Charles Orlando Bridgeman

Vice-Admiral the Hon. Charles Orlando Bridgeman (5 February 1791 – 13 April 1860) was a Royal Navy officer who saw active service in the Napoleonic Wars and the Greek War of Independence.

Bridgeman was a younger son of Orlando Bridgeman, 1st Earl of Bradford, by his marriage to Lucy Elizabeth Byng, daughter of George Byng, 4th Viscount Torrington and Lady Lucy Boyle, a daughter of John Boyle, 5th Earl of Cork. Educated at Harrow, on 18 June 1804, at the age of thirteen, he joined the navy as a first class volunteer on the almost-new HMS Repulse.

In 1805 Bridgeman was rated as a Midshipman, and during the Napoleonic Wars he saw active service on blockade duty with Robert Calder, later serving in the Dardanelles Operation of 1807 and in the expedition to the Scheldt. In November 1809 he joined HMS Manilla under Captain George Francis Seymour, and on 10 September 1810 was promoted Lieutenant in HMS Semiramis. On 1 May 1811 he transferred to HMS Revenge as Flag-Lieutenant to Rear Admiral Arthur Kaye Legge and served at the defence of Cadiz. On 8 March 1813 he joined HMS Bellerophon and on 2 April 1814 the king's yacht HMS Royal Sovereign. He commanded HMS Badger from 12 December 1814 until 28 August 1816, on the West India station, taking part in the invasion of Guadeloupe of 1815. His next command was Icarus, a ten-gun brig-sloop, from 24 June 1817 until 2 September 1819, on the South America station. In 1819 he was promoted Captain. His last command, from 7 September 1827 to May 1830, was HMS Rattlesnake, attached to a squadron in the Mediterranean. For most of the years 1827 to 1829 Rattlesnake was cruising off the coasts of Greece during the Greek War of Independence. Her log for the period, kept by Talavera Vernon Anson, survives in a collection at the New York Public Library.