JOHN COOKE, Esq
[Superannuated Rear-Admiral.]
This officer was born at Kirby, near Norwich, in 1750, and first embarked in the royal navy as a Midshipman, on board the Raisonable of 64 guns, commanded by Captain Maurice Suckling, the worthy uncle, and first professional patron of our lamented hero, the renowned Nelson, who, with several other Norfolk youths, joined that ship about the same period.
The Raisonable was one of the ships commissioned in 1770, on the apprehension of a rupture with Spain, on account of the very extraordinary conduct of that .power relative to the Falkland Islands[1]. On the termination of the dispute, she was paid off, and Captain Suckling was, in May, 1771 > appointed to the command in the river Medway; but Mr. Cooke not relishing so idle and uninteresting a life as that of a Midshipman in a guard-ship, applied for and obtained permission to join the Crescent frigate, then fitting for the Leeward Islands station. In that ship he served, mostly as Master’s-Mate, until Aug. 1774, when she was put out of commission at Woolwich.
We next find him in the Conquestador, 64, guard-ship, at
- ↑ The author of the History of England, in a series of letters from a nobleman to his son, generally, though erroneously attributed to Lord Lyttleton, gives the following concise account of the transaction: “In the course of the summer, the Spaniards sent out some ships, and seized upon Falkland’s Islands, where the English had lately made a settlement, and erected a fort; and this violation of peace had nearly involved us in a war with that nation. A negociation, however, took place, and the Spaniards restored the islands. It was privately stipulated that they should be afterwards evacuated by Great Britain; and since that time no settlement has been made upon them. The pens of the political writers were employed to magnify or diminish the consequence of these islands, according as they were engaged for or against the ministry. Junius, a popular and elegant writer, whose real name has never yet been discovered, was at this time a formidable opponent to administration; and Dr. Samuel Johnson, whose moral and critical writings are above all praise, ranged himself on their side. On the whole, if the affront to the nation be overlooked, it does not appear that the possession of these islands was worth contending for.” The late Admiral Macbride, who visited them about the year 1766, says; “We found a mass of islands and broken lands, of which the soil was nothing but a bog, with no better prospect than that of barren mountains, beaten by storms almost perpetual.”
