A Naval Biographical Dictionary/Wheatley, John
WHEATLEY. (Commander, 1832.)
John Wheatley was born 15 Nov. 1801.
This officer entered the Navy, 5 Aug. 1813, as Fst.-cl. Vol., on board the Duncan 74, Capt. Robt. Lambert. He served subsequently, as Midshipman and Master’s Mate, in the Royal Sovereign 100, Eurotas 38, Capts. Robt. Bloye and Jas. Lillicrap, Tigris 36, Capt. Robt. Henderson, and Liverpool 50, Capt. Fras. Augustus Collier. In the ship last mentioned he accompanied, towards the close of 1819, an expedition sent to the Persian Gulf for the purpose of crushing a race of notorious pirates, whose head-quarters lay at Ras-al-Khyma, which place was in a short time destroyed and all the vessels lying in its vicinity burnt or sunk. After acting as Lieutenant in the Leander 50, flag-ship of Hon. Sir Henry Blackwood, Satellite 18, Capt. Mark John Currie, and Ganges 84, Capt. F. A. Collier, he was promoted, officially, 9 Jan. 1823. His succeeding appointments were – 8 Aug. 1823, 10 Aug. 1826, and 2 Aug. 1827, to the Alacrity 10, Capt. Chas. Philip Yorke, Camelion 10, Capts. Peter Richards and Chas. Cotton, and Zebra 18, Capts. C. Cotton, Brunswick Popham, and Edmund Wm. Gilbert, all in the Mediterranean – 2 Jan. 1830, as First-Lieutenant (a post he had filled on board the Zebra), to the North Star 28, Capt. Lord Wm. Paget, in the West Indies – and to the command, next, of the Manly 12. In the Alacrity, Camelion, and Zebra he assisted at the capture of several piratical vessels in the Archipelago. In April, 1826 (he belonged at the time to the Alacrity), he was severely burnt in the right hand by an explosion of gunpowder on board a pirate in the Dora Passage; and in Jan. 1828 he was present in the Zebra in an attack made by a squadron under the orders of Sir Thos. Staines upon a fort and vessels in the possession of the freebooters at Carabusa. He was in the same sloop at the turning back of the Turco-Egyptian fleet from Patras. He was advanced to the rank of Commander 5 Dec. 1332; and was employed as such in the Coast Guard from 4 July, 1839, until July, 1844. While on duty on the night of 27 Oct. 1842, his horse took fright, ran away with him, and fell, breaking and dislocating the wrist of the same hand which had been on a former occasion burnt.
Commander Wheatley married, in April, 1838, at Bruges, Caroline Amelia Elizabeth, daughter of Francis Hoper, Esq., of Burlington Street, London.