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John Erskine (Royal Navy officer)

Royal Navy Admiral (1806–1887)

Summary

Royal Navy Admiral (1806–1887)

Field	Value
honorific_prefix	Admiral
name	John Erskine
birth_date
death_date
allegiance	United Kingdom
rank	Admiral
commands	HMS Orion
branch	Royal Navy
battles	Crimean War

Admiral John Elphinstone Erskine (13 July 1806 – 23 June 1887) was a Royal Navy officer and Liberal politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1865 to 1874.

Background and education

A member of Clan Erskine, he was the son of David Erskine, of Cardross, Stirling, and the great-grandson of the jurist John Erskine. His mother was the Hon. Keith Elphinstone, the daughter of John Elphinstone, 11th Lord Elphinstone. He was educated at the Royal Naval College, Portsmouth and entered the Royal Navy in 1819.

Naval career

Erskine's first command was the gunboat on the Jamaica station in 1829. He served in the Mediterranean and was promoted to captain on 28 June 1839. He was the flag captain to his cousin, Sir Charles Adam, on the West Indies station. After three years on half-pay from 1845 to 1847 he was appointed senior officer on on the Australian station. Between 25 June and 7 October 1849, he toured Samoa, Tonga, Niue, Fiji, the New Hebrides, the Loyalty Islands and New Caledonia. In 1850 he visited the Solomon Islands and other islands and published his account of the expeditions in Journal of Cruise among the Islands of the Western Pacific in H.M.'s ship Havannah in 1853. He also published A short account of the Gold Discoveries in Australia after touring the Australian goldfields in 1850. Erskine commanded in the Baltic during the Crimean War and was present at the Fleet Review of 1856 at Spithead, England. In January 1857 he was stationed on the Coast of Central America. He was Second-in-Command of the Channel Squadron from 1859 until 1861. He became a vice-admiral in 1864 and an admiral in 1869.

Political career

At the 1865 general election Erskine was elected Member of Parliament for Stirlingshire. He held the seat until 1874. In parliament he was leader of the influential lobby working for the Pacific Islanders Protection Act of 1872. Erskine was also a justice of the peace for Stirlingshire. He was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and joined the Aborigines' Protection Society after he had experienced naval anti-slavery operations in the West Indies and seen the impact of European penetration into the Pacific Ocean.

Personal life

Erskine died unmarried in June 1887, aged 80.

References

[https://archive.org/stream/debrettshouseo1870londuoft#page/96/mode/2up Debretts House of Commons and the Judicial Bench 1870]
"Pbenyon.plus.com: Naval Database – ''Orion 1854''".
"Important from Nicaragua".
Gibbney, H. J.. (1972). "John Elphinstone Erskine (1805–1887)".
{{Rayment-hc. s. 5. (March 2012)

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

1806-births 1887-deaths royal-navy-admirals clan-erskine uk-mps-1865–1868 uk-mps-1868–1874 members-of-the-parliament-of-the-united-kingdom-for-scottish-constituencies scottish-liberal-party-mps members-of-the-parliament-of-the-united-kingdom-for-stirling-constituencies

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