.

External links

• Maria Dolores Sanchez-Jauregui, 'Two Portraits of Francis Basset by Pompeo Batoni in Madrid', The Burlington Magazine
  The Burlington Magazine
  The Burlington Magazine is a monthly academic journal that covers the fine and decorative arts. It is the longest running art journal in the English language and it is a charitable organisation since 1986. It was established in 1903 by a group of art historians and connoisseurs which included Roger...
  
  , Vol. 143, No. 1180 (Jul., 2001), pp. 420-425
• Angus Trumble, 'Pirates of the Mediterranean — mining the cargo of the Westmorland in Madrid', Trinity Today, December 2007, pages 14 to 15
• Giles Tremlett, 'Spaniards looted British art hoard', The Times, 1999