Project Gutenberg 2025-07-10 Public domain in the USA. 329 Burke, Peter 1811 1881 Celebrated naval and military trials $aLondon :$bWm. H. Allen & Co, $c1866. Richard Tonsing, Brian Coe, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) "Celebrated naval and military trials" by Peter Burke is a collection of historical accounts written in the mid-19th century. It assembles notable British naval and army cases—part biography, part battle narrative, part courtroom record—to explore duty, mutiny, piracy, and political scandal. Prominent figures include Admiral Benbow, Captain Kidd, and Admiral Byng, with attention to how law, war, and public opinion collide. The opening of the work lists its cases and immediately narrates Admiral Benbow’s career and last action: his rise from merchant captain, the famed Cadiz episode with the brined heads, and the 1702 pursuit of Du Casse in the West Indies, where most of his captains held back while he fought on and was maimed; a French letter praises his bravery and denounces his officers, court-martials in Jamaica condemn Kirby and Wade, and Benbow dies soon after. It then turns to Captain Kidd, who, commissioned to hunt pirates, succumbs to piracy himself, captures the Quedagh Merchant, triggers a political uproar in London, faces a detailed Old Bailey trial where pleas about a French pass and a general pardon fail, and is executed. A third section sketches the bitter soldier–civilian friction after 1688 via two Scottish cases: townsmen who kill Major Menzies after he stabs a town clerk are acquitted, while a writer who fatally wounds a soldier is condemned. The excerpt closes as the Byng chapter begins, outlining his family’s distinction, his service, the Minorca crisis, and ministerial unpreparedness. (This is an automatically generated summary.) https://archive.org/details/cu31924030896173/page/n15/mode/2up 20220629031835burke 1866 UK Reading ease score: 60.3 (8th & 9th grade). Neither easy nor difficult to read. en Courts-martial and courts of inquiry -- Great Britain Trials (Military offenses) -- Great Britain Trials (Naval offenses) -- Great Britain KD Text Category: History - British Category: History - Early Modern (c. 1450-1750) Category: History - Modern (1750+) Category: History - Warfare Category: Law & Criminology 737610 2025-09-30T07:54:07.674170 text/html 711821 2025-07-10T12:41:06 text/html 514556 2025-09-30T07:54:16.520143 application/epub+zip 513850 2025-09-30T07:54:09.741116 application/epub+zip 396416 2025-09-30T07:54:08.638140 application/epub+zip 929080 2025-09-30T07:54:21.635590 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 886854 2025-09-30T07:54:15.476139 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 670464 2025-09-30T07:54:06.744129 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 650524 2025-07-10T12:41:06 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 17484 2025-09-30T07:54:21.774567 application/rdf+xml 15267 2025-09-30T07:54:08.951201 image/jpeg 2090 2025-09-30T07:54:08.791153 image/jpeg 994404 2025-09-30T07:54:07.735172 application/octet-stream application/zip Archives containing the RDF files for *all* our books can be downloaded at https://book.klll.cc/wiki/Gutenberg:Feeds#The_Complete_Project_Gutenberg_Catalog en.wikipedia