Career
Churchill appointed him to the Royal Anne at Portsmouth, and made him a lieutenant in the marines. Forbes was midshipman on HMS St George in 1704, and was with George Rooke at the Capture of Gibraltar, where he was on shore as aide-de-camp to the Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt and in the Battle of Málaga the same year. Forbes became heir to the earldom on the death of his elder brother, a captain in the Scots royals, from wounds received at the Battle of Blenheim.
In 1705, Forbes was second lieutenant of the frigate Triton, one of the most active cruisers in the navy. The Triton captured twenty-three French privateers in the Channel in fifteen months. He was in her at the siege of Ostend in 1706, where he was on shore, and first met, the Duke of Argyll, who commanded in the trenches. Forbes found his commission as captain of the Lynn frigate, in which he served as convoy to the Baltic Sea trade. The Lynn being ordered to the West Indies, Forbes was transferred to the Gosport, and on 3 January 1707 to the Leopard of 50 guns. On 6 March 1707, he was appointed brigadier in the 4th troop of horse-guards, of which the Duke of Argyll was captain and colonel.
The brigadiers of the horse-guards—styled in their commissions 'corporals,’ and in society 'captains'—were commissioned officers ranking with lieutenants of horse. Forbes did duty with his troop until appointed to command the Sunderland of 60 guns, part of the western squadron under Lord Dursley, afterwards third Earl Berkeley.
In 1708, Forbes became exempt from his troop and a brother of the Trinity House. In May 1709, he left his ship to do duty with his troop at Windsor, where "his sprightliness of genius and politeness of manner recommended him to Queen Anne", at whose desire he was appointed to the Grafton of 70 guns. Forbes, who in the meantime had married, sailed for the Mediterranean with Sir John Norris in 1710. Charles III of Spain (afterwards the emperor Charles VI) then had his court at Barcelona, and Norris stationed some ships off the coast of Catalonia, the command of which was assigned to Forbes, who was directed to co-operate as much as possible with the Spanish court, and was permitted to reside on shore. Two Genoese ships of war, of 50 and 70 guns respectively, were at Cádiz taking in specie, alleged to be for the use of the French faction in Italy.
The Spanish king proposed that Forbes should put out to sea and seize the vessels on their return voyage. Forbes explained that England was at peace with the Genoese republic; but being pressed by the king, and the queen offering him her sign-manual for his indemnification, he started with his own ship, the Grafton of 70 guns, and the Chatham of 50 guns, Captain Nicholas Haddock, took the Genoese ships into Port Mahon, discharged the officers and crews to shore, landed the specie, amounting to 1,600,000 dollars, and returned with the ships to Barcelona. Charles III, greatly pleased, made Forbes a grant of the duty payable at the mint for coinage of the amount, and urged him to go back to Menorca and fetch the specie.
Forbes, doubting the legality of the capture, excused himself until he should receive instructions from home, or from General Stanhope, the British ambassador and commander-in-chief in Spain, and, to avoid any appearance of backwardness, set out to confer with Stanhope. He joined the part of the allied army under Marshal Staremberg, and was slightly wounded while charging with Brigadier Lepell's regiment at the battle of Villaviciosa, 10 December 1710. Stanhope had surrendered at Brihuega the day previous. Forbes returned to Barcelona, and found orders from home forbidding the disposal of the Genoese treasure, which sorely disconcerted the Spanish court. Forbes came to England bearing an autograph letter from Charles III to Queen Anne. Eventually, the British government decided to retain the capture and indemnify the Genoese republic. In the end, Forbes accepted £ 6,000 in lieu of what had promised to prove a large fortune.
In January 1711, the Duke of Argyll was appointed to the command in Spain. He set out leaving Forbes, who was to serve with him, in London to solicit supplies for the army, which was short of money. Forbes obtained an order for eight hundred thousand dollars of the Genoese treasure, and set off, riding through the Netherlands, Germany, the Tyrol, and Italy to Genoa, where he took ship, with such despatch that he reached Barcelona in twenty-one days from England. During that year, he served with the army in Spain, at the head of three hundred cavalrymen drafted from home, whom Argyll purposed to form into a new regiment of horse under Forbes's command. The regiment was never completed, as peace negotiations were too far advanced. A return of the army in Spain, dated 19 February 1712, is in Treasury Papers, cxliv. 23, and is the only paper of any interest entered under Forbes's name in the Calendars of State Papers for the period.
In 1712, Forbes was appointed to the Greenwich of 50 guns, and became cornet and major in his troop of horse-guards. After the peace of Utrecht he commanded a small squadron of vessels in the Mediterranean, and took up his residence with his wife and child in Menorca, whence he returned home in 1716. The year after he was appointed lieutenant-governor of the castle of St. Phillipa, Menorca, and acted as governor of the island during the brief hostilities with Spain in 1718. He introduced better order on the island, and abolished the trials for witchcraft, which had been a source of much misery.
On his return home in 1719, Forbes, at the desire of George I, proceeded to Vienna, to carry into effect a long-cherished project of the emperor Charles VI, of forming a naval power either in Naples and Sicily or on the Adriatic, for which purpose Forbes received the rank of vice-admiral in the imperial service with a salary of twelve thousand florins a year, and unlimited powers of organisation. But the imperialist ministers looked coldly on the scheme, and adopted a policy of tacit obstruction, which at the end of two years led Forbes to resign his appointment in a private audience with the emperor, who presented him with a valuable diamond ring in recognition of his services. Forbes joined the king at Hanover, and afterwards returned home.
In 1724 he was appointed to command the Canterbury of 60 guns on the Mediterranean station, and was employed on shore at the defence of Gibraltar against the Spaniards in 1726–7. On 11 March 1727 Forbes along with HMS Royal Oak captured the brand new Spanish 46-gun Fifth-rate warship Nuestra Senor Del Rosario not far from Cádiz during a relief effort into Gibraltar. In September that same year Forbes, who had previously sat in the English House of Commons for the borough of Queenborough, was called to the Irish house of peers under the title of Baron Forbes.
