Admiral Sir Henry Prescott GCB (4 May 1783 – 18 November 1874) was an officer of the Royal Navy who served during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and was later the Governor of the Newfoundland Colony.

[1] Prescott entered the Navy on 16 February 1796 as first-class volunteer on board the 98-gun ship of the line Formidable, serving under Captains the Honourable George Cranfield Berkeley and John Irwin, stationed in the Channel.

[1] In 1799, he sailed to the Mediterranean aboard the frigate Penelope, Captain the Honourable Henry Blackwood, where on 31 March 1800 he took part in the capture of the Guillaume Tell of 84 guns and 1,000 men.

He afterwards took part in the Egyptian Campaign of 1801; and on 17 February 1802, while serving under Lord Keith in the 80-gun ship Foudroyant, was appointed acting-lieutenant of the brig Vincejo, Captain James Prevost, and his commission was confirmed on 28 April 1802.

On 14 December 1804, he moved to the frigate Aeolus, Captain Lord William FitzRoy, seeing action in the Battle of Cape Ortegal on 4 November 1805, when a squadron under Sir Richard Strachan fought four ships escaped from Trafalgar.

On 1 April off Sardinia, he fell in with a French fleet of ten ships of the line, three frigates, a brig, and a store-ship, and after making a reconnaissance on the next day, sailed to report their position to Collingwood, who was cruising with a more powerful force near Sicily.

Two days later Prescott returned to Amantea with a detachment of marines from Cumberland, destroyed several vessels, and captured a gun under a heavy fire of musketry, and having only three men wounded.

The following month he twice engaged convoys, and captured six vessels, although he was obliged to abandon two — an armed xebec and a gunboat — as a sudden shift of wind direction, and the Weazle's mainyard being shot away, it became impossible for her to tow them out from under a shore battery.

[1] He returned to sea duty on 6 April 1821 in command of the 46-gun frigate Aurora as senior officer on the coast of Brazil and also spent 18 months in the Pacific protecting British interests during the Spanish American wars of independence.

[1] On 24 September 1834, Prescott was appointed Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Newfoundland and its dependencies,[3] He arrived in St John's in November, into a turbulent situation riven by political and religious acrimony.