William Johnstone Hope

Vice-Admiral Sir William Johnstone Hope, GCB (16 August 1766 – 2 May 1831) was a prominent and controversial British Royal Navy officer and politician in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Britain, whose career experienced fleet actions, disputes with royalty, party politics and entry to both Russian and British orders of chivalry. A popular officer, Hope served with Nelson, Duncan and Lord Keith through several campaigns, making connections which enabled him to secure a lengthy political career after his retirement from the Royal Navy in 1804 due to ill-health. After 26 years in Parliament, Hope was largely inactive and instead served as a Lord of the Admiralty and commissioner of Greenwich Naval Hospital. Hope died in 1832 after 55 years of naval and political service and was buried in the family plot in Scotland.

Early life William Johnstone Hope was born the third son of John Hope and his wife Mary Breton. The Hopes were descendants of the first Earl of Hopetoun and maintained strong political links with the family; his brothers were also prominent figures, Charles Hope later became Lord Granton and Sir John Hope served as a brigadier under Wellington in the Peninsular War.

Hope was educated at Edinburgh High School between 1774 and 1776 and the following year, aged 12, he entered the Royal Navy as a midshipman in HMS Weazel, a sloop commanded by his uncle Captain Charles Hope. In 1782 he was promoted to lieutenant and left his uncle, taking a position on the frigate HMS Daedalus in Newfoundland. At the conclusion of the war, Hope returned home on Daedalus and remained on her until 1785 when his uncle returned him to his own ship, now the guardship HMS Sampson at Plymouth.

Hope was still in command of the Bellerophon three months later when he was heavily engaged in the van of Howe's fleet at the Glorious First of June, when an equally sized French fleet was defeated 200 miles out in the Atlantic Ocean. Hope changed positions several times in this role, but he held onto the position for twenty years as a political favourite, a status maintained by being almost totally politically inactive. and was invested later in the year.

From 1813, Hope served as commander-in-chief at Leith until 1818 and in 1819 he was again promoted, this time to vice-admiral. In March 1820 he was recalled to the Admiralty as First Naval Lord in the Liverpool ministry. He remained there for seven years without participating in any of the important decisions and innovations of the period. In 1827, in the chaotic aftermath of the collapse of Lord Liverpool's government, Hope was retired in favour of Sir George Cockburn and given the favourable role of treasurer and later commissioner of the Royal Naval Hospital in Greenwich. Despite his conflicts with Prince William 45 years earlier, when King William IV ascended the throne in 1830, he made Hope a privy councillor, before Hope entered retirement later in the year. Hope died in May 1831, a few months after giving up his seat in Parliament. Although he died in Bath, his remains were returned to the family crypt at Johnstone Church, Johnstone, Dumfriesshire.