John Wainwright (Royal Navy officer)

John Wainwright C.B. was an officer in the Royal Navy.

In 1806, he became captain of the frigate HMS Chiffonne and, in 1809, was the commodore of a squadron sent to suppress pirates in the Persian Gulf.

After having led that joint-services expedition to ‘burn the Pirates out of the Gulf’, he was awarded a scimitar by a grateful emir and a gift ‘for plate’ by the Honourable East India Company. In recompense for the period without the opportunity to capture prizes, he was invited to escort on Chiffonne the 1810 Trade fleet from India to China, involving a lucrative ‘freight’ fee.

In 1814, he captained Admiral Cochrane's flagship, HMS Tonnant (1798), and saw action against the Chesapeake Bay Flotilla of Joshua Barney in the War of 1812., and subsequently landed some of the Marines who later helped burn Washington.

In 1819, he became lieutenant governor of the Royal Naval College in Portsmouth but died within ten days.

John Wainwright's father, also John, had been an RN Master's Mate at the siege of Quebec, his elder son, also John, was navigating lieutenant on HMS Blossom on the 1825–1828 Beechey expedition through the Bering Strait, and his younger son James Francis Ballard Wainwright C.B. was commissioning captain on HMS Black Prince (1861).