Sir George Carteret

Sir George Carteret, Bt
Sir George Carteret
Born	c.1610 Jersey
Died	19 January 1680
Allegiance	Kingdom of England
Service/branch	Royal Navy
Rank	Vice Admiral
Commands held	HMS Mary Rose

Vice Admiral Sir George Carteret, 1st Baronet (c.1610—18 January 1680 N.S.), son of Elias de Carteret, was a royalist statesman in Jersey and England, who served in the Clarendon Ministry as Treasurer of the Navy. He was also one of the original Lords Proprietor of the former British colony of Carolina and New Jersey. Carteret, New Jersey, as well as Carteret County, North Carolina, both in the United States, are named after him. He acquired the manor of Haynes, Bedfordshire (alias Hawnes) in about 1667.

Carteret was the son of Elias de Carteret and Elizabeth Dumaresq of Jersey, who both died in 1640 (George dropped the "de" from his surname when he entered the English navy, concerned that it sounded too French). He was "bred for the sea" and served as an officer in various naval ships in the 1630s and commanded the Mary Rose before becoming Comptroller of the Navy in 1641.

As a result of his early life at sea, he received little or no formal education, and his embarrassing ignorance was a source of much ridicule in later life. Andrew Marvell mocked his poor command of English, and Samuel Pepys remarked that his ignorance of even the most basic Latin phrases would cause a schoolboy to be whipped; "such ignorance is not to be borne in a Privy Councillor', wrote Pepys severely.

On the commencement of the Civil War he retired from the navy, and withdrew with his family to Jersey, but subsequently returned to aid the projects of the royalists. He afterwards, on the ruin of the royal cause, afforded an asylum to the Prince of Wales (Charles Stuart) and other refugees of distinction within his government of Jersey where he served as Bailiff (1643–1651), and defended the island against the Parliamentarians, the Island in October and then Elizabeth Castle surrendering in December 1651.