Walter Stirling

Sir Walter Stirling
Sir Walter Stirling
	"Sir Walter Stirling of Faskine, Commander in Chief at the Nore, 1781. - d. 1786" by James Northcote
Born	18 May 1718
Died	24 November 1786 (aged 68)
Allegiance	Kingdom of Great Britain
Service/branch	Royal Navy
Rank	Captain
Commands held	Nore Command
Battles/wars	Fourth Anglo-Dutch War

Captain Sir Walter Stirling (18 May 1718 – 24 November 1786) was a captain in the Royal Navy.

Naval career

Born in 1718, Walter Stirling entered the Royal Navy. He was made "The Regulating Captain of the Impress at the Tower". On 30 October 1753 he married Dorothy Willing, the daughter of Charles Willing, a Philadelphia merchant. According to family stories, he persuaded the family of Horatio Nelson to let Horatio join the navy, and he lost the opportunity to be appointed Governor of Halifax as he was visiting his wife in Scotland when the offer came in. In 1780 he was captain of the Gibraltar, and was present when Admiral George Rodney captured the island of Sint Eustatius from the Dutch during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War.^[1] Selected to take home dispatches, he was knighted on arrival. In 1783 he appointed Commander-in-Chief, The Nore.^[1] When King George III inspected Stirling's ships, he was so impressed that he offered to make Stirling a baronet. Stirling declined, but his eldest son, also named Walter, later claimed the title, becoming Sir Walter Stirling, 1st Baronet of Faskine. He died in London in November 1786. His second surviving son, Charles, became an admiral. A grandson by his daughter Anne was James Stirling, first Governor of Western Australia, and himself an admiral in later life.^[2]

References

^ ^a ^b "Walter Stirling". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/26536. Retrieved 2 January 2015. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
^ "James Stirling". Dictionary of Australian Biography. Retrieved 2 January 2015.

Sources

Statham-Drew, Pamela (2003). James Stirling: Admiral and Founding Governor of Western Australia. Nedlands, Western Australia: University of Western Australia Press. ISBN 0-85564-170-3.