Admiral the Honourable Sir William Cornwallis GCB (10 February 1744 – 5 July 1819) was a Royal Navy officer who fought in the Napoleonic Wars. He was the brother of Charles Cornwallis, the 1st Marquess Cornwallis, British commander at the siege of Yorktown. Cornwallis took part in a number of decisive battles including the Siege of Louisbourg in 1758 and the Battle of the Saintes but is best known as a friend to Nelson and as the Commander-in-chief of the Channel Fleet during the Napoleonic war. He is depicted in the Horatio Hornblower novel, Hornblower and the Hotspur.
Read more about Sir William Cornwallis: Early Life, Seven Years' War, American Revolutionary War, Third Anglo-Mysore War, French Revolutionary Wars, Honours and Politics, Later Life
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“They turn one’s legs
To cribbage pegs—”
—Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)