Hugh Pigot (Royal Navy officer, born 1722)

Admiral of the White Hugh Pigot (28 May 1722 – 15 December 1792), of Wychwood Forest in Oxfordshire, was a Royal Navy officer.

On 5 November 1741 he passed his examination, and on 9 February 1741/42 (OS) was promoted to lieutenant, and on 2 August was appointed to the Romney under Captain Thomas Grenville, in the Mediterranean.

[3] He was employed in Royal William for the remainder of the war in the Channel; and in May 1760, chased the Diadem, a French third rate of seventy-four guns, bound for Martinique with stores and specie for the payment of the soldiery, into the Groyne.

[5] By this time he was a consistent opponent of Lord North's government (he was a gaming crony of the Whig leader Charles James Fox), and seems to have been denied commands for political reasons.

When Sheridan attacked the government in the Commons in February 1782 for driving the most distinguished naval commanders out of the service, it was Pigot who rose in answer to the invitation to give instances of the First Lord of the Admiralty's conduct towards officers who were his political opponents.

[11] Pigot hoisted his flag on board the 50-gun Jupiter, and sailed from Plymouth[4] on 18 May,[3] only a day before the arrival of the frigate bringing the news of the defeat of the French fleet under Comte de Grasse at the Battle of the Saintes on 12 April.

His second-in-command, Samuel Hood, seems to have regarded him with mixed feelings of pity and contempt, and considered that the government had acted unwisely "in placing an officer at the head of so great a fleet who was unequal to the very important command, for want of practice".