Vice-Admiral John Lyons (1 September 1787 – December 1872) was an eminent British Admiral and Foreign Ambassador of the Royal Navy.

[1] He was the eldest son and third of fifteen children of Captain John Lyons of Antigua JP, DL (20 October 1760 – 6 February 1816), who was a British owner of extensive sugar plantations, of 563 acres (228 ha) in total, in Antigua,[2][1] and whose English residence was St. Austens, Lymington, Hampshire.

[1] In 1803, Lyons joined the 74-gun HMS Magnificent, which struck rocks off Brest on 25 March 1804 whilst blockading the French.

[1] Lyons subsequently joined the 110-gun HMS Ville de Paris in January 1814, and was promoted to commander on 27 June 1815, as which he served at the Cape of Good Hope between 1828 and 1830 onboard HMS Jaseur, a Cruizer-class 18-gun brig-sloop involved with anti-slave operations between Mauritius and Madagascar.

[1] Between 1839 and 1840 Lyons was employed as an ambassador to the Ottoman states by the Egyptian Government between Cairo and Alexandria and Syria.

[1] His first wife died in August 1864, and he married in 1865, at Hove, Sussex, Anna Maria Ferguson, a widow of Colonel John L. Mowatt of the Bengal Horse Artillery, with whom he was living at Worthing in 1871.