John Trigge

c1745-1815.

Trigge was commissioned lieutenant on 28 May 1766, and whilst serving aboard the London 90, Captain James Kempthorne, he was wounded during the inconclusive engagement with the Scipion 74 off San Domingo on 17 October 1782.

He was promoted commander on 1 December 1787, and in January 1789 recommissioned the Nautilus 16, going out to Newfoundland in June, and after wintering in England, as was the practice, he was again on that station from June 1790. He returned to Portsmouth from Newfoundland in November to find that he had been posted captain on 1 October, and that but for his late arrival he would have joined the Marlborough 74 as flag-captain to Rear-Admiral Samuel Pitchford Cornish, who was taking a squadron out to the West Indies.

Trigge recommissioned the Mermaid 32 in February 1793, and after going out to the Mediterranean he assisted the Tartar 28, Captain Thomas Fremantle, in taking the privateer G n ral Washington on 27 May, and then captured the privateer Ang lique 16 on 30 May.

He was next placed under the orders of Captain George Lumsdaine of the Iris 32 to undertake a mission to Tripoli and Tunis in July. Bizarrely, this resulted in Lumsdaine being brought to a court martial for failing to allow the French to capture the sloop Tisiphone 18, Commander Thomas Byam Martin, an event that would have subsequently provided the justification for the British to seize all of the French shipping on the North African coast. Trigge thereafter served at the occupation of Toulon from August 1793, but he had left the Mermaid by the time she went out to the West Indies in the following summer.

As a result of his wounds and arduous service he was never fit enough to serve again, and after becoming a superannuated rear-admiral on 4 May 1808 he died on 18 October 1815 at Gloucester.