I was thrilled to discover more about my 9x great-grandfather’s life than his date of birth and death. It’s not often easy to learn much about someone who lived in the 1600s.

As a captain in Charles II’s Restoration Navy, Benjamin Young would have known the chance of fatalities was high when he ordered his ship, H.M.S. Advice, to engage in battle in the Mediterranean Sea.

Trading ships were concerned about privateers, so H.M.S. Advice joined H.M.S. Guernsey to protect a convoy off the south of Spain, near Cape de Gata. It was near there they encountered seven Algerian men-of-war with a combined total of more than 200 guns. The Advice and Guernsey were outnumbered, but put up a valiant fight over almost two days. When the enemy retreated, the English casualties included the captains of both ships.

Benjamin was just forty-years-old when he died in 1670, and had commanded three ships before the Advice: H.M.S. Adventure, H.M.S. Yarmouth, and H.M.S. Fountain. He had participated in the second Anglo-Dutch War, including in the Battle of Lowestoft and the St James’ Day Battle. His career was relatively short, although perhaps not unexpectedly so given the risks associated with such a life.

Benjamin’s children would have had few memories of him, all being under seven when he died. However, connection to the sea remained strong in his descendants and their extended families, notably in the Darracott and Toms branches of the family. Benjamin’s son Robert worked in the Plymouth Dockyards for around forty years, and his grandson Greenhill Darracott, one-time mayor of Plymouth, followed suit. Henry Young Darracott, Robert Young Man Darracott, and Francis Philip Toms, Benjamin’s 2x, 3x, and 4x great-grandsons, all served in the Royal Navy.

Selected references

William Laird Clowes, The Royal Navy: A History From the Earliest Times to the Present, S. Low, Marston and Company Limited, London, 1897-1903, vol. 2, pp. 438-439. https://wellcomecollection.org/works/gfmgumrt.

John Charnock, Biographia Navalis or Impartial Memoirs of the Lives of Officers of the Navy of Great Britain From the Year 1660 to the Present Time, R. Faulder, London, 1794, vol. 1, pp. 140-141, https://archive.org/details/biographianaval13chargoog/page/n8/mode/2up.

Will of Benjamin Young, died July 1670, England and Wales, Perogative Court of Canterbury Wills, 1383-1858, The National Archives, Perogative Court of Canterbury and Related Probate Jurisdictions: Will Registers; Class: PROB 11; Piece 334, Ancestry.com, accessed 23 October 2021.

Maritime Memorials, ‘Memorial: M4259’, https://memorials.rmg.co.uk/m4259/, accessed 23 October 2021.

Royal Museums Greenwich, ‘The Restoration’, https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/restoration, accessed 28 December 2023.