Vice Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood, 1st Baron Collingwood, Royal Navy Claimed

Vice Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood, 1st Baron Collingwood, Royal Navy, was born on the 26 September 1748 in Newcastle.  At the age of twelve, he went to sea as a volunteer on board the frigate HMS Shannon under the command of his cousin Captain Richard Brathwaite (or Braithwaite), who took charge of his nautical education. He spent a total of only three years on dry land after joining the navy as a teenager. After several years of service under Captain Brathwaite and a short period attached to HMS Lenox, a guardship at Portsmouth commanded by Captain Robert Roddam, Collingwood sailed to Boston in 1774 with Admiral Samuel Graves on board HMS Preston, where he fought in the British naval brigade at the battle of Bunker Hill (June 1775), and was afterwards commissioned as a Lieutenant (17 June 1775). In 1777, Collingwood first met Horatio Nelson when both served on the frigate HMS Lowestoffe. The Battle of Trafalgar immediately followed. Villeneuve, the French admiral, drew up his fleet in the form of a crescent. The British fleet bore down in two separate lines, the one led by Nelson in the Victory, and the other by Collingwood in the Royal Sovereign. The Royal Sovereign was the