Captain Sir Murray Maxwell, CB, FRS (10 September 1775 – 26 June 1831)[1] was a British Royal Navy officer who served with distinction in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, particularly during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

Maxwell first gained recognition as one of the British captains involved in the successful Adriatic campaign of 1807–1814, during which he was responsible for the destruction of a French armaments convoy at the action of 29 November 1811.

As a result of further success in the Mediterranean, Maxwell was given increasingly important commissions and, despite the loss of his ship HMS Daedalus off Ceylon in 1813, was appointed to escort the British Ambassador to China in 1816.

The voyage to China subsequently became famous when Maxwell's ship HMS Alceste was wrecked in the Gaspar Strait, and he and his crew became stranded on a nearby island.

[4] Later that year, he was engaged in the invasion of Corsica and the siege of Bastia, during which he made such a favourable impression that when Hood transferred to HMS Aigle in 1794, he requested that Maxwell accompany him.

[4] In 1803, Maxwell was involved in the capture of St Lucia, for which he was made captain of the ship of the line HMS Centaur—the flagship of his former commander Sir Samuel Hood.

Seven months later, a convoy of French frigates carrying cannon from Corfu to Trieste was spotted attempting to slip past his base of operations on the island of Lissa.

[20] In the battle that followed, Unite pursued and, after a lengthy chase, seized the smaller Persanne, while Maxwell and James Alexander Gordon in Active engaged the frigates.

Maxwell, despite attributing most of the credit for the victory to the wounded Gordon, was rewarded in 1812 with command of HMS Daedalus, a former Italian frigate captured at the Battle of Lissa.

Although she was soon brought off, the leaks created in the grounding became so severe that Maxwell had no option but to order his crew to cease their desperate attempts to keep her afloat and abandon ship.

In 1815 he was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath for his naval service,[25] and although the war against France had ended, was retained for active duty at the special request of Lord Amherst.

Alceste was accompanied by the small sloop HMS Lyra, under Captain Basil Hall, and the East Indiaman General Hewitt, which carried gifts for the Emperor.

The small convoy called at Madeira, Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, Anjere and Batavia, and arrived at Peiho after nearly six months at sea in July.

[27] During the journey, Maxwell saw the Great Wall of China and discovered serious inaccuracies in the charts of Western Korea, finding it lay 130 miles east of its supposed position.

At the mouth of the Pearl, Alceste was refused permission to enter the river and perfunctorily ordered to halt by a local mandarin, who threatened to sink the frigate if it tried to force passage.

[30] Collecting Amherst and his party from Whampoa, Maxwell sailed back down the Pearl River and, in January 1817, began the return journey to Britain, visiting Macao and Manila.

[33] A third party was ordered to clear a path to the island's central hill, where a cool cave could be used as a larder and trees felled to form a protective stockade.

The party escaped on the raft, only reaching the island ahead of the pursuing proas with the assistance of boats sent to meet them carrying armed Royal Marines.

[34] With the wreck vacated, the Dayaks began enthusiastically looting it and several proas approached the island, landing their crews on offshore rocks to both observe the British and store their salvage.

[38] By 2 March there were nearly 30 proas off the island, 20 of which were detached to open an ineffective long-range fire on the British positions ashore, accompanied by frenzied drumming and the bashing of gongs.

Although further attempts were made to communicate with the proas, and messages successfully passed to them in the hope someone in authority would transmit them to nearby settlements, the British crew expected an attack at any moment.

In the morning however the 20 canoes were still offshore and, with the anticipated rescue overdue and supplies running low, a desperate plan was made to use the ship's boats to board and capture enough Dayak vessels to enable the entire crew to reach Batavia.

In the Indian Ocean Caesar caught fire and was almost destroyed,[46] and after stopping at Cape Town, the Indiaman visited St Helena, where Amherst, Maxwell and the other officers were introduced to the former French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, then a prisoner on the island.

The campaign ruined him financially, and after a "severe personal injury" in Covent Garden when he was struck in the back by a paving stone thrown from a mob opposed to his candidacy, he was left with disgust for the political process.

[2][30] Maxwell's lungs were badly damaged; he never fully recovered from the injury, and never again became involved in politics, instead returning to the Navy in 1821 as captain of HMS Bulwark, the flagship of Admiral Sir Benjamin Hallowell at Chatham.

He also failed to gain any of the financial rewards that overseas postings could bring, and was unable to restore his shattered finances, returning a poorer man than when he had left.

[52] Still feeling the chest injury sustained during the 1818 election, Maxwell returned to Britain in 1826 and entered retirement; during this period he also reportedly had a bout of depression, especially following the sudden death of his youngest daughter in 1827.

[53] As Maxwell sailed from his home in Scotland to London to make preparations for his departure, he was suddenly taken ill. Medical assistance was unavailable for 48 hours during the passage, and the weather too rough for him to go ashore in an open boat in his condition.

[54] As a result, Maxwell died shortly after arriving at Green's Hotel in Lincoln's Inn Fields, London;[51] Colonel Aretas William Young took his place as governor.