The Narrative which is here presented in print to the public for the first time was written by William Owen (circa 1735 – 1779), a younger son of a Welsh family of gentry, the Owens of Glandulas, near Llanidloes, in the then County of Montgomeryshire.
This volume of the Narrative covers the years 1750 to 1761 and records the life of William Owen as a young naval or sea officer between the ages of around 15 to 26. The Narrative starts with Owen travelling from his family home in Wales to enter the Royal Navy in 1750, and in the early, juvenile, chapters records Owen’s shipboard voyages to the Mediterranean, the West Coast of Africa and the West Indies. The main historical interest of the Narrative relies on the eye witness account Owen gives of the British struggle in the years 1755 to 1761 against various Indian rulers and the French during the run up to – and course of – the Seven Years War (1756 to 1763).
An outline of William Owen’s life shows a remarkable series of adventures. In his Narrative there are detailed accounts of Owen surviving an attempted murder by a Dutch barge skipper; his visiting an African slaving post, Port Royal in Jamaica, Madagascar, Ceylon and various Indian ports and towns; taking part in the British capture of Angria in 1756, and in three of the eighteen century’s British major fleet actions against the French; leading a cutting-out expedition against a French frigate (in which he loses an arm); fighting in some of the major land battles in India against French and local rulers; being one of a handful of survivors of the crew of his Majesty’s ship Sunderland when that ship foundered in the Great Storm of 1 January 1761. In India Owen served as an aid de camp to two great British Admirals, Charles Watson and Sir George Pocock, and knew Robert Clive.
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