William Wolseley

Admiral William Wolseley (1756 – 1842) was an Anglo-Irish naval officer in the Royal Navy. Life William Wolseley, of the Irish branch of the old Staffordshire family of Wolseley, was born on 15 March 1756 at Annapolis in Nova Scotia, where his father, Captain William Neville Wolseley, of the 47th Regiment of Foot, was then in garrison. His mother was Anne, sister of Admiral Phillips Cosby. In 1764 the family returned to Ireland; and in 1769 William, who had been at school in Kilkenny, was entered on board the Goodwill cutter at Waterford, commanded by his father's brother-in-law, Lieutenant John Buchanan. Two years later, when the Goodwill was paid off, Wolseley was sent by his uncle Cosby to a nautical school in Westminster, from which, after some months, he joined the Portland, going out to Jamaica. He returned to England in the Princess Amelia, and in September 1773 joined the 50-gun ship Salisbury, with Commodore [Sir] Edward Hughes, Commander-in-Chief in the East Indies. The Salisbury came home in the end of 1777, and Wolseley, having passed his examination, was promoted, 11 June 1778, to be junior lieutenant of the Duke, one of the fleet with Keppel in July, though on the 27th she had fallen so far to leeward that she had no part in the action. When the autumn cruise came to an end, Wolseley, at the suggestion of Sir Edward Hughes, going out again as Commander-in-Chief in the East Indies, effected an exchange into the Worcester, one of his squadron. After some service against pirates in the Indian seas, he commanded a company of the naval brigade at the reduction of Negapatam in October 1781, and again at the storming of Fort Ostenburg, Trincomalee, on 11 January 1782, when he was severely wounded in the chest by a charge of slugs from a gingal, and left for dead in the ditch. Happily he was found the next day and carried on board the Worcester. He was shortly afterwards moved into the Superb, Hughes's flagship, and in her was present in the first four of the actions with the Bailli de Suffren. After the last of these, 3 September 1782, he was promoted to be commander of the Combustion fireship, and on 14 September was posted to the Coventry frigate, which on the night of 12 January 1783 ran in among the French fleet in Ganjam Roads, mistaking the ships for Indiamen, and was captured. Wolseley was civilly treated by Suffren, who sent him as a prisoner to Mauritius.