December 280 years ago was a stormy time, and not just the weather. George II was on the throne, but he spent so much time in his native Hanover that he was accused of being an absentee king, leaving his wife, Queen Caroline, to govern as regent at home. Even worse, he was also seeing his latest mistress in Hanover.
In 1736 George had spent a few months in Hanover before reluctantly deciding to return to London that December. The weather, though, had been stormy for several weeks. The king was accompanied on the journey back by Admiral Sir Charles Wager, who strongly advised waiting for safer weather for their crossing, but George insisted on putting to sea.
“Let it be what weather it will, I am not afraid,” the king declared, to which Wager replied, “If you are not, I am.” Wager at last gave way and the ship set sail with a convoy on December 20, 1736, but a short way out in tempestuous seas, they turned back and landed at Hellevoetsluis, the Netherlands. As “the British newsletter Wye’s Letter” reported, “The [royal] Yatchts had been in a great Storm, with as high a Sea as it was possible for them to live in, but that several of the Men of War were dispers’d and not come in; and that his Majesty was in perfect Health.”
That news came as a big disappointment in England, where it was hoped that the royal ship had sunk and the king had been lost at sea. Queen Caroline, though, on hearing of these rumours had been devastated and then appalled by the insensitivity of their son, Frederick, Prince of Wales, who appeared to celebrate the apparent loss of his father with a great dinner. To add to the dismal weather, the same storm also flooded parliament in London.
When the queen learnt that the king had returned safely to the Dutch coast, she wrote to congratulate him, but the storms carried on for weeks until George eventually landed at Lowestoft on January 15, 1737.
