Who were the people and the ships involved in this naval skirmish?

by NikKerk

From Wars of the Americas: A Chronology of Armed Conflict in the New World, 1492 - 1997

May 5-6th 1711. This night the 44-gun Thetis of Jean François de Choiseul, compte de Beaupré and former governor of Saint Domingue (Haiti) is intercepted three miles outside Havana by the 60 gun HMS Windsor of Captain George Paddon and the 48-gun Weymouth of Richard Lestock. They batter their French opponents into submission, killing or wounding 65 of 180 crewmembers. Captives are set ashore at the Cuban capital, including the wounded Choiseul, who expires shortly thereafter.

  • Jean François de Choiseul, compte de Beaupré

  • George Paddon

  • Richard Lestock

  • Thetis

  • HMS Windsor

  • (HMS?) Weymouth

I would like to know the places and dates of birth and death of these people, and how long they served in the Caribbean for.

For the ships: when were they built? And how long were they in commission for? How long were they commissioned in this area of the Caribbean for?

Elphinstone1842

There are databases of ships and naval officers online that you can try to use, though they're not always complete.

Using this one, it seems George Paddon was born in 1670 in Devon, England, he joined the navy in 1691, and died in 1719. Richard Lestock joined the navy in 1696 and died in 1748. It doesn't have his date of birth there, but with my Googling skills I found that he was apparently born in about 1679. Using a genealogy website, I found that Jean François de Choiseul (also known as François-Joseph, comte de Choiseul-Beauprés) was born in 1655.

For the ships, Thetis can be found here, HMS Windsor can be found here, and HMS Weymouth can be found here.

I'm actually a little surprised I was able to find all that because sometimes there just is no information about obscure things like this online or in any book, or it's just wrong (don't necessarily trust Wikipedia or online sources). There is a great book by Baylus C. Brooks called Quest For Blackbeard: The true story of Edward Thache and his world published in 2016 that details how the author had to go himself and track down old colonial archives in Jamaica and England in order to find and confirm even basic information about such a famous pirate because no one had ever done it before.