Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Strachan, John (d.1777)
STRACHAN, Sir JOHN (d. 1777), captain in the navy, was the descendant of a younger branch of the family of Strachan of Thornton in Kincardineshire. His uncle, Thomas Strachan, having served with distinction in the armies of the Emperor Leopold I, was created a baronet by James II in May 1685. Dying without issue, he was succeeded by his younger brother, Patrick Strachan, M.D., physician to Greenwich Hospital. John, the elder son of this Patrick, by his wife, a daughter of Captain Gregory, R.N., entered the navy, and was promoted lieutenant in January 1746–7. In 1755 he was appointed second lieutenant of the St. George, then Lord Hawke's flagship, and in the following year, when the Antelope took out her ‘cargo of courage’ to Gibraltar, Strachan, with the other officers of the St. George, accompanied Hawke. At Gibraltar he was appointed to command the Fortune sloop, and on 9 Sept. 1756 was posted into the Experiment, of 20 guns and 160 men, in which, on 8 July 1757, off Alicante, he captured the French privateer Télémaque, of 20 guns and 460 men [see Locker, William]. After the action the Experiment and her prize anchored near a Spanish fort, the governor of which claimed the French ship as having been in Spanish waters when she struck. Strachan, however, took the Télémaque to Gibraltar, and was shortly afterwards moved to the Sapphire, of 32 guns, in which, in the following year, he was sent to England, and in 1759 was attached to the grand fleet under Sir Edward (afterwards Lord) Hawke [q. v.], and was with Commodore Robert Duff in the light squadron in Quiberon Bay. He continued in the Sapphire till 1762. In November 1770 he was appointed to the Orford, one of the squadron which went to the East Indies with Rear-admiral (afterwards Sir Robert) Harland. In 1765, by the death of his father, he succeeded to the baronetcy. On account of ill-health he returned to England in 1772, and had no further service. He died at Bath on 26 Dec. 1777. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Robert Lovelace of Battersea, but had no male issue, the baronetcy passing to his nephew, Richard John Strachan [q. v.]
[Charnock's Biogr. Nav. vi. 202; Gent. Mag. 1778, p. 45; Rogers's Memorials of the Strachans, pp. 91–3.]