John Cookesley

Notes on Officer

John Cookesley entered the Navy, 29 Jan. 1791, as a Boy, on board the Triton 32, Capt. Geo. Murray, employed off Halifax; became attached, in June, 1794, to the Polyphemus 64, flag-ship on the Irish station of Vice- Admiral Robt. Kingsmill; and was promoted, 16 Dec. 1799, immediately after passing his examination, to a Lieutenancy in the Trusty 50, armée en flûte, Capts. Geo. Bowen, Alex. Wilson, and Dan. Oliver Guion. Attending the expedition to Egypt in 1801, for which he received the Turkish gold medal, this officer landed with the troops in Aboukir Bay, commanded a gun-boat on the Nile, fought some of the enemy’s batteries, accompanied the British army to Cairo, and was present at the capitulation of the French army. Between April, 1803, and the summer of 1805, he next served, as First Lieutenant, on board the Zebra bomb, and Constance 24, Capts. Wm. Beauchamp and Anselm John Griffiths, under whom we find him successively employed at the bombardment of Havre in July and Aug. 1804, and the subsequent blockade of the Elbe. He then joined the Gibraltar 80, Capts. John Whitley, Wm. Lukin, Willoughby Lake, John Halliday, and Henry Lidgbird Ball, and was Senior Lieutenant of that ship on 11 April, 1809, when Lord Gambler made his celebrated attack on the French squadron in Basque Roads. On the evening of that day Mr. Cookesley enacted a very conspicuous part as commander of one of the five successful fire-vessels, and behaved with so much gallantry and judgment that he induced two of the enemy’s line-of-battle ships, La Ville de Varsovie and L’Aquilon, to cut their cables and run on shore, where they were soon afterwards destroyed. So highly, indeed, did Lord Mulgrave, then First Lord of the Admiralty, estimate this feat, that he gave Mr. Cookesley a Commander’s commission bearing the same date, and otherwise promoted the whole of his crew, seven in number, two of whom (one, the present Lieut. Robt. Tucker, R.N.) were advanced, as Midshipmen, to the quarterdeck. The subject of this sketch, who subsequently, from 10 May, 1810, until 16 Dec. 1816, commanded the Recruit and Hazard sloops on the Newfoundland station, was advanced to Post-rank 7 Dec. 1818. He accepted the retirement 1 Oct. 1846.

Capt. Cookesley is the inventor of a very simple and efficacious species of raft, fully described and illustrated in the fourth volume of the ‘Nautical Magazine.’ He married, in 1809, Miss Nash, of Anthony, near Torpoint.