Captain John Richards Lapenotière (1770 – 19 January 1834) was a British Royal Navy officer who, as a lieutenant commanding the tiny topsail schooner HMS Pickle, observed the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October 1805, participated in the rescue operations which followed it and then carried the dispatches of the victory and the death of Admiral Nelson to Britain.

Born in 1770 in Ilfracombe, Devon to a Huguenot exile family that came to Britain in 1688 with William of Orange, he came from a military family: his great grandfather, Frederick La Penotiere, served in the Royal Irish Regiment in the campaigns of the Duke of Marlborough in the War of the Spanish Succession and received a bounty for his service at the Battle of Blenheim, in 1704.

At fifteen he enlisted with Nathaniel Portlock on a commercial expedition to what is now Alaska and the Canadian Pacific coast, where he learned the principles of seamanship in difficult climates and the handling of small ships, which was very advantageous to him, given that he spent most of his career in such craft.

After a period of service as a midshipman in the Royal Navy, Lapenotière again took a leave of absence, to accompany Portlock and William Bligh on a breadfruit expedition to the South Pacific, to replace those plants lost following the Mutiny on the Bounty.

Pickle was too small to serve an active role in the Battle of Trafalgar, which culminated the campaign on 21 October 1805 but her assistance was invaluable during the difficult and dangerous task which arose during the ensuing storm.

He then took an exhausting series of mail coaches and horses overland to London, where he arrived on 6 November, after a journey of about 271 miles and involving 21 changes of horses taking 37 hours and costing £46 [each stage being between 10 and 15 miles at a speed of just over 7 mph], to give his dispatches to William Marsden, First Secretary to the Board of Admiralty, with the simple words, "Sir, we have gained a great victory.