Vice-Admiral James Wilkes Maurice (10 February 1775 – 4 September 1857) was an officer of the Royal Navy during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

His career took a major step forward when Maurice, his lieutenant's commission by now confirmed, went out to the West Indies with Commodore Sir Samuel Hood.

For seventeen months Maurice and his men raided and interdicted shipping off Martinique, and proved a continual thorn in the side of the French.

The arrival of a large fleet under Pierre de Villeneuve in May 1804 during the Trafalgar Campaign gave the French enough resources to assault the Rock.

[1] Hicks was replaced by Captain William Albany Otway, and Powerful was ordered to the West Indies, but Maurice left the ship before she sailed, having been subpoenaed to give evidence in a case concerning a warrant officer accused of embezzling stores.

[1] By the time his services were no longer required Maurice found himself unable to rejoin his ship and instead joined the 80-gun HMS Cambridge under Captain Richard Boyer in January 1794.

[1] Cambridge was based at Plymouth with the Channel Fleet, and in May Maurice transferred to another ship on the station, the 32-gun HMS Concorde under Captain Sir Richard Strachan.

[2][3] Maurice remained with Concorde after Captain Anthony Hunt replaced Strachan and served in the Western Approaches based out of Falmouth.

[3] Warren gave Maurice an acting commission as a lieutenant in August aboard the 74-gun HMS Thunderer under Captain Albemarle Bertie.

[2][3] In late summer 1802 he was moved to become first lieutenant of the 74-gun HMS Centaur, captained by Murray Maxwell and the flagship of Commodore Sir Samuel Hood.

[3] Centaur went out to the West Indies and aboard her, Maurice was present at the reduction and capture of the French and Dutch possessions of Saint Lucia, Tobago, Demerara and Essequibo.

[5] After fixing ladders and ropes to scale the sheer sides of the rock, they were able to access the summit and began to establish messes and sleeping areas in a number of small caves.

[6] Marshall's Naval Biography, when describing the process of hauling the guns to the summit, recorded that Lieutenant Maurice having succeeded in scrambling up the side of the rock, and fastened one end of an 8-inch hawser to a pinnacle, the viol-block was converted to a traveller, with a purchase block lashed thereto, and at the other end if the hawser set up as a jack-stay, round the Centaur's main-mast.

In this manner the desired object was effected in the course of a week, during which time lieutenant Maurice and the working party on shore suffered most dreadfully from excessive heat and fatigue, being constantly exposed to the sun, and frequently obliged to lower themselves down over immense precipices to attend the ascent of the guns, and bear them off from the innumerable projections against which they swung whenever the ship took a shear...[3]By early February the guns had been installed and tested.

[7] With work complete by 7 February Hood decided to formalise the administration of the island, and wrote to the Admiralty, announcing that he had commissioned the rock as a sloop, under the name Fort Diamond.

[9] Shortly after their arrival Maurice discovered that the main cistern, holding a month's supply of water, had cracked in some earth tremors, and the leak had been made worse by the vibration from the guns.

[10] Villeneuve despatched a flotilla consisting of the 74-gun Pluton and Berwick, the 36-gun Sirène, a corvette, schooner, eleven gunboats, and between three and four hundred men, under Captain Julien Cosmao, to retake the rock.

[13] Cosmao began an intense bombardment while the infantry forced their way onto the landing stage, losing three gunboats and two rowing boats full of soldiers as they did so.

Maurice was made Governor of Anholt in August 1810, a Danish island in the Kattegat captured in May the previous year during the Gunboat War.

The Naval Chronicle recorded It is proper to mention, that the assaulting force consisted of a Danish flotilla, of 33 sail, amongst which, according to our Gazette account, were 18 heavy gun-boats, carrying nearly 3,000 men.