Admiral Charles Ramsay Drinkwater Bethune CB (27 December 1802 – 14 February 1884)[citation needed] was a British officer of the Royal Navy.

[1] Born at Little Ealing, Middlesex, the son of Colonel John Drinkwater and Eleanor Congalton, he assumed the name of Bethune in 1837, when his mother inherited the estates of her brother, George Congalton-Bethune.

Bethune served with the Royal Navy from the age of 13 and commanded HMS Conway [2] in Australasia and the Far East from 1836 to 1842.

In 1846 he joined the Council of the newly formed Hakluyt Society, for which he subsequently edited two volumes.

[4]) In 1851, on the death in India of his elder brother John Elliot Drinkwater Bethune, he became 24th Laird of Balfour.