George Saunders (Royal Navy officer)

Sir George Saunders (c. 1671–1734) of St Olave's, Hart Street, London, was a Royal Navy officer, British official, and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1728 to 1734.

[1] Saunders was in the merchant service before joining the Royal Navy as a volunteer in 1689 on board the Portsmouth, with Captain George St Lo, and became for a short time a prisoner of war when the ship was captured in 1690.

In 1700 he was in the Suffolk and in 1701, in the Coventry, again with Hardy, and in 1702 he was first lieutenant of the St George, the flagship of Sir Stafford Fairborne.

[2] Saunders was promoted to the command of the Terror bomb, which he brought home in November after a stormy and dangerous passage.

From January 1705, he was in the Shoreham, and continued until 1710, cruising in the Irish Sea, chasing and sometimes capturing the enemy's privateers.

He also convoyed the local trade between Whitehaven, Hoylake, Milford, and Bristol on the one side, and on the other from Belfast to Kinsale.

[2] In September 1715 Saunders was sent by Admiral Sir George Byng to Havre and Paris to investigate ships suspected of carrying arms for the Pretender.