Charles Shipley

Major-General Sir Charles Shipley (18 February 1755 – 30 November 1815) was a senior officer in the British Army who was acting Governor of Grenada from 1813 to 1815. Early life Shipley was born at Copt Hall, Luton, Bedfordshire, the son of a captain of cavalry, Richard Shipley. His mother was born Jane Rudyerd, and was distantly descended from Benjamin Rudyerd and the Maddox baronets of Wormley, Hertfordshire. Military career After entering the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich at the age of nine he received in 1771 a commission as ensign and practitioner engineer. The following year he went to Menorca and in 1776 was promoted to be lieutenant and sub-engineer. He returned to England in 1778, and was stationed at Gravesend as engineer on the staff under Colonel Debbieg, the commanding Royal Engineer of the Chatham or Thames district. From 1780 to 1783, he served in St Lucia in the Leeward Islands, returning home to be stationed at Dover Castle In 1788, he again went to the West Indies, stationed at Antigua, but was called home in 1792 to be tried by court-martial for disobedience to regulations for employing his own negroes in Antigua on government fortification work. The court sat at the Horse Guards, found him guilty, and sentenced him to be suspended from rank and pay for twelve months, at the same time stating that they fully recognised that Shipley's departure from regulations did not suggest any corrupt or interested motive.