Royal Naval Biography/Maxwell, John
JOHN MAXWELL, Esq.
[Post-Captain of 1810.]
Brother to Captain Sir Murray Maxwell, C.B., whose services we already have recorded[1].
This officer was made a Lieutenant about May 1800; and advanced to the rank of Commander, Jan. 22, 1806.
On the 16th July, 1808, Captain John Maxwell, then commanding the Royalist, a brig of the largest class, captured the Danish schooner privateer Aristides, of 6 guns and 41 men. At the time he fell in with this vessel she was engaging an English packet, which must have been taken had not the Royalist come to her assistance. Between May 1, 1809, and Feb. 24, 1810, he reported the capture of five French privateers, viz. – la Princesse of 16 guns and 50 men; le Grand Napoleon, 18 guns, 75 men; l’Heureuse Etoile, 2 guns, 15 men; le Françoise, 14 guns, 60 men; and the Prince Eugene, 14 guns, 55 men. His post commission bears date June 15, 1810.
Captain Maxwell’s next appointment was, April 27, 1812, to the Favorite of 20 guns, in which ship he visited all the British settlements on the coast of Africa, destroyed several slave factories on the Rio Pongus, and captured four Portuguese ships, which he found employed in that cruel traffic. After the peace with France, in 1814, Captain Maxwell was appointed to the Barrosa of 42 guns; and in Feb. 1825, he received a commission for the Aurora 46, on board which frigate he died, when about to proceed from Plymouth to Bermuda and the West Indies, May 31, 1826.