Charles Shipley

Major-General Sir Charles Shipley (18 February 1755 – 30 November 1815) was a senior British Army officer of the Royal Engineers who was acting Governor of Grenada from 1813 to 1815.

The court sat at the Horse Guards, found him guilty, and sentenced him to be suspended from rank and pay for twelve months, at the same time stating that they fully recognised that Shipley's departure from regulations did not suggest any corrupt or interested motive.

The prisoners were confined in hulks at Guadeloupe and suffered great hardship, but Shipley's wife was set free and eventually managed to secure her husband's freedom.

In 1797 he accompanied Sir Ralph Abercromby as commanding Royal Engineer on his expedition to Trinidad, which gained possession of the island from the Spanish, and in the unsuccessful attack on Puerto Rico in the following month.

In April 1804 he accompanied an expedition sent under Brigadier-General (afterwards Sir) Charles Green, temporarily commander in chief in the Leeward Islands, against Dutch Guiana.

In that year, under orders from the Board of Ordnance, he made a circuit of the coast of Jamaica, and explored the interior by crossing the island in various directions, almost losing his life in a fast-flowing river.

Brigadier-general Harcourt, in his despatch, expressed his indebtedness to Shipley during the operations, and especially in the action at Ridge Beaurepaire, St. Louis, in front of Bellair.

Shipley received, by the command of the Prince Regent, a medal for Martinique with a clasp for Guadeloupe, accompanied by a letter from the Duke of York, then commander-in-chief.

In July 1815, Shipley declined promotion out of the corps of Royal Engineers, to which he had belonged all his service, and of which he was senior regimental colonel, preferring to wait for his battalion.

Lady Shipley died at Boulogne (where she was assigned a residence by Louis XVIII in consideration of her husband's services in the French West Indies) on 6 August 1820, and was buried in the English burial-ground there; her remains were later removed and reinterred in the cloisters of Canterbury Cathedral.