SANDWICH, JOHN MONTAGU | autograph letter signed, to Captain Ouvry, 1779

SANDWICH, JOHN MONTAGU, FOURTH EARL OF, FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY AND THE SECRETARY OF STATE

AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED, TO CAPTAIN OUVRY OF HMS FAME

urging uncompromising suppression of a shipyard strike by "refractory shipwrights", 2 pages, 4to, 2 pages, Hitchingbrook, 18 August 1779, address panel affixed 

"...we can do without them, tho they cannot do without us... they must be made to smart, and taught that they can never get anything by laying down their tools, & threatening to leave the yard. it is of the utmost importance to shew them that it is dangerous work to combine together, & that their leaders will allways suffer in the end..." 

A characteristically uncompromising statement by the First Lord of the Admiralty, written during the navy's crisis years of the American Revolutionary War. In August 1779 Britain faced possible invasion by a numerically superior Franco-Spanish fleet.

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