John Knox Laughton

Sir John Knox Laughton (23 April 1830 – 14 September 1915) was a British naval historian and arguably the first to argue for the importance of the subject as an independent field of study. Beginning his working life as a mathematically trained civilian instructor for the Royal Navy, he later became Professor of Modern History at King's College London and a co-founder of the Navy Records Society. A prolific writer of lives, he penned the biographies of more than 900 naval personalities for the Dictionary of National Biography.

Laughton was born in Liverpool on 23 April 1830, the second son and youngest child of a former Master Mariner, James Laughton of Liverpool (1777–1859).

In 1866 Laughton married his first wife, Isabella, daughter of John Carr of Dunfermline. They had one son and three daughters. In 1886 Laughton married his second wife, Maria Josefa, daughter of Eugenio di Alberti, of Cadiz, Spain; they had three sons and two daughters, one of whom was Vera Laughton Mathews.

He died at home at Wimbledon in his eighty-sixth year on 14 September 1915.

Laughton was educated at the Royal Institution School, Liverpool, and then at Caius College, Cambridge, graduating BA (34th wrangler) in 1852. He served with the Royal Navy as a civilian shipboard instructor teaching mathematics, science and navigation, and saw combat in the Baltic and Far East campaigns. In 1866 he finished his sea days by going ashore to teach at the Royal Naval College in Portsmouth. When the College moved to the new Royal Naval College, Greenwich, in 1873, Laughton moved with it to become Head of the Department of Meteorology and Marine Surveying.

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