O'HardS Unusual Tdl

When James O'Hara, Baron Tyrawley, returned to England after 13 years as envoy extraordinary to Portugal, he took with him 14 illegitimate children and three "wives", one of whom. Dona Anna — Portuguese with long black hair plaited ^11 the way down her back — was probably the mother of his son, Charles.

Shocking, perhaps, but no-one could accuse James of lacking style. One of the two remaining ladies in the entourage was presumably O'Hara's legal wife, Mary Stewart, daughter of Viscount Mountjoy who, either for medical reasons, or be cause her husband was perennially busy elsewhere,never bore him a child herself. Consequently, when James O'Hara died in 1774, the baronetcy died with him since not one of his offspring could lay legitimate claim to the title.

Colourful a character as James O'Hara was, it is Charles who is of interest to us, for Charles was to rise above his ille gitimacy to become Governor of Gibraltar and, along the way, play a significant, if uncoveted,role in one of the major turning points of world history.

Charles was bom in Lisbon, Portugal, on an unrecorded date in 1740, This laxity might suggest James O'Hara was a black-heart ed rogue who cared little for his bastard brood and intended to leave them and their mothers to fend for themselves in the Lisbon gutter, but that was far from the truth.

As we have seen,on his return home he took the whole lot with him,and in fulfilling his re sponsibilities he was refreshingly generous.

Charles, for instance, was educated at London's exclusive Westminster School,and for Christmas 1752, when he was just 12 years old, his father bought him,in lieu of a toy trumpet, a commission in the 8th Regiment of Foot.

Playing soldiers clearly suited the lad, for at 16 he wasa captain in his father's old regiment, the 2nd Coldstream Foot Guards. He saw ac tion at the battle of Minden,and returned fully blooded to join the staff of the Marquess of Granby,where he metand befriended two other young officers — Henry Clinton and Charles Comwallis.It was a meeting that was destined to colour the whole of his life.

In 1776, the American colonists tired of the British yoke and started a revolution. O'Hara, Cornwallis and Clinton were all packed off to the new world to nip the rebellion in the bud, but in the years since they had met, his two friends had risen far higher in the social and military scales than Charles.

Clinton was now Sir Henry Clinton, and Cornwallis was Lord Cornwallis, no less. Charles, by contrast, arrived in New York as a relatively humble aide to Lord Howe, and was put in charge of exchanging prisoners of war. Fate, however, was about to deal him a lucky hand.

Lord Howe left, and was replaced as Commander-in-Chief of the British Forces by none other than Charles' old drinking buddy. Sir Henry Clinton. Clinton saw Charles morosely pushing a pen at his desk and immediately promoted him to the rank of Brigadier General. Alas, the promotion did not enable him to es cape the shackles of his desk job, and exasper- ated by the lack of real action, he returned to England in February 1779.

For more than 18 months he bored everyone with his endless moaning, before returning to America in October 1780 to give it another go. This time, under the command of General Al exander Leslie, he was tasked with delivering reinforcements to his other old pal Lord Charles Cornwallis, who was encamped at Winnsboro, South Carolina.

O'Hara and the reinforcements arrived on 18th January 1781, but Cornwallis was in de spondent mood. The war was going badly,and with frustration flooding the parts of his brain previously occupied by common sense, Comwaliis decided to bum all unnecessary baggage and send his army in hot pursuit of his sworn enemy. General Nalhanael Greene.

Charles O'Hara was put in command and told not to return without Greene's head on a plate.

Several skirmishes followed, including a fracas at Cowan's Ford where O'Hara's horse was shot from under him. It hardly mattered. They were in waist-high water at the time, and the only other option open to the hapless beast was death by drowning. With his horse gone, O'Hara was swept 40 yards downstream before being rescued.

The climax of the cha.se came at the Guildford Courthouse, where O'Hara finally cornered Greene and his men. The fight started badly for Charles. The first shot, or it might have been the second, caught him squarely in the chest. Cursing his luck. he passed the baton to Colonel Stuart, who barely had time to salute before he ^ was killed. Though badly wounded, O'Hara resumed command. Moments later another bullet caught him in the thigh.

Fighting alongside him was one of his half-brothers. He did not survive. Technically, the battle ended in vic tory for the British, but it was a hollow one. To cap it all, torrential rain made it well nigh impossible to tend to the wounded and gather the dead.

O'Hara wrote;"1 wish the battle had 'f^.. produced one substantial benefit to Great Britain, on the contrary, we feel at this moment,the sad and fatal effects of our loss on that day, nearly one half of our best officers and soldiers were either killed or wounded, and [those remaining] are so completely worn out, that the spirit of our little army has evaporated a good deal."

Few expected Charles to recover from his injuries, but within a matter of months he was back on duty. For Cornwallis and the British in America, however,the end was nigh.

In spite of his setback at the Guildford Court house, Nathanael Greene was now the pursuer, and Comwailis the pursued. It all came to a head at Yorktown. With disaster following rapidly on disaster, and defeat piling heavily upon defeat,Cornwallis was forced to throw in the towel and surrender to some upstart by the name of General George Washington.

But he just couldn't do it. Claiming illness (though no doctor's sick note has survived) he hid under the blankets and asked Charles O'Hara to do the deed on his behalf.

Washington, considering it beneath his dig nity to barter with an underling, also sent an understudy — General Benjamin Lincoln. It was a moment of sweet revenge. The previous year, Lincoln had been forced to surrender his own forces to the British at Charlestown.

When wars go badly,the losers look forscape goats, and O'Hara might have found himself vilified after Yorktown,but he was not. He was promoted to Major General, and after return ing to his regiment as part of a prisoner-of-war exchange, sent to the West Indies to protect Britain's colonies from attack by the marauding navies of France and Spain.

A few months later he was back in England as commander of a brand new regiment — the 22nd Regiment of Foot.

Bored by the relative inactivity oflife at home, he took to gambling, and was soon heavily in debt. Hounded by his creditors he fled to the continent. In Italy he met and courted a wellknown writer of^e day, Mary Berry. Although she resolutely spumed his persistent proposals of marriage,she was impressed enough to call him "the most perfect specimen ofa soldier and a courtier of the past age".

Lord Cornwallis was still fond enough of his old friend to help him straighten out hisskewed finances, enabling him to return to England in 1785 with his head held reasonably high.

Comwallis was about to assume the Gover norship of India, and asked O'Hara to accom pany him,but it all seemed much too far away. Instead, Charles agreed to take command of the Garrison of Gibraltar. He stayed in the post until 1791,when he was promoted to Lieutenant Governor of the colony.

It was time for another war, and on this oc casion the enemy was France. O'Hara, now a Lieutenant General, became military governor of Toulon just in time for the city to be put un der siege. Not wishing to repeat the errors of Yorktown, he went on the offensive.

It might have worked but for the niggling technicality that his troops were outnumbered two to one. Once again Charles was wounded and captured, this time by a certain Napoleon Bonaparte.

The dubious honour of having been captured by both George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte was to be his and his alone.

History, as we know, loves an outrageously implausible coincidence,so stand by.

At Yorktown, O'Hara had tried initially to surrender not to the fledgling "Americans", but to the French, commanded by the Comte de Rochambeau. In August 1795, Napoleon ex changed Charles for a prisoner held by the Eng lish. That prisoner was Rochambeau's son.

O'Hara returned to England,but suffered the effects of his wounds for the rest of his life. He

History

resumed his courtship of Mary Berry with con siderably more success. They became engaged, but Charles' lifelong connection to Cornwallis and Clinton had one last trick up its sleeve.

Sir Heruy was appointed Governor of Gibral tar, but was too ill to travel and promptly died. Charles agreed to accept the post in his stead, but when he told the good news to Mary she tossed his ring back in his face and immediately broke off their engagement.Thisstory has never featured in the tourist board's brochures.

To be honest,Charlie wasn't too fussed.Given his father's example, the presence of a wife probably wouldn't have cramped his style over much,but without one to slow him down he let ri p. His endless parties and eccentric dress sense soon had him hailed as "Cock-of-the-Rock". Mary was replaced by two local women who bore him several children, but in deference to family tradition Charles married neither.

If he was heartbroken, he bore his sorrow like a man. Nevertheless,his father's legacy was also reflected in his generosity and sense of duty.

He died on 21st February 1802, leaving a considerable fortune for the time of more than £70,000, which was placed in trust for his ille gitimate children. A black servant also received £7,000 worth of silver plate.

He was buried in the King's Chapel, one of only two Governors of Gibraltar to be interred on the Rock. His memorial plaque is still there. It reads:"Few men possessed so happy a com bination of rare talents. He was a brave and enterprising soldier, a strict disciplinarian, and a polite accomplished gentleman."

And he was captured by George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte. Follow that.