Vice-Admiral Vice admiral is a senior naval flag officer rank, usually equivalent to lieutenant general and air marshal. A vice admiral is typically senior to a rear admiral and junior to an admiral. Australia In the Royal Australian Navy, the rank of vic ...

Sir Peter Denis, 1st Baronet (1713 – 11 June 1778) was an English

naval A navy, naval force, military maritime fleet, war navy, or maritime force is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake-borne, riverine, littoral, or ocean-borne combat operatio ...

officer and Member of Parliament.

Life

The son of

Huguenot The Huguenots ( , ; ) are a Religious denomination, religious group of French people, French Protestants who held to the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, ...

refugee, the Rev. Jacob Denis and his wife Martha Leach, Denis was educated at

The King's School, Chester The King's School, Chester, is a co-educational private day school for pupils aged 4 to 18. It is one of the seven 'King's Schools' established (or re-endowed and renamed) by King Henry VIII in 1541 after the Dissolution of the Monasteries ...

and joined the navy as a young man. He was a

midshipman A midshipman is an officer of the lowest Military rank#Subordinate/student officer, rank in the Royal Navy, United States Navy, and many Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth navies. Commonwealth countries which use the rank include Royal Cana ...

in HMS ''Centurion'' under the command of

Commodore Commodore may refer to: Ranks * Commodore (rank), a naval rank ** Commodore (Royal Navy), in the United Kingdom ** Commodore (India), in India ** Commodore (United States) ** Commodore (Canada) ** Commodore (Finland) ** Commodore (Germany) or ' ...

George Anson at the start of his famous

circumnavigation Circumnavigation is the complete navigation around an entire island, continent, or astronomical object, astronomical body (e.g. a planet or natural satellite, moon). This article focuses on the circumnavigation of Earth. The first circumnaviga ...

(1740–1744). He was promoted to lieutenant in 1739. On 5 November 1741, in the South Seas, he was sent in command of 16 men in a cutter to pursue a Spanish vessel. He boarded and carried his prize, which proved to be bound from

Guayaquil Guayaquil (), officially Santiago de Guayaquil, is the largest city in Ecuador and also the nation's economic capital and main port. The city is the capital (political), capital of Guayas Province and the seat of Guayaquil Canton. The city is ...

Callao Callao () is a Peruvian seaside city and Regions of Peru, region on the Pacific Ocean in the Lima metropolitan area. Callao is Peru's chief seaport and home to its main airport, Jorge Chávez International Airport. Callao municipality consists ...

. The cargo was of little value to its captors, but intelligence derived from the capture led to the attack on the town of

Paita Paita is a city in northwestern Peru. It is the capital of the Paita Province which is in the Piura Region. It is a leading seaport in the region. Paita is located 1,089 km northwest of the country's capital Lima, and 57 km northwest of ...

a few days afterwards. By 1745 Denis had been promoted to command and given the 26-gun

sixth rate In the rating system of the Royal Navy used to categorise sailing warships, a sixth-rate was the designation for small warships mounting between 20 and 28 carriage-mounted guns on a single deck, sometimes with smaller guns on the upper works an ...

. Soon afterwards he was transferred to temporary command of , during which time he captured a French

privateer A privateer is a private person or vessel which engages in commerce raiding under a commission of war. Since robbery under arms was a common aspect of seaborne trade, until the early 19th century all merchant ships carried arms. A sovereign o ...

and recaptured two British merchantmen. By 1747 Denis was back in the 50-gun ''Centurion'' as her

captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader or highest rank officer of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police depa ...

, commanding her at the Battle of Cape Finisterre, where he once more served under Anson, now an

admiral Admiral is one of the highest ranks in many 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. Admiral is ranked above vice admiral and below admiral of ...

. When the enemy was sighted, Anson signalled a general chase as he expected the French to evade action if possible until they could escape under cover of darkness; ''Centurion'' was swiftest into action, engaging the rearmost French ship and occupying her and two larger enemy ships until the main body of the British fleet could come up. After the battle Denis was entrusted with bringing back to England the news of Anson's victory; as the public acclaim that followed won Anson a peerage, this may well have further endeared Denis to Anson. On 2 September 1750, he married Elizabeth Pappett at

St Benet's, Paul's Wharf The Church of St Benet Paul's Wharf is a Welsh Anglican church in the City of London, England. Since 1556, it has also been the official church of the College of Arms in which many officers of arms have been buried. In 1666 it was destroyed in t ...

, London. She died in 1765 without issue. In 1754, Denis entered Parliament as member for

Hedon Hedon is a town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in Holderness in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It is situated approximately east of Kingston upon Hull, Hull city centre. It lies to the north of the A1033 road at the cross ...

, a

Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ) is an area of Northern England which was History of Yorkshire, historically a county. Despite no longer being used for administration, Yorkshire retains a strong regional identity. The county was named after its county town, the ...

borough where Anson was the "patron" with the power to select the MPs. He held the seat for fourteen years, throughout which time the other MP was another naval officer, Sir Charles Saunders, who later rose to become

First Lord of the Admiralty First Lord of the Admiralty, or formally the Office of the First Lord of the Admiralty, was the title of the political head of the English and later British Royal Navy. He was the government's senior adviser on all naval affairs, responsible f ...

. Denis continued his naval career, commanding the 90-gun in Admiral Edward Hawke's unsuccessful expedition against Rochefort in September 1757. At the action of 29 April 1758, he was captain of the 70-gun which defeated and captured

French French may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France ** French people, a nation and ethnic group ** French cuisine, cooking traditions and practices Arts and media * The French (band), ...

ship of the line ''Raisonnable '' in the

Bay of Biscay The Bay of Biscay ( ) is a gulf of the northeast Atlantic Ocean located south of the Celtic Sea. It lies along the western coast of France from Point Penmarc'h to the Spanish border, and along the northern coast of Spain, extending westward ...

. ''Dorsetshire'' was with the fleet at the decisive victory of

Quiberon Bay Quiberon Bay (, ; ) is an area of sheltered water on the south coast of Brittany. The bay is in the Morbihan département. Geography The bay is roughly triangular in shape, open to the south with the Gulf of Morbihan to the north-east and the ...

in 1759. In 1767 he was created a

baronet A baronet ( or ; abbreviated Bart or Bt) or the female equivalent, a baronetess (, , or ; abbreviation Btss), is the holder of a baronetcy, a hereditary title awarded by the British Crown. The title of baronet is mentioned as early as the 14th ...

, of St Mary's in the County of Kent, but as he left no male heir the title became extinct on his death. Denis 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. Nore, The Nore is a sandbank at the mouth of t ...

, based on the

River Medway The River Medway is a river in South East England. It rises in the High Weald AONB, High Weald, West Sussex and flows through Tonbridge, Maidstone and the Medway conurbation in Kent, before emptying into the Thames Estuary near Sheerness, a to ...

in 1771 with his flag in the third-rate . He died in 1778, having reached the rank of Vice-Admiral of the Red. He was buried at St. George the Martyr Cemetery,

Brunswick Square Brunswick Square is a public garden and ancillary streets along two of its sides in Bloomsbury, in the London Borough of Camden. It is overlooked by the School of Pharmacy and the Foundling Museum to the north; the Brunswick Centre to the we ...

, beside his mother Martha (d.1746), his wife Elizabeth (d.1765), his brother Charles (d.1772), and his sisters Susanna (d.1776) and Ann (d.1793).The Monumental Inscriptions of Middlesex Vol II - Cansick 1872.

References

External links

* * Dictionary of National Biography
Ships of the 18th-century Royal Navy
, - {{DEFAULTSORT:Denis, Peter 1713 births 1778 deaths Royal Navy vice admirals Royal Navy personnel of the War of the Austrian Succession Royal Navy personnel of the Seven Years' War Baronets in the Baronetage of Great Britain Members of the Parliament of Great Britain for English constituencies British MPs 1754–1761 British MPs 1761–1768 People educated at The King's School, Chester