Augustus Keppel , 1st Viscount Keppel Admiral Augustus Keppel , 1st Viscount Keppel PC ( 25 April 1725 – 2 October 1786 ) was an officer of the Royal Navy during the Seven Years ' War and the War of American Independence . During the final years of the latter conflict he served as First Lord of the Admiralty . Early life . A member of a leading Whig aristocratic family ( which had come to England with William of Orange in 1688 ) , Augustus Keppel was the second son of Willem Anne van Keppel , 2nd Earl of Albemarle and Anne van Keppel , a daughter of the 1st Duke of Richmond ( himself an illegitimate son of King Charles II ) . Augustus Keppel went to sea at the age of ten , and had already five years of service to his credit when he was appointed to the " Centurion " and sent with Lord Anson round the world in 1740 . He had a narrow escape from being killed at the capture of Paita ( 13 November 1741 ) , and was named acting lieutenant in 1742 . Also on this voyage , he made friends with John Campbell , and lost many of his teeth to the scurvy prevalent on the voyage . After their return from the circumnavigation , in 1744 , he was promoted to be Commander and Post Captain . He was actively employed throughout the rest of the War of the Austrian Succession , until peace was signed in 1748 . In 1747 he ran his ship the " Maidstone " ( 50 ) ashore near Belleisle while chasing a French vessel , but was honourably acquitted by a court martial , and reappointed to another command . Early in 1749 , he was introduced by Lord Edgecombe to Sir Joshua Reynolds . When , on 11 May 1749 , Commodore Keppel sailed from Plymouth to the Mediterranean , as Commodore commanding the Mediterranean Fleet , ( with his pennant in his old ship HMS " Centurion " intending to persuade the Dey of Algiers to restrain the piratical operations of his subjects ) Reynolds travelled with him as far as Minorca and there painted the first of his 6 portraits of Keppel , " left " , along with others of officers of the British garrison there . After trying the effect of bullying without success , the Dey made a treaty , and Keppel returned to England in 1751 . Seven Years ' War . During the Seven Years ' War he saw constant service . He served as Commander - in - Chief , North American Station from 1751 to 1755 He was on the coast of France in 1756 , was detached on an expedition to conquer Gorée , a French island off the west coast of Africa in 1758 , and his ship the " Torbay " ( 74 ) was the first to get into action in the Battle of Quiberon Bay in 1759 . In 1757 he had formed part of the court martial which had condemned Admiral Byng , but was active among those who endeavoured to secure a pardon for him ; but neither he nor those who had acted with him could produce any serious reason why the sentence should not be carried out . In March 1761 , Keppel transferred to and was put in command of a squadron to reduce Belle Isle , which was successfully completed in June . Havana expedition . When Spain joined France in 1762 he was sent as second in command with Sir George Pocock in the British expedition against Cuba which took Havana . His health suffered from the fever which carried off an immense proportion of the soldiers and sailors . The £25 , 000 of prize money which he received freed him from the unpleasant position of ' younger son of a family ruined by the extravagance of his father ' . Achievement of flag rank . He became Rear Admiral in October 1762 , was one of the Admiralty Board from July 1765 to November 1766 , and was promoted Vice Admiral on 24 October 1770 . When the Falkland Island dispute occurred in 1770 he was to have commanded the fleet to be sent against Spain , but a settlement was reached , and he had no occasion to hoist his flag . American War of Independence . The most important and the most debated period of his life belongs to the opening years of the American War of Independence . Keppel was by family connection and personal preference a strong supporter of the Whig connection , led by the Marquess of Rockingham and the Duke of Richmond . He shared in all the passions of his party , then excluded from power by the resolute will of George III . As a member of Parliament , in which he had a seat for Windsor from 1761 until 1780 , and then for Surrey he was a steady partisan , and was in constant hostility with the King ' s Friends . In common with them he was prepared to believe that the king ' s ministers , and in particular Lord Sandwich , then First Lord of the Admiralty , were capable of any villainy . When therefore he was appointed to command the Channel Fleet , the main fleet prepared against France in 1778 , he went to sea predisposed to think that the First Lord would be glad for him to be defeated . It was a further misfortune that when Keppel hoisted his flag one of his subordinate admirals should have been Sir Hugh Palliser ( 1723 – 1796 ) , who was a member of the Admiralty Board , a member of parliament , and in Keppel ' s opinion , which was generally shared , jointly responsible with his colleagues for the bad state of the Royal Navy . When , therefore , the battle which Keppel fought with the French on 27 July 1778 ( the First Battle of Ushant ) ended in a highly unsatisfactory manner , owing mainly to his own unintelligent management , but partly through the failure of Sir Hugh Palliser to obey orders , he became convinced that he had been deliberately betrayed . Though he praised Sir Hugh in his public despatch he attacked him in private , and the Whig press , with the unquestionable aid of Keppel ' s friends , began a campaign of calumny to which the ministerial papers answered in the same style , each side accusing the other of deliberate treason : The result was a scandalous series of scenes in parliament and of courts martial . Keppel was first tried and acquitted 1779 , and then Palliser was also tried and acquitted . Keppel was ordered to strike his flag in March 1779 . A column was built in the late 18th century to commemorate his acquittal , commissioned in 1778 by Charles Watson - Wentworth , 2nd Marquess of Rockingham and designed by John Carr . Political career . Until the fall of Lord North ' s ministry he acted as an opposition member of parliament . He was MP for UK Parliament constituency from 1755 to 1761 , then for UK Parliament constituency from 1761 to 1780 and finally for UK Parliament constituency from 1780 to 1782 . When North ' s government fell in 1782 he became First Lord , was raised to the peerage as Viscount Keppel , of Elveden in the County of Suffolk , and sworn of the Privy Council . His career in office was not distinguished , and he broke with his old political associates by resigning as a protest against the Peace of Paris . He finally discredited himself by joining the Coalition ministry formed by North and Fox , and with its fall disappeared from public life . Last years and legacy . Lord Keppel died unmarried on 2 October 1786 . Burke , who regarded him with great affection , said that he had something high in his nature , and that it was a wild stock of pride on which the tenderest of all hearts had grafted the milder virtues . The peerage died with him . In popular culture . Keppel appears in Patrick O ' Brian ' s " The Golden Ocean " as a midshipman aboard the " Centurion " . He is often the comic relief , winding up bald and toothless due to the various privations of the voyage . See also . Named after Keppel :