Robert Clerk

Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Clerk (c.1720 – 1797) was a British engineer officer who served in the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years' War. His report on the state of the defences of Rochefort (Rochefort, Charente-Maritime) in 1757 was the main reason for that French naval port being chosen as the target for a major British expedition, the Raid on Rochefort, for which Clerk was appointed chief engineer. Early career Robert Clerk (sometimes spelled Clark or Clarke) was born about 1720, the son of an Edinburgh physician. John Entick speaks of him as a worthy, intelligent, skilful officer. However Horace Walpole wrote, ”There was a young Scot, by name Clarke, ill-favoured in his person, with a cast in his eyes, of intellects not very sound, but quick, bold, adventurous.” Clerk entered the Army as a second lieutenant in Cotterrell's Marines with seniority 11 June 1741. He was appointed a practitioner engineer on 24 May 1749, promoted to sub-engineer on 30 May 1753, while also becoming a lieutenant in the 25th Regiment of Foot on 2 October 1755. In 1745 Clerk went as “a Volunteer with Sir John Mordaunt to Ostend, but they did not arrive, till after the Siege; he saw the Attack, and was afterwards in the trenches.” In 1746, Clerk was appointed as an engineer-in-ordinary to an expedition, commanded by General St Clair, to take Quebec. Due to the lateness of the season, in September the force was diverted to Port L’Orient in Brittany. In 1747 Clerk was an engineer with the Anglo-Dutch troops defending the town of Bergen-op-Zoom against the besieging French army led by Count Löwendahl. After a long and destructive siege the town was taken by a surprise assault and Clerk captured; “being pursued into a house where the enemies fired at him through a door, he opened it and told them he was related to Marshal Löwendahl, who would reward them for saving him. Being conducted to the Marshal, with the same readiness he avowed the deceit, urging that he had no other method of saving his life. Löwendahl was pleased with the man, and gave him money.” Clerk was held as a prisoner of war and not released until the end of the war in 1748. Background to the Raid on Rochefort In Clerk's own words, “In returning from Gibraltar in (April) 1754, I went along Part of the western Coast of France to see the Conditions of some of their Fortifications of their Places of Importance, on purpose to Judge if an Attempt could be made with a Probability of Success....