William Mulcaster Capt Sir William Howe Mulcaster CB , KCH , KTS , RN , ( 1783 – 12 March 1837 ) was an officer in the British Royal Navy who played a distinguished part in the Anglo - American War of 1812 , in particular in the Engagements on Lake Ontario . He was the son of Major General Frederick George Mulcaster ( 1739 - 1797 ) of the Royal Engineers and Mary Juliana Auchmuty ( 1750 - 1830 ) , his father ' s second wife . His mother was a daughter of the Rev . Samuel Auchmuty DD ( 1725 - 1777 ) , the Rector of Trinity Church , New York . It seems likely that he was named after General Sir William Howe , whom his father came to know as his ADC , when serving in America ; they returned to England together in 1778 . He was baptised in St Helier , Jersey , Channel Islands on 30 October 1783 , and was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Royal Navy in January 1800 . In 1809 , he was serving as a Lieutenant in HMS " Confiance " . One of his fellow officers was his future commander , James Lucas Yeo . " Confiance " played a significant part in the capture of Cayenne , for which Mulcaster received a commemorative sword from the Prince Regent of Portugal and was promoted to Commander . He was appointed to command the brig - rigged sloop of war " Emulous " serving at Halifax , Nova Scotia . Shortly after war with America broke out in 1812 , " Emulous " was wrecked on Cape Sable Island , and Mulcaster was recruited for service on the Great Lakes by Yeo ( whose frigate , HMS " Southampton " had also been wrecked shortly before in the Caribbean ) . Mulcaster was initially offered command of the flotilla on Lake Erie but he declined on grounds of the scarcity of resources there . Instead , he acted as second in command to Yeo . In that role , he commanded the sloop " Royal George " in 1813 in several actions on Lake Ontario against the American squadron led by Isaac Chauncey . Both combatants on Lake Ontario were building progressively larger ships of war . Yeo laid down a frigate , to be named " Prince Regent " , and requested the Admiralty to promote Mulcaster to the rank of Post - Captain to command her . This was agreed . Before the ship was launched , in late 1813 , Mulcaster commanded several vessels from the Lake Ontario flotilla which were escorting supply convoys up the Saint Lawrence River . He encountered the vessels of American General James Wilkinson ' s expedition against Montreal at French Creek and harassed the American encampments . When Wilkinson set off down the Saint Lawrence , Mulcaster hastened to Kingston with the news and then sailed in pursuit with armed schooners and gunboats , with a detachment of soldiers commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Wanton Morrison embarked . On 11 November Mulcaster ' s gunboats helped goad Wilkinson into a hasty attack against Morrison which led to the American defeat at the Battle of Crysler ' s Farm . On 2 May 1814 , the British fleet and army on Lake Ontario mounted the Raid on Fort Oswego to intercept supplies and armaments for the American fleet . Mulcaster took part in the landing , leading 200 sailors armed with boarding pikes but he was severely wounded by a grapeshot and eventually lost a leg . This ended his active career , for which he received a pension of £300 and was nominated a Companion of the Order of the Bath . In October 1814 he married Sophia Sawyer Van Cortlandt ( 1789 - 1841 ) , the youngest daughter of Colonel Philip Van Cortlandt ( 1739 - 1814 ) and Catherine Ogden ( 1746 - 1828 ) , at Duloe in Cornwall . Colonel Van Cortlandt was an American of Dutch descent ; he had refused to take the colonists ' side in the American War of Independence and having lost his substantial property in America , he left with the evacuation of New York City and sailed to England with his wife and family in 1783 . He and his wife Sophia had at least seven children , but only four survived into adulthood . His two surviving sons , William Edward Mulcaster ( 1820 - 1887 ) and William Sydney Smith Mulcaster ( 1825 - 1910 ) both became generals . In 1831 he received a knighthood and became Naval aide de camp to King William IV . He died at Guilford Lawn in Dover on 12 March 1837 . He was buried at St Mary ' s Church , Bishopsbourne , Kent , and there is a memorial tablet to him in the church .