Admiral Benjamin William Page (7 February 1765 – 3 October 1845) was a Royal Navy officer of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who served extensively on the East Indies Station.

Page served as Rainier's temporary flag captain in Suffolk and fought at the invasion of Ceylon in 1795 before being given command of the sloop HMS Hobart.

In Hobart Page used his extensive knowledge of the East Indies to navigate Rainier's fleet to the Moluccas and Amboyna Island, which they captured.

[1][4][5][6] Superb sailed for the East Indies on 7 March 1779, where Hughes took command of the British fleet there to fight in the American Revolutionary War.

[1][7] Page participated on board Superb in the subsequent four battles, Sadras, Providien, Negapatam, and Trincomalee, fought between Hughes and the French admiral Pierre André de Suffren in 1782.

[8][1][9] In Exeter Page fought at the final naval action between the fleets of Hughes and Suffren, the Battle of Cuddalore on 20 June 1783, before the war ended.

[8] Page joined Eurydice in September and returned to England in her in July 1785, where he received his long-awaited confirmation as a lieutenant from Lord Howe, backdated to 20 November 1784.

[14][10] While on station he was moved from Minerva to serve in the ship of the line HMS Crown, which was the flagship of the commander-in-chief Commodore William Cornwallis, in August 1791.

[14][10][11][16] As a commodore Rainier was meant to have a flag captain serving under him in Suffolk but none was present, and so Page was unusually given the pay of a commander and held the role temporarily.

[12][10][17] His first action as captain of Hobart was to coordinate with a detachment of the 52nd Regiment of Foot the capture of the Dutch factory of Molletive on 1 October.

Page was by now on his third tour of the East Indies and was known to be an expert on the seas of the area; as such he was chosen to navigate the fleet through the difficult passages leading to the islands, doing so in January 1796.

[12][10] His command was made permanent with his promotion to post captain on 22 December of the same year, and he stayed in the East Indies with Orpheus until he was ordered home to England, his health having severely declined, in August 1798.

The ship was armed en flute as a troopship throughout his command, with only the guns on her upper deck remaining in situ and a large portion of her crew having been removed.

Genoa surrendered on 4 June but the day before Page and Inflexible had been sent from the blockade on a special service to Leghorn, meaning that as previously at Amboyna he was deprived of any prize money resulting from the success.

In May 1803 he was sent in the frigate, with secret orders announcing the start of the Napoleonic Wars, to the East Indies where his patron the now Vice-Admiral Rainier was still commander-in-chief.

[Note 4][12][10][11][22] The war being very new, Page was able to use his awareness to his advantage, taking a number of French merchant vessels and detaining two ships of the Batavian Republic as droits of admiralty on the voyage.

[10][28] Page commanded Caroline until 26 February 1805 when he was translated into the ship of the line HMS Trident, which was the flagship of Rainier, to serve as flag captain.

[10][11] Page sailed Trident home to be paid off in October when Rainier's term as commander-in-chief ended, and at the same time acted as escort to a convoy of 44 ships.

[Note 5] Puissant also served as the flagship, and Page the flag captain, of Admiral Sir Richard Bickerton who was Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth.

[35] Page married Elizabeth, the daughter of John Herbert of Totnes (who served for some time as Governor of Prince of Wales Island), on 2 August 1796.