Robert Faulknor the younger

Robert Faulknor the younger
Printed memorial to Robert Faulknor, by H. D. Gardner, published 1795 (after James Roberts)
Born	1763 Northampton
Died	1795 Off Pointe à Pitre, Guadeloupe
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Service/branch	Navy
Years of service	1777–1795
Rank	Captain
Commands held	Pluto, Zebra, Rose, Blanche
Battles/wars	American War of Independence, West Indies theatre of the War of the First Coalition
Relations	Jonathan Faulknor the elder (brother)

Robert Faulknor the younger (1763–1795) was an 18th-century Royal Navy officer, part of the Faulknor naval dynasty. He was court-martialled (but acquitted) and died in an action off Guadeloupe in the eastern Caribbean Sea.

He was born in Northampton, the eldest of the two sons of Robert Faulknor the elder and Elizabeth (née Ashe). Sometime after that the family moved to Dijon, France, where they stayed until Robert the elder died there on 9 May 1769, when his widow and the children returned to Northampton. Robert and his brother were enrolled in a grammar school, with Robert then entering the Royal Naval Academy, Portsmouth, in 1774, aged eleven.

Robert completed his term at the Academy in March 1777 and joined HMS Isis (50 guns), under the Hon. William Cornwallis, stationed in North America. He then followed Cornwallis to HMS Bristol (50 guns) and then HMS Lion (64 guns), seeing many engagements in 1779/80. From December 1780 to March 1783 Robert served in HMS Princess Royal (98 guns) and HMS Britannia (98 guns), leading Rear-Admiral Sir Joshua Rowley to call him ‘a young man of great merit’. After the American War of Independence, Robert Faulknor was one of a lucky few officers to gain peacetime commissions and was put in command of the sloop HMS Merlin after the Britannia's paying-off in March 1783 and then, from December 1783, to the HMS Daphne (20 guns).

He was appointed to serve in the Impregnable (98 guns) during the Nootka Sound crisis in May 1790 and six months later he was promoted to commander, although it was April 1791 before he got his first command at that rank, (the fireship Pluto). That command ended in September 1791, after which he remained on half pay until the outbreak of the War of the First Coalition against France in 1793.