Captain James Cornewall (c. 1698 – 11 February 1744) was a British Royal Navy officer and politician who became a national hero following his death in action at the Battle of Toulon in 1744.

John Knox Laughton compares this phase of his life to "the opening chapters of Fenimore Cooper's Water Witch and Red Rover.

[6] In December of that year he was back at sea, this time commanding HMS Greyhound,[1][7] which he sailed to the coast of Morocco establishing friendly relations with the Barbary pirates of Salé and the bashaw of Tétouan.

By the time the House came to consider this petition, Birch was no longer alive to defend his side of the argument, resulting in Cornewall once more being appointed to the seat on 3 March 1737.

He was once rumoured to have personally transported a cargo of African slaves to Barbados, but the British Admiralty was unable to find any evidence to support the allegation.

A plan that would have seen him lead a small flotilla to the China Seas fell through, and instead he was given command of HMS Bedford in 1741 and sent to the Mediterranean the following year with Admiral Thomas Mathews.

[4] Amongst the killed was Cornewall, with both his legs carried away by a chain-shot early in the action, living only long enough "to express the agony he was in, by shaking his head at the surgeon.

News of Cornewall's death was greeted by a public show of grief comparable with that following the loss of Nelson sixty years later,[1] though the man had led a solid but unspectacular naval career.