William Hargood

Admiral of the White Sir William Hargood (6 May 1762 – 12 December 1839) was a British naval officer who served with distinction through the American War of Independence, the French Revolutionary War and the Napoleonic Wars, during which he gained an unfortunate reputation for bad luck, which seemed to reverse following his courageous actions at the battle of Trafalgar in command of HMS Belleisle. Military service Born in 1762 into a Royal Navy Dockyard family, the son of a Clerk of the Survey, Hargood was able to secure a position as a midshipman on HMS Triumph, on which he served from 1775 until the following year, in which time he made a convoy to Newfoundland, and then moved to HMS Bristol in which he saw the West Indies and American Eastern Seaboard, being heavily in involved in the landing at Fort Moultrie in 1776. In 1781, Hargood was a lieutenant, serving in the sloop HMS Port Royal when Pensacola fell to the Spanish despite his best efforts to keep it supplied, and in 1782 he was on board HMS Magnificent at the battle of the Saintes. Hargood continued in service in American waters beyond the end of the war, remaining there until he met Captain William Henry (who in 1830 would succeed his brother to become King of the United Kingdom). The two became firm friends, and William took him as his first lieutenant aboard the frigate HMS Pegasus and then HMS Andromeda, procuring his promotion in 1789 to commander and getting him the sloop , which he commanded for a year off Ireland before moving to and the West Indies when he was made a Post Captain. Captured by the French in 1793 along with his ship, Hargood was exchanged and honourably acquitted and in 1796 given the 50 gun , a command which ended in disaster, when he was deposed ashore during the Spithead mutiny. Moving to and then , Hargood convoyed a fleet of East Indiamen to China, where he remained until the Peace of Amiens in 1803, defending Macau at the Macau Incident of January 1799. On his return at the outbreak of war, he was given the ship of the line HMS Belleisle, a good ship captured from the French in the battle of Groix in 1795.