Admiral Vernon and the Navy e-bog

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Certain historians, from Tobias Smollett downwards, have done scant justice to the subject of this memoir, and even the origin of the nickname Old Grog has been misrepresented. So far as the author of Roderick Random is concerned, possible reasons for his prejudice may be found in the present narrative. But, apart from Sir Robert Walpole and his colleagues, most of Vernon's contemporaries honoured him as an upright man and brave and able officer. Walpole, who held that every man had his price, found in Old Grog an inconvenient exception to his cynical summary. He hated him accordingly, and his political henchmen followed suit.<br><br>Westminster Abbey contains a tribute in stone to the Admiral's character and services. In H.M.S. Vernon (the Torpedo School in Portsmouth Harbour) the Royal Navy retains a special memorial of its own.