[1] John MacDougall entered the Navy as a midshipman in December 1802, on board the sloop Cruiser, actively employed on the north coast of France through 1803.
'With a judgment and zeal which did him infinite credit' he returned to communicate his intelligence to the senior officer, Captain Murray Maxwell, with the result that two of the French ships were captured.
John MacDougall's elder brother, Alexander, captain in the 5th regiment of foot, was killed in 1812, at the storming of Ciudad Rodrigo in Spain.
In 1819 he was flag-lieutenant to Rear-admiral Donald Campbell in the West Indies, and was officially thanked by the king of Denmark, through the lords of the admiralty, for his conduct in saving the crew of a Danish ship wrecked in a hurricane at Saint Thomas.
In February 1845 he commissioned the Vulture, paddle-wheel frigate, for the East India station, and in April 1847, being then senior officer at Hong Kong, escorted the governor, Sir John Francis Davis, with a strong body of troops up the river to Canton, capturing the Bogue forts on the way, spiking upwards of five hundred guns and destroying the ammunition (Bulletins of State Intelligence, 1847, p. 262).