Admiral Admiral is one of the highest ranks in some navies. In the Commonwealth nations and the United States, a "full" admiral is equivalent to a "full" general in the army or the air force, and is above vice admiral and below admiral of the fleet, ...

Sir John Gore, KCB (9 February 1772,

County Kilkenny County Kilkenny ( gle, Contae Chill Chainnigh) is a county in Ireland. It is in the province of Leinster and is part of the South-East Region. It is named after the city of Kilkenny. Kilkenny County Council is the local authority for the cou ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

– 21 August 1836,

Datchet Datchet is a village and civil parish in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in Berkshire, England, located on the north bank of the River Thames. Historically part of Buckinghamshire, and the Stoke Hundred, the village was eventually tr ...

Buckinghamshire Buckinghamshire (), abbreviated Bucks, is a ceremonial county in South East England that borders Greater London to the south-east, Berkshire to the south, Oxfordshire to the west, Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north-ea ...

) was a British naval commander of the 18th and 19th centuries. His father was Colonel John Gore.

Naval career

Gore joined the Royal Navy in August 1781, as a captain's servant, and would have served as a midshipman, before gaining promotion to lieutenant on 26 November 1789 and

commander Commander (commonly abbreviated as Cmdr.) is a common naval officer rank. Commander is also used as a rank or title in other formal organizations, including several police forces. In several countries this naval rank is termed frigate captain. ...

on 24 May 1794. The Royal Navy had just captured the French corvette ''Fleche'' at the capture of Bastia, in which Gore had played a significant role and had been injured. The Navy took the corvette into service as HMS ''Fleche'' and commissioned her under Gore. He fitted her out and sailed her to Malta where he negotiated with the Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller

Emmanuel de Rohan-Polduc Fra' Emmanuel Marie des Neiges de Rohan-Polduc (18 April 1725, in La Mancha, Spain – 14 July 1797, in Valletta, Malta) was a member of the wealthy and influential Rohan family of France, and Prince and 70th Grand Master of the Order of St. Joh ...

for seamen, supplies, and the like. On 13 September Gore was a witness at the trial of Lieutenant William Walker, commander of the hired armed cutter ''Rose'', on charges that Walker had accepted money from merchants at Bastia to convoy their vessels to Leghorn, where the court martial took place. Walker was acquitted. Gore received promotion to

post captain Post-captain is an obsolete alternative form of the rank of Captain (Royal Navy), captain in the Royal Navy. The term served to distinguish those who were captains by rank from: * Officers in command of a naval vessel, who were (and still are) ...

on 14 November 1794. When in command of , he took part in the successful

Action of 16 October 1799 The action of 16 October 1799 was a minor naval engagement during the French Revolutionary Wars between a squadron of British Royal Navy frigates and two frigates of the Spanish Navy close to the Spanish naval port of Vigo in Galicia. The Spani ...

, in which two Spanish frigates were captured and more than 2 million silver dollars taken. While commanding the 32-gun frigate HMS ''Medusa'', he took part in the

action of 5 October 1804 The Battle of Cape Santa Maria was a naval engagement that took place off the southern Portuguese coast, in which a British squadron under the command of Commodore Graham Moore attacked and defeated a Spanish squadron commanded by Brigadier D ...

. Promoted to rear-admiral on 4 December 1813, he became

Commander-in-Chief, The Nore The Commander-in-Chief, The Nore, was an operational commander of the Royal Navy. His subordinate units, establishments, and staff were sometimes informally known as the Nore Station or Nore Command. The Nore is a sandbank at the mouth of the Th ...

from 1818 to 1821. Promoted to vice-admiral on 27 May 1825, he served as Commander-in-Chief, East Indies and China Station from 1831 to 1834.

Family

On 15 August 1808, at

St George's, Hanover Square St George's, Hanover Square, is an Anglican church, the parish church of Mayfair in the City of Westminster, central London, built in the early eighteenth century as part of a project to build fifty new churches around London (the Queen Anne C ...

, he married Georgiana Montagu, daughter of Admiral Sir George Montagu and Charlotte Wroughton. The couple had four children: *Lieutenant John Gore (d. 1835) *Hon. Georgiana Stuart Gore (d. 18 July 1877) *Anne Gore (d. 23 July 1877) – the mother of

Assheton Gore Curzon-Howe Admiral The Honourable Sir Assheton Gore Curzon-Howe, (10 August 1850 – 1 March 1911) was a British naval officer who served as Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean Fleet from 1908 to 1910. Early life Curzon-Howe was the thirteenth and younge ...

. *Maria Gore (d. 8 March 1902)

Popular culture

In fiction, he appears in CS Forester's ''

Hornblower and the Hotspur ''Hornblower and the Hotspur'' (published 1962) is a Horatio Hornblower novel written by C. S. Forester. It is the third book in the series chronologically, but the tenth by order of publication, and serves as the basis for one of the episodes o ...

'' and in MC Muir's ''Admiralty Orders'' as the ''Medusas captain. In the latter book the action of 5 October 1804 is described.

References

, - {{DEFAULTSORT:Gore, John Royal Navy admirals Royal Navy personnel of the French Revolutionary Wars British naval commanders of the Napoleonic Wars Military personnel from County Kilkenny Knights Commander of the Order of the Bath 1772 births 1836 deaths Irish officers in the Royal Navy

Naval career

Family

Popular culture

See also

References