Vice Admiral Joseph Denman (23 June 1810 – 26 November 1874) was a British naval officer, most noted for his actions against the slave trade as a commander of HMS Wanderer of the West Africa Squadron.

[1] In 1834, Lieutenant Joseph Denman commanded a prize crew aboard the captured slave ship Maria da Gloria.

He first sailed her to the Anglo-Brazilian Mixed Commission Court at Rio de Janeiro, which declined jurisdiction on the grounds that the ship was Portuguese, not Brazilian.

[2] On 26 December 1836 Commander the Honourable Joseph Denman commissioned the brig-sloop HMS Scylla for the Lisbon Station.

[4] On 5 April 1840, the Wanderer's boats seized the American slaver Eliza Davidson, which was subsequently condemned in British and Spanish Mixed Commission Court at Sierra Leone.

[6] In 1848 the court reached a final decision in the case Burón vs. Denman, one of the last cases in English & Welsh law to regard slaves as property or cargo,[7] finding in Denman's favour as he had been operating as an agent of the British state's policy of suppressing the slave trade when he "trespassed to goods" when destroying the barracoon, rather than as an individual.