Vice-Admiral Vice admiral is a senior naval flag officer rank, usually equivalent to lieutenant general and air marshal. A vice admiral is typically senior to a rear admiral and junior to an admiral. Australia In the Royal Australian Navy, the rank of vic ...

George Murray (22 August 1741 – 17 October 1797) was a

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom ...

officer and politician. He was the third son of the Jacobite general Lord George Murray.

Naval career

Murray joined the

in 1758 as a midshipman.George Murray at Oxford Dictionary of National biography
/ref> In 1765 he became commander of the sloop HMS Ferret. Promoted

captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader or highest rank officer of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police depa ...

he commanded HMS ''Renown'', HMS ''Adventure'', HMS ''Levant'' and HMS ''Cleopatra''. He commanded the ''Cleopatra'' at the Battle of Dogger Bank in 1781. From 1782 he commanded HMS ''Irresistible''. He was elected Member of Parliament for Perth burghs in 1790 but gave up his seat in 1796. Resuming his naval career he commanded HMS ''Defence'' from 1790. He was appointed Commander-in-Chief at Chatham in 1792 and went on to command HMS ''Duke'' and then HMS ''Glory''. He was made Commander-in-Chief, North American Station in 1794, establishing a permanent Royal Naval base at St. George's Town, at the East End of

Bermuda Bermuda is a British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean. The closest land outside the territory is in the American state of North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. Bermuda is an ...

colony A colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule, which rules the territory and its indigenous peoples separated from the foreign rulers, the colonizer, and their ''metropole'' (or "mother country"). This separated rule was often orga ...

British North America British North America comprised the colonial territories of the British Empire in North America from 1783 onwards. English colonisation of North America began in the 16th century in Newfoundland, then further south at Roanoke and Jamestown, ...

), with Admiralty House at Rose Hill, the ships of the squadron reaching ''Murray's Anchorage'' (named for him) in the lagoon enclosed by Bermuda's barrier reach via the newly discovered Hurd's Channel, and with various sites around the town acquired by the navy, including Convict Bay (below ''Barrack Hill'' at St. George's Garrison),

Admiralty Island Admiralty Island is an island in the Alexander Archipelago in Southeast Alaska. It is long and wide with an area of , making it the seventh-largest island in the United States and the 132nd largest island in the world. It is one of the A ...

, and ''Naval Tanks'' (acquisition of land at Bermuda's West End also began in the 1790s for the longer term goal of the navy was the construction of the Royal Naval Dockyard with which Bermuda was to be elevated to an

Imperial fortress Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, Lord Salisbury described Malta, Gibraltar, Bermuda, and Halifax as Imperial fortresses at the 1887 Colonial Conference, though by that point they had been so designated for decades. Later histor ...

). He almost completely cleared North American waters of French men-of-war and privateers. He returned to England in 1796 and died the following year.

Family

In 1784 he married Wilhelmina King, daughter of Thomas King, 5th Baron King; they had no children.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Murray, George 1741 births 1797 deaths Members of the Parliament of Great Britain for Scottish constituencies British MPs 1790–1796 Royal Navy vice admirals George People from Perthshire Royal Navy personnel of the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War