Robert Pitcairn (Royal Navy officer)

His father, John Pitcairn (1722–75), was a major in the Royal Marines who commanded the British advance party at the Battle of Lexington where the "shot heard round the world" was fired, and who died from wounds after the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775.

[1] The ship, a 14-gun sixth-rate sloop, sailed under Philip Carteret on a voyage of exploration in the South Pacific, accompanying HMS Dolphin commanded by Samuel Wallis.

[1] He left the Swallow in May 1769, and joined the East India Company ship HMS Aurora, a 32-gun fifth-rate frigate, commanded by Captain Thomas Lee.

[1] He sailed from England on Aurora in September, and called at the Cape of Good Hope in December 1769.

[2] It may have been sunk in a tropical storm, or wrecked on the Star Bank off the south coast of Madagascar in early 1770.