John Perkins (Royal Navy officer)

John Perkins
Signature of Captain John Perkins from the Logbook of HMS Arab 1800, held at the National Archives, Kew, London
Nickname(s)	Jack Punch
Born	Kingston, Jamaica
Died	27 January 1812 Kingston, Jamaica
Allegiance	Great Britain
Service/branch	Royal Navy
Years of service	1775–1804
Rank	Captain
Commands held	HM Schooner Punch HMS Endeavour HMS Spitfire HMS Marie Antoinette HMS Drake HMS Meleager HMS Arab HMS Tartar
Battles/wars	American Revolution Fourth Anglo-Dutch War French Revolutionary Wars Napoleonic War

Captain John Perkins (died 27 January 1812), nicknamed Jack Punch, was a British Royal Navy officer. Perkins was the first mullato commissioned officer in the Royal Navy. He rose from obscurity to be one of the most successful ship captains of the Georgian navy. He captained a 10-gun schooner during the American War of Independence and in a two-year period captured at least 315 enemy ships.

Later in his career Perkins acted for the navy as a spy and undertook missions to Cuba and Saint-Domingue (modern day Haiti). At the start of the slave revolt in Saint-Domingue he was captured in Cap-Français and sentenced to death for supplying the rebel slave army with weapons.

After his rescue he was promoted commander in 1797 and then post-captain in 1800. Perkins went on to cause an international incident with the Danes when he fired on two of their ships during peacetime. Toward the end of his career he participated in capture of the islands of Saint Eustatia and Saba from the French. Perkins also attacked a 74-gun ship-of-the-line with a 32-gun frigate.

John Perkins was probably born in Kingston, Jamaica in the middle of the 18th century. Very little is known of his birth or early life but several contemporary accounts describe him as mulatto (mixed race), with a white father and a black (probably slave) mother.

In 1775 Perkins first appears in the records of the Royal Navy when he was appointed to the 50-gun HMS Antelope, the flagship of the commander-in-chief of the Jamaica station as an extra pilot. "His knowledge of the different ports, &C. in the West Indies was, perhaps, seldom equalled, and never surpassed."