Admiral of the Fleet Sir George Rooke was an English naval officer. As a junior officer he saw action at the Battle of Solebay and again at the Battle of Schooneveld during the Third Anglo-Dutch War. As a captain, he conveyed Prince William of Orange to England and took part in the Battle of Bantry Bay during the Williamite War in Ireland.
Vice-Admiral John Benbow was an English officer in the Royal Navy. He joined the navy aged 25 years, seeing action against Algerian pirates before leaving and joining the merchant navy where he traded until the Glorious Revolution of 1688, whereupon he returned to the Royal Navy and was commissioned.
Admiral Sir John Ashby was an officer of the Royal Navy, who rose to the rank of Admiral. Ashby was the fourth son of Robert Ashby and his wife Alice, who was a sister of Sir Thomas Allin. He grew up in Suffolk where his father was involved in business.
Admiral of the Fleet Matthew Aylmer, 1st Baron Aylmer, of Covent Garden, Westminster, and Westcliffe, near Dover, was an Anglo-Irish Royal Navy officer and Whig politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons between 1695 and 1720.
Admiral Sir William Wynter was an admiral and principal officer of the Council of the Marine under Queen Elizabeth I of England and served the crown during the Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604).
George Legge, 1st Baron Dartmouth PC was an English Royal Navy officer, who was appointed Admiral of the Fleet by James II in September 1688. However, he failed to intercept the invasion force under William III that landed at Torbay on 5 November 1688 and was dismissed following the Glorious Revolution.
Admiral of the Fleet Sir John Leake was a Royal Navy officer and politician. As a junior officer he saw action at the Battle of Texel during the Third Anglo-Dutch War. He then distinguished himself when he led the convoy that broke the barricading boom at Culmore Fort thereby lifting the siege of Derry during the Williamite War in Ireland. As a captain he saw action in some of the heaviest fighting at the Battle of Barfleur and was also involved in a successful attack on the French ships at the Battle of La Hogue during the Nine Years' War.
General Thomas Erle PC of Charborough, Dorset, was a general in the English Army and, thereafter, the British Army. He was also a Whig politician who sat in the House of Commons of England and of Great Britain from 1678 to 1718. He was Governor of Portsmouth and a Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance.
Sir Bernard de Gomme was a Dutch military engineer. By some he is considered the most important figure in 17th-century English military engineering.
Sir George Walton was an officer in the Royal Navy during the late 17th and early 18th centuries, eventually rising to the rank of Admiral.
Sir William Whetstone was an officer of the Royal Navy in the later 17th and early eighteenth century. He eventually rose to the rank of rear admiral, having spent his career serving with several distinguished figures.
Wolfgang William Romer was a Dutch military engineer, born at The Hague.
Edmund Dummer (1651–1713) was an English naval engineer and shipbuilder who, as Surveyor of the Navy, designed and supervised the construction of the Royal Navy dockyard at (Devonport), Plymouth and designed the extension of that at Portsmouth. His survey of the south coast ports is a valuable and well-known historic document. He also served Arundel as Member of Parliament for approximately ten years and founded the first packet service between Falmouth, Cornwall and the West Indies. He died a bankrupt in the Fleet debtors' prison.
Greenvile Collins was an officer of the Royal Navy and prominent hydrographer, who compiled Great Britain's Coasting Pilot, the first survey of the country's coast undertaken by a Briton.
Sir Martin Beckman (1634/35–1702) was a draughtsman/painter, Swedish-English colonel, chief engineer and master gunner of England.
During the early 17th century, England's relative naval power deteriorated, In the course of the rest of the 17th century, The office of the Admiralty and Marine Affairs steered the Navy's transition from a semi-amateur Navy Royal fighting in conjunction with private vessels into a fully professional institution, a Royal Navy. Its financial provisions were gradually regularised, it came to rely on dedicated warships only, and it developed a professional officer corps with a defined career structure, superseding an earlier mix of sailors and socially prominent former soldiers.
John Peter Desmaretz was a British civil and military engineer. His projects included a new entrance to Shoreham-by-Sea's harbour (1753), powder and horse mills in Faversham (1755-1763) and for gun batteries at vulnerable points on the coasts of Kent and Sussex (1759). He also advised on modifications to Edward Gatton's plans for Ramsgate harbour (1749-1772).
Lewis Petit des Etans was a French-born military engineer and brigadier-general in the British Army.
Admiral Salmon Morrice was a Royal Navy officer and Vice-admiral of the White.
Justly Watson was an English army officer and military engineer in the British Army, rising to the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the Royal Engineers. He served beside his father Jonas Watson, an officer in the Royal Artillery, at the Siege of Gibraltar in 1727. He joined the Royal Engineers in 1732, served at Carthagena, and in the futile attempt on Cuba, in 1741, and the attack on Panama in 1742. He was stationed at Jamaica from 1742 to 1744, surveyed Darien and Florida in 1743, and served in the descent on Brittany in 1746. He was appointed chief engineer in the Medway Division in 1748, and reported on the West African stations from 1755 to 1756. He was stationed in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland in 1757, and died there, probably from coffee poisoned by a black female domestic.
