Admiral of the Fleet Sir James Alexander Gordon, KCB, RN (6 October 1782 – 8 January 1869) was a distinguished British officer in the Royal Navy. His 75 years in the service, from Midshipman to Admiral of the Fleet was unprecedented in its duration. He served in the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. Historian Bryan Perrett has suggested that his career was the model for events in the Horatio Hornblower novels of C. S. Forester.
Gordon came of ...
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Admiral of the Fleet Sir James Alexander Gordon, KCB, RN (6 October 1782 – 8 January 1869) was a distinguished British officer in the Royal Navy. His 75 years in the service, from Midshipman to Admiral of the Fleet was unprecedented in its duration. He served in the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. Historian Bryan Perrett has suggested that his career was the model for events in the Horatio Hornblower novels of C. S. Forester.
Gordon came of a family of minor Highland gentry of Jacobite sympathies, the Gordons of Beldorney and Wardhouse. He was born the eldest son of Charles Gordon of Wardhouse, Aberdeenshire, and his wife, a daughter of Major James Mercer, of Auchnacant, Aberdeenshire, at Kildrummy Castle, Kildrummy, Aberdeenshire
He entered the Royal Navy in 1793 as a Midshipman in HMS Arrogant (74). He transferred in 1795 to the frigate Révolutionnaire, which was part of Alexander Hood's fleet in the Battle of Groix on 23 June 1795. In 1796 Gordon moved to the ship-of-the-line...
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