John Markham

Admiral John Markham, (13 June 1761 – 13 February 1827) was a Royal Navy officer. As a junior officer he served in the American Revolutionary War. He commanded the third-rate HMS Hannibal in the action of 10 April 1795 and then the third-rate HMS Centaur, capturing a French frigate squadron in the action of 18 June 1799, during the French Revolutionary Wars. He went on to be a Lord Commissioner of the Admiralty and First Naval Lord under Earl St Vincent. He also served as MP for Portsmouth. Naval career Markham was born in 1761 at Westminster, second son to William Markham, the Archbishop of York, and Sarah Goddard. One of his seven sisters, Frederica, later became Countess of Mansfield. He was educated at Westminster School. In March 1775, he joined the Royal Navy at the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. He served under George Elphinstone in HMS Romney and HMS Perseus. Going to the West Indies in February 1777, the Perseus captured another privateer, to which again young Markham was sent as prize-master, and a third time, in May, Markham was appointed in a like capacity to a large merchant-ship, captured on the coast of Carolina. He had with him four men and a boy from the Perseus, and four of the prisoners, americanised Frenchmen, to assist in working the ship. During a violent gale the ship sprang a leak, and became waterlogged. The English seamen, growing desperate, got dead drunk, and the Frenchmen, arming themselves as they best could, attacked Markham, who was at the helm. He succeeded, however, in beating them below. The ship, too, though waterlogged, was laden with barrel-staves, and kept afloat until her crew were rescued by a passing vessel. Some months later, he arrived in England, to find his family in mourning for him, Elphinstone having written that he had certainly been lost with the ship. Markham subsequently served on the North American and West Indian stations in HMS Phoenix, HMS Roebuck, HMS Royal Oak, HMS London, HMS Volcano and HMS Zebra, participating at the Siege of Charleston and the Battle of Cape Henry. Markham went to Jamaica, where, in March 1782, Sir Peter Parker, 1st Baronet promoted him to command the Volcano fireship. In May, Rodney moved him to the Zebra sloop, and sent him out to cruise off Cape Tiburon. On 22 May, he fell in with a brig flying a French ensign. He chased her, and was fast gaining on her, when she hoisted a union jack at the fore.