In November 1888 Ernle Chatfield, Midshipman, was appointed to the sloop Cleopatra, which had just commissioned for duty on the South East Coast of America Station. He recalled in his memoirs of her Captain:
Captain Archibald Musgrave was an elderly, grey-bearded man with a large growth on the back of his neck.
Chatfield went on to recount how on Christmas day the ship was taken aback without warning, keeled over, and on account of the First Lieutenant’s swift response the ship keeled over in the other direction:
The Captain, flung off the poop, struck his bad neck against a bolt and was carried away insensible to his cabin. He soon recovered, but I think the blow eventually killed him as he died at Monte Video in the following year.
Lord Chatfield can not have thought too much of Musgrave, as several of his details are wrong. His name was Archer John William Musgrave, not Archibald. He had entered the Royal Navy in 1855 and, in spite of losing a year’s seniority as a Midshipman, he had managed to obtain a haul down promotion to the rank of Commander at the age of 28, and promotion to Captain at the relatively early age of 37. He then had to wait over five years for a command, that of Rapid, before being given command of the Cleopatra in 1888. He was not elderly, being only 46 at the time, although if he was as grey-haired as Chatfield says then he may be forgiven for assuming it. Where Chatfield is especially inaccurate is in claiming Musgrave died in Montevideo in 1889. On 10 August 1891 he was superseded at his own request (Chatfield had left the ship in February 1890), and was invalided on 21 August for ‘Lipomata’, the growth on his neck. He returned to Britain on 21 September and was invalided, his ailment being ‘beyond control’. He then presumably went abroad for his health, and he died in Pau, France, on 20 May 1892, 13 days after his fiftieth birthday. His widow, Louise Elizabeth Innes Musgrave, was awarded a pension of £90 a year. In highlighting Captain Musgrave’s sad story, Chatfield might have gotten the facts right, a record which is now corrected.
Captain Musgrave’s service records are in ADM 196/14/461 and ADM 196/37/282.
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