ship, in which he continued for the next two years, when he was appointed, 22 Oct. 1867, to the Constance frigate, on the North American station. Towards the close of the following year the Constance was paid off, and Burgoyne was appointed to superintend the building and fitting out of the Captain, an experiment of a full-rigged ship, with turrets and a low freeboard, which the admiralty had decided to try on a very large scale [see Coles, Cowper Phipps]. The Captain was put in commission on 30 April 1870, and in a first cruise in the Channel, and as far as Vigo, during the month of July, appeared to those on board to be a remarkably easy and comfortable sea-boat, and was currently epoken of as being the steadiest platform for guns that had ever been afloat. It was not then understood that this unusual steadiness was really a sign of the most serious danger; and Burgoyne reported officially that the ship had 'proved herself a most efficient vessel both under sail and steam, as well as easy and comfortable.' In August she accompanied the Channel fleet as far as Gibraltar. On 6 Sept. the fleet, on its return voyage, was broad off Cape Finisterre; Sir Alexander Milne, the commander-in-chief, visited the ship, and was much struck by her extreme lowness in the water, so that with a pleasant royal breeze ' the water was washing over the lee side of the deck fore and aft, and striking the after turretto a depth of about 18 inches to 3 feet.' He said to Captain Coles, who, as the designer of the ship, had come in her in a private capacity, 'I cannot reconcile myself to this state of things so very unusual in all my experience.' Still there was no thought of danger, and Sir Alexander went back to his ship puzzled rather than alarmed at the novel appearances on board the Captain. During the evening the weather changed for the worse; it came on thick with a drizzling rain, and the wind got up. The ships were screened from each other's sight, but there had been plenty of warning, and the gale was of no alarming strength. It was about twenty minutes after midnight on the morning of the 7th that a fresh squall struck the ships. Under any other circumstances it would have passed with a bare notice, but it proved fatal to the Captain. As the squall struck her she heeled over, had no power of recovery, turned completely over bottom upwards, and sank. The greater number of her officers and men were below, and went down with her; but of those who were on deck only eighteen managed to scramble into the launch, which had been thrown out when the ship was on her beam ends, and were saved. Burgoyne, with some few men, had got on to the bottom of the pinnace; and as the launch drifted near, the men jumped and were picked up. Whether from exhaustion, or from a determination not to survive the loss of the ship, Burgoyne refused to jump, and he was never seen again.
Two brass mural tablets, commemorating by name the officers and ship's company of the ill-fated Captain, have been placed in St. Paul's Cathedral.
[Wrottesley's Life of Sir John Fox Burgoyne, ii. 445; O'Byrne's Victoria Cross, 45; Minutes of the Proceedings of the Court-martial on the loss of H.M.S. Captain, published by order of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty.]
BURGOYNE, Sir JOHN (1739–1785), general, seventh baronet, of Sutton, Bedfordshire, and cousin of Lieutenant-general the Right Hon. John Burgoyne, was born in 1739, and entered the army at an early age. After serving in the 7th fusiliers and other corps, he obtained the lieutenant-colonelcy of the 58th foot in Ireland in 1764. Some years later he was transferred to that of the 14th light dragoons, then on the Irish establishment. The 'Calendar of Home Office Papers,' 1770-2, pars. 224, 639, shows these appointments to have been dictated by political as well as professional considerations. In 1781 Burgoyne was commissioned to raise a regiment of light dragoons for service in India, the first European cavalry sent out to that country. This corps, originally known as the 23rd light dragoons, was formed out of drafts from other regiments, and had its rendezvous at Bedford. Standards, now in possession of the 19th hussars, were presented to it by George III, and early in 1782 it embarked, with other reinforcements, on board the East India fleet under convoy of Admiral Sir R. Bickerton, and landed at Madras towards the end of the year. Under its changed name of the 19th light dragoons it subsequently won great renown on Indian battle-fields. Burgoyne was promoted to the rank of major-general on the Madras staff in 1783. He married Charlotte, daughter of General Johnstone of Overston, Northamptonshire, and by this lady, who afterwards married, secondly, Lieutenant-general Eyre Power Trench, he left several children. He died at Madras in 1785.
Burgoyne's eldest son, Sir Montague Roger Burgoyne, eighth baronet, was also a cavalry officer, and like his father ultimately became a major-general. He entered the army as cornet in the Scots Greys in 1789, and in 1795 became lieutenant-colonel of theshort-
