Cooper Willyams

author

Cooper Willyams

1762–1816

A clergyman, artist, and keen observer of naval life, he turned voyages through the West Indies and Mediterranean into vivid accounts filled with landscapes, people, and battle scenes. His firsthand record of Nelson’s Mediterranean campaigns remains his best-known work.

1 Audiobook

An Account of the Campaign in the West Indies, in the Year 1794 Under the Command of their Excellencies Lieutenant General Sir Charles Grey, K.B., and Vice Admiral Sir John Jervis, K.B.

An Account of the Campaign in the West Indies, in the Year 1794 Under the Command of their Excellencies Lieutenant General Sir Charles Grey, K.B., and Vice Admiral Sir John Jervis, K.B.

by Cooper Willyams

About the author

Born in June 1762, probably at Plaistow House in Essex, Cooper Willyams was the son of a Royal Navy commander. He studied at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, earning his master’s degree in 1789, and entered the church in 1784 as a curate in Suffolk. His early artistic talent appeared in A History of Sudeley Castle, published in 1792.

Willyams combined his clerical career with extensive travel. In 1793 he served as chaplain aboard HMS Boyne during the British campaign in the West Indies, later becoming domestic chaplain to Admiral John Jervis, Earl St Vincent. In 1798 he joined HMS Swiftsure under Captain Benjamin Hallowell and witnessed the Battle of the Nile, recording the Mediterranean landscape and naval campaign in drawings and written observations.

His principal travel book, A Voyage up the Mediterranean in His Majesty’s Ship the Swiftsure, appeared in 1802 and included descriptions of the Battle of the Nile alongside numerous illustrations. He later served as rector of Kingston and Stourmouth in Kent. Willyams died in London on 17 July 1816; a collection of his views of Egypt, Palestine, Rhodes, Italy, Minorca, and Gibraltar was published posthumously in 1822.