Sir William Hoste, 1st Baronet

Captain Sir William Hoste, 1st Baronet KCB (26 August 17806 December 1828) was a Royal Navy officer. Best known as one of Lord Nelson's protégés, Hoste was one of the great frigate captains of the Napoleonic Wars, taking part in six major engagements, including the capture of the heavily fortified port of Kotor during the Adriatic campaign of 1807–1814. He was, however, absent from the Battle of Trafalgar, having been sent with gifts to the Dey of Algiers. Childhood and education He was the second of eight children of Reverend Dixon Hoste (1750–1805) and Margaret Stanforth. At the time of his birth his father was rector of Godwick and Tittleshall in Norfolk. He was born at Ingoldisthorpe, and the family later moved to Godwick Hall, east of Tittleshall, which was leased from Thomas Coke, who later became the 1st Earl of Leicester, of Holkham Hall. His next brother, George Charles Hoste, became an officer in the Royal Engineers. Hoste was educated for a time at King's Lynn and later at the Paston School in North Walsham, where Horatio Nelson himself had been to school some years previously. Dixon Hoste had arranged for Hoste's name to be entered in the books of as a Captain's servant when he was just 5 years old, although he would not actually go to sea until he reached the age of 12 or 13. That time coincided with the outbreak of war with France in February 1793. Lacking any influence or naval contacts himself, Dixon Hoste asked his landlord, Thomas Coke, for assistance and was introduced to Nelson, then living nearby in Burnham Thorpe and who had recently been appointed as Captain of a 64-gun third-rate, which was being fitted out at Chatham Dockyard.