BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF SIR JOHN JENNINGS, REAR-ADMIRAL OF ENGLAND

Summary

“Heav'n gave thee courage, not with impious rage

T' oppress thy friends, and civil combats wage;

But that thy soul with noble warmth might glow,

In fields of fight against, the common fee.”

Hoole's Trans, of Tasso's Jerusalem.

OF the Family of this distinguished commander we have sought in vain for information; it was probably obscure, and himself the first member of it whose talents and character were to rescue it from the mass of those which pass down the stream of time unnoticed and unknown, but to the small circle which private interests bring round them.

We are equally unacquainted with the period of his birth, and that of his entrance into the navy. His first appointment as lieutenant was on the 12th of May, 1687, to the Pearl, from, which ship he was, on the 27th August, 1688, removed to the St. David, and on the 22d December, of the same year, was commissioned by Lord Dartmouth to the Swallow.

His first appointment as a commander was to the St. Paul fire-ship, on the 16th November, 1689, and in the following year he was made captain of the Experiment, 32 guns, stationed as a cruiser off the coast of Ireland. In this ship he served the cause, of the Revolution with considerable success, until the year 1693, when he was appointed, under Sir John Ashby, captain of the Victory, from which ship he was shortly afterwards removed in the Winchester, of 60 guns, attached to the grand fleet.