Robert Pitcairn (midshipman)
(1752-c. 1770)
BIRTH
1752
PLACE
Burntisland, Fife, Scotland
NAME
Robert Pitcairn
DEATH
c. 1770
PLACE
At sea
FAMILY
FATHER
John Pitcairn
(1722-1775)
BROTHER
Clerke Pitcairn
(1750-1780)
SISTER
Janet Pitcairn
(18th Century-?)
SISTER
Johanna Pitcairn
(d. 1830)
CHILDREN
Elizabeth Dalrymple
(1724-1809)
HOMES
RELIGIOUS VIEWS
RELIGION NOT DOCUMENTED
DENOMINATION NOT DOCUMENTED
MEMBERSHIPS
AWARDS
Robert Pitcairn was a Scottish Royal Navy midshipman and son of Major John Pitcairn and Elizabeth Dalrymple. During Philip Carteret’s Pacific voyage aboard HMS Swallow, he sighted an island in July 1767 that was named Pitcairn in his honour. He later sailed aboard HMS Aurora, which disappeared after leaving the Cape of Good Hope in 1769. His death is presumed with the lost ship. Sources place his birth in May 1752, but differ over the day and year of his loss.
EARLY LIFE
Robert Pitcairn was born at Burntisland, Fife, on May 6, 1752, a son of Major John Pitcairn and Elizabeth Dalrymple. He entered naval service while young and joined HMS Swallow in 1766, when he was fourteen. No reliable account of his earlier schooling was found in the reviewed material.
Pitcairn served as a Royal Navy midshipman. Aboard Captain Philip Carteret’s HMS Swallow, he made the recorded sighting of Pitcairn Island on July 2, 1767, and Carteret named the island for him. Pitcairn later served aboard HMS Aurora and was lost when that ship disappeared on its voyage from the Cape toward India around 1770.
CAREER
DEATH
Robert Pitcairn was a Scottish Royal Navy midshipman and son of Major John Pitcairn and Elizabeth Dalrymple. During Philip Carteret’s Pacific voyage aboard HMS Swallow, he sighted an island in July 1767 that was named Pitcairn in his honour. He later sailed aboard HMS Aurora, which disappeared after leaving the Cape of Good Hope in 1769. Aboard Captain Philip Carteret’s HMS Swallow, he made the recorded sighting of Pitcairn Island on July 2, 1767, and Carteret named the island for him. Pitcairn later served aboard HMS Aurora and was lost when that ship disappeared on its voyage from the Cape toward India around 1770. Pitcairn served as a Royal Navy midshipman. Robert Pitcairn (midshipman)'s death is placed at c. 1770, associated with At sea, but the chronology remains approximate or disputed. The available biographical account does not describe a continuous final medical course. It gives no dependable sequence of treatment and last symptoms from which to reconstruct a more detailed bedside narrative.
POPULAR BIOGRAPHIES
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