John Osborn (c1749-1820)
One of three brothers who became admirals, Osborn had to wait until his forties before being posted captain. His subsequent service was almost exclusively in East Indian waters, and he retired ashore in the early years of the Napoleonic War.
He was a son of Lieutenant William Osborn, who had served with Captain Hon. Samuel Barrington aboard the Achilles 60 during the Seven Years War, and he was the brother of Admiral Samuel Osborn and of Vice-Admiral Edward Oliver Osborn.
John Osborn (sometimes spelled Osborne) was commissioned lieutenant at the age of 28 on 22 February 1777 in the early stages of the American Revolutionary War. Starting in June 1777 and into the following year he commanded the unrated sloop Florida 6 on the Jamaican station.
Having served as the first lieutenant of Vice-Admiral Hon. Samuel Barrington’s flagship Britannia 100 at the relief of Gibraltar in October 1782, he was promoted commander on 15 January 1783 of the captured Dutch privateer Hercules 18, which was rated a sloop, renamed the Pylades, and employed in the Downs. Following the end of the American Revolutionary War she arrived at Sheerness on 16 May where she was paid off, but Osborn then recommissioned her in the same month for peacetime service.
By the autumn of 1783 the Pylades was patrolling between the Humber and Harwich, and in March 1784 she assisted a revenue lugger in the capture of a smuggling vessel. Unfortunately, the smugglers overcame the revenue men who had been put aboard their vessel and promptly fled out to sea, giving their former captors the choice of either walking the plank or taking a boat ashore! Osborn’s sloop captured another smuggling vessel, the rapid sailing ‘Old Cow’, during July; in the previous month the Pylades had carried away her mast during a futile 12-hour chase of this vessel. In August the Pylades gave passage to Rear-Admiral Alexander Innes from Plymouth to Portsmouth, prior to that officer departing for the West Indies. She continued to serve out of Plymouth during 1785, losing one man killed and two wounded in October when a boat led by a midshipman got into a firefight with a smuggling vessel to the west of Rame Head. It would appear that Osborn retained the command until the autumn of 1786.
In May 1787 he commissioned the sloop Ferret 14, which left Portsmouth for the Mediterranean in June, remaining on that station until late the following year. At the end of the Spanish Armament he (along with many other officers) was posted captain on 22 November 1790, being appointed to the Success 32 for purposes of rank only. Then in his 41st year, this was in all likelihood a promotion he had given up hope of achieving.
Osborn was not immediately re-employed when the French Revolutionary War broke out in early 1793, and it was not until September 1795 that he assumed command of the Trusty 50 in succession to Captain James Walker, who had been controversially court-martialled and dismissed the ship at the behest of the court of Spain. After taking a convoy from St. Helens to the Downs, the Trusty was sent on a ten-day cruise off Cherbourg in December with three other men-of-war in an unsuccessful quest for three French frigates. In the following month she was cruising in the Channel where she retook an outward-bound troop transport which had been carrying several hundred soldiers of the 88th regiment as part of Rear-Admiral Hugh Christian’s West Indies expedition. Unfortunately, the French had already transferred most of the soldiers onto other ships but Osborn was able to send the recaptured vessel into a British port. The Trusty was engaged in convoy duty in home waters during the summer of 1796, and on 26 June she put out from Spithead with the East India trade to escort it south to a safe latitude. She returned to Portsmouth in August from Tenerife before proceeding to the Downs with the homeward-bound West Indies trade.
By November 1796 the Trusty was at Sheerness, preparing to depart Portsmouth for the Cape with the new governor of the colony, Lord George Macartney, and two East Indiamen in convoy. Unfortunately, she struck a rock whilst passing through the Needles and by the time she reached Plymouth two days later she was making a foot of water an hour in her hold, necessitating her to be taken up the Hamoaze for inspection. Osborn took some leave in London while the ship was being repaired; she eventually got away with the two East Indiamen on 22 February to arrive at the Cape on 5 May. By this time both of Osborn’s brothers were serving on the Cape and East Indian stations.
At the end of 1797 Osborn removed to the Stately 64 at the Cape. After a brief spell in command of the Tremendous 74, he returned home in the Stately , giving up the command in mid-summer 1798, and going on half pay for most of a year. In February 1799 he briefly commanded the Ajax 74 in the Channel Fleet in succession to the promoted Rear-Admiral John Pakenham, but a month later the command went to Captain Alexander Forrester Cochrane.
Having returned to the Cape and to the command of the Tremendous in July 1799, Osborn assisted the Adamant 50, Captain William Hotham, in driving ashore the successful commerce-raiding French frigate Preneuse 36 off Mauritius on 12 December 1799. During the pursuit of the French frigate, he also managed to capture a Spanish brig. The Tremendous returned to the Cape in February 1800, and when the colony was returned to the Dutch following the end of the French Revolutionary War in March 1802, she sailed for the East Indies with troops who had formed the garrison at the Cape.
Following the resumption of hostilities in May 1803, the Tremendous was involved with the East India fleet’s stand-off with the French at Pondicherry in July, and by November she was at Bombay repairing during the north-east monsoon. She left that port in May 1804 for Batavia, departing for Bencoolen on Sumatra in late June. By now Osborn commanded a squadron consisting of the Tremendous, Lancaster 64, Captain William Fothergill, and the frigates Phaeton 38, Captain George Cockburn, and Terpsichore 32, Captain Walter Bathurst, and he had orders to search for Rear-Admiral Charles Alexandré Durand Linois’s commerce raiders. From late August Osborn’s force blockaded the Isle de France, but Linois’ force slipped into Grand Port on the other side of the island, without being detected. Since there was now no chance of capturing the French ships, Osborn raised the blockade, and on 2 February 1805 the Tremendous arrived at Bombay with the Lancaster and Phaeton. Despite failing to catch the French warships, the squadron did enjoy the compensation of having captured nine merchantmen during its cruise.
At the beginning of 1805, Rear-Admiral Sir Edward Pellew took command of the East Indies station and ordered Osborn (with the temporary rank of commodore) to cruise in the Bay of Bengal to protect the merchant shipping and then resume the blockade of the Isle de France. The Tremendous was now worn out (having been in the eastern seas for eight years), and in early 1806, she and her captain were ordered home. On 21 April 1806 the ship (with the Hindostan 50, Captain Alexander Fraser) was off the Natal coast escorting a convoy to England when she fell in with the French frigate Canonnière 40. During the chase that followed, the Tremendous received a number of effective broadsides as her far smaller enemy yawed from side to side during her flight. One accurate shot brought down the Tremendous’ fore-topsail yard, throwing her aback, and leaving the Canonnière to make good her escape. At the end of July, the Tremendous arrived with her ten-ship convoy and the Hindostan in the Downs. Some contemporary commentators and later historians have criticised Osborn (perhaps unjustly) for his failure to defeat French frigate.
Osborn did not serve again but was promoted rear-admiral on 25 October 1809, vice-admiral on 4 June 1814, and he died in the parish of Sopley in Hampshire on 11 January 1820, aged 70.
Osborn’s personal life is a mystery – we know he married (his wife’s name was Mary), and that she outlived him, but they do not seem to have any children who survived to adulthood. In his will he left a sizeable fortune (about £20,000) to his wife and then to pass to his brother Edward Oliver Osborn, who in fact died just a few months after John. Their other brother, Samuel, had passed away several years earlier.