Jonathon Faulknor (2)

Died 1809. He was the son of Admiral Jonathon Faulknor, and the cousin of both Captain Robert Faulknor and of Admiral Richard Curry, who served his early years in the service with him.

Faulknor was commissioned lieutenant on 24 June 1777 and promoted commander on 10 February 1780 after the arrival of Admiral Sir George Rodney s fleet at Gibraltar. After commissioning the captured Spanish brig Saint Fermin at Gibraltar he commanded her on 7 June during the Spanish fireship attack on the Rock. On 4 April 1781 he became a prisoner of war when two Spanish xebecs recaptured the Saint Fermin off Gibraltar after she had set off the night before in company with a tender from the Brilliant 28 with despatches for Port Mahon, Minorca.

He was posted captain on 12 August 1782, and following the ending of hostilities he recommissioned the Proselyte 32 in April 1783, serving on the Newfoundland station before being paid off in December 1784. He thereafter remained unemployed for the duration of the peace.

The action between the Venus and the Semillante in 1793

Faulknor recommissioned the Venus 32 in January 1793, and he departed Spithead on 19 May in the company of the Nymphe 36, Captain Edward Pellew, with whom he had agreed to share any pool of prize-money. Whilst cruising towards the Channel Islands the next evening they fell in with two French frigates and two brigs, but much to the celebrated Pellew s fury the Venus was particularly slow in coming up on the enemy and the opportunity of an engagement was lost. Faulknor was also less than fortunate in an action he fought with the S millante 32 on 27 May, for having all but defeated his enemy he was unable to take possession due to the arrival on the scene of another French frigate, the Cl op tre 36. Pellew poured scorn on his fellow frigate captain for failing to secure the S millante, denouncing him as thick-headed , and it little helped their relationship when the two fell out over the dispersal of prize-money pertaining to the Nymphe s capture of the Sans Culottes 16 on 24 May. He later commanded the Venus in the Channel fleet’s summer and autumn cruises.

In April 1794 Faulknor commissioned the new eighteen-pounder frigate Diana 38, and whilst taking many small prizes off the French coast he was also in the crack squadron led by Captain Sir John Borlase Warren that drove the French frigate Volontaire 36 ashore on the Penmarcks on 23 August.

In the latter part of 1795 he was ordered by the commander-in-chief of the Irish station, Vice-Admiral Robert Kingsmill, to lead a squadron of four frigates in the protection of several convoys that had been dispersed in the December gales, including transports from Rear-Admiral High Christian s outward-bound Leeward Islands fleet carrying sixteen thousand troops. Towards the end of 1796 he commanded a squadron of frigates in search of the French invasion fleet of Ireland. During this year he continued to scoop up a number of prizes, including the privateer Indemnit 14 off the Irish coast on 28 August in company with the Seahorse 36, Captain George Oakes, and Cerberus 32, Captain John Drew, and in the following year the privateer Neptune 12 on 12 September in company with the Cerberus. On 5 December 1797 he assisted the Shannon 32, Captain Alexander Fraser, in the capture of the Mouche 16, and he was eventually succeeded in the command of the Diana by the latter officer in March 1799.

During the spring of 1799 Faulknor briefly commanded the Terrible 74 in the Channel Fleet after Sir Richard Hussey Bickerton had been promoted to flag rank, and he served thereafter in the Channel with the Impregnable 98 from June, being in command of her when she was wrecked after going aground off Chichester on 19 October. At the subsequent court-martial on 30 October aboard the Gladiator in Portsmouth Harbour he was acquitted of any blame for her loss, but the sailing master was found culpable and dismissed the service.

Faulknor was promoted rear-admiral on 23 April 1804, and he died in 1809.

In 1789 he married Rebecca Spry, daughter of Lieutenant-General Horatio Spry, and they had issue Commander Jonathon Faulknor and Lieutenant Augustus Spry Faulknor.

ressed with the younger officer.