Admiral Sir Augustus Leopold Kuper GCB

Order of the Bath

The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the elaborate mediæval ceremony for creating a knight, which involved bathing as one of its elements. The knights so created were known as Knights of the Bath...

 (16 August 1809 – 28 October 1885) was a Royal Navy

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

 officer known for his commands in the far east.

Naval career

Kuper, whose ancestry was German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, joined the Navy in 1823 as a midshipman. On 20 February 1830 he became a Lieutenant. On 17 October 1831 he was appointed a Lieutenant in Savage, commanded by Lord Edward Russell

Lord Edward Russell

Admiral Lord Edward Russell CB MP was a British naval officer and Whig politician.-Early life:He was the son of John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford and his second wife Lady Georgina Gordon-Career:...

, on the Irish station. On 9 April 1832 he followed Russell to Nimrod

HMS Nimrod

Six ships of the Royal Navy have borne the name HMS Nimrod, after the biblical figure of Nimrod: was an 18-gun sloop, previously the French ship Eole. She was captured in 1799 by HMS Solebay and sold in 1811...

, off the coast of Spain. On 27 August 1833, John Macdougall succeeded Russell, still on the Spain-Portugal station. From 30 March 1836 he was a lieutenant in Minden, commanded by Alexander Renton Sharpe, at Lisbon. Then on 10 July 1837 he moved to Alligator, commanded by James John Gordon Bremer, at Australia, who was involved in founding the settlement at Port Essington

Port Essington

Port Essington is an inlet and historic site located on the Cobourg Peninsula in the Garig Gunak Barlu National Park in Australia's Northern Territory...

.

From 27 July 1839 he was a lieutenant and acting captain of Pelorous

HMS Pelorus (1808)

HMS Pelorus was a 385-ton, 18-gun Cruizer-class brig-sloop of the Royal Navy. She was built in Itchenor, England and launched on 25 June 1808. She saw action in the Napoleonic Wars and in the War of 1812. On anti-slavery patrol off West Africa, she captured four slavers and freed some 1350 slaves...

. While he was captain Pelorus wrecked on 25 November by a cyclone at Port Essington. There were no casualties and eventually she was refloated. In December 1840 he was promoted to Commander, retroactive to when he took command of Pelorus.

On 5 March 1840 he became Acting Captain in Alligator, and with her he participated in the First Opium War

First Opium War

The First Anglo-Chinese War , known popularly as the First Opium War or simply the Opium War, was fought between the United Kingdom and the Qing Dynasty of China over their conflicting viewpoints on diplomatic relations, trade, and the administration of justice...

 (1840–1842). On 8 June 1841 he received a promotion to Captain and on 14 June he took command of Calliope and participated in the operations that led to the capitulation of Canton, China

Guangzhou

Guangzhou , known historically as Canton or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of the Guangdong province in the People's Republic of China. Located in southern China on the Pearl River, about north-northwest of Hong Kong, Guangzhou is a key national transportation hub and trading port...

 (now Guangzhou). On 21 January 1842 he was made a Companion of the Bath (CB)

Order of the Bath

The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the elaborate mediæval ceremony for creating a knight, which involved bathing as one of its elements. The knights so created were known as Knights of the Bath...

.

From 3 July 1850 to February 1854 he was Captain in Thetis

HMS Thetis (1846)

HMS Thetis was a 36-gun fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. After nearly a decade of service with the British, she was one of two frigates transferred to Prussia in exchange for two gunboats...

 from her commissioning at Plymouth. He sailed her to the south-east coast of America and then the Pacific. Kuper Island

Kuper Island

Kuper Island belongs to the Penelakut First Nation and is located in the southern Gulf Islands between Vancouver Island and the mainland Pacific coast of British Columbia, Canada. Kuper has a population of about 300 members of the Penelakut Band. The island has an area of 8.66 km²...

 in the Strait of Georgia

Strait of Georgia

The Strait of Georgia or the Georgia Strait is a strait between Vancouver Island and the mainland coast of British Columbia, Canada. It is approximately long and varies in width from...

, off the east coast of Vancouver Island

Vancouver Island

Vancouver Island is a large island in British Columbia, Canada. It is one of several North American locations named after George Vancouver, the British Royal Navy officer who explored the Pacific Northwest coast of North America between 1791 and 1794...

, is named for him after he surveyed the area from 1851-3.

From 13 August 1855 to 24 January 1856 he was a Captain in HMS London

HMS London (1840)

HMS London was a two-decker 90-gun second rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 28 September 1840 at Chatham Dockyard.In 1854, London took part in the bombardment of Fort Constantine at Sevastopol during the Crimean War, where she sustained damage.In 1858 she was converted to screw...

 in the Mediterranean.

In 1861 he was promoted to Rear-Admiral

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

 and in 1862 he succeeded Admiral Sir James Hope as Commander-in-Chief, East Indies and China Station

East Indies and China Station

The East Indies and China Station was a formation of the British Royal Navy from 1831 to 1865.-History:The Station was formed in 1831; it ceased to exist when it was separated into the East Indies Station and the China Station in 1865. Its area covered the Indian Ocean and the coasts of China and...

. His tenure coincided with the later stages of British involvement in the Taiping Rebellion

Taiping Rebellion

The Taiping Rebellion was a widespread civil war in southern China from 1850 to 1864, led by heterodox Christian convert Hong Xiuquan, who, having received visions, maintained that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ, against the ruling Manchu-led Qing Dynasty...

. To achieve parity with the French navy, whose local commander-in-chief was a Vice-Admiral, Kuper was given temporary promotion to Vice-Admiral

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

.

In August 1863 he hoisted his flag in the wooden screw-frigate Euryalus

HMS Euryalus (1853)

HMS Euryalus was a fourth-rate wooden-hulled screw frigate of the Royal Navy, with a 400HP steam engine that could make over 12 knots. She was launched at Chatham in 1853, was 212 feet long, displaced 3125 tons and had a complement of 515...

 and led a British squadron of seven warships to Kagoshima to coerce the Daimyo

Daimyo

is a generic term referring to the powerful territorial lords in pre-modern Japan who ruled most of the country from their vast, hereditary land holdings...

 of Satsuma into paying the £100,000 demanded by the British Government as reparation to the British victims of the Namamugi Incident

Namamugi Incident

The was a samurai assault on foreign nationals in Japan on September 14, 1862, which resulted in the August 1863 bombardment of Kagoshima, during the Late Tokugawa shogunate...

. During the Bombardment of Kagoshima

Bombardment of Kagoshima

The Bombardment of Kagoshima, also known as the , took place on 15–17 August 1863 during the Late Tokugawa shogunate. The British Royal Navy was fired on from the coastal batteries near town of Kagoshima and in retaliation bombarded the town...

 the captain of Euryalus, John James Steven Josling, was killed, as was his second-in-command, Commander Wilmot, both decapitated by the same cannonball.

In 1864 Kuper was in command of the International fleet at the Shimonoseki Expedition, Japan, the action fought to reopen the Inland Sea and the Straits of Shimonoseki

Kanmon Straits

The Kanmon Straits or the Straits of Shimonoseki is the stretch of water separating two of Japan's four main islands. On the Honshū side of the water is Shimonoseki and on the Kyūshū side is Kitakyūshū, whose former city and present ward, Moji , gave the strait its "mon"...

. His interpreter at Shimonoseki was Ernest Satow. Kuper was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) on 25 February 1864 'in acknowledgement of his services at Kagoshima'. In due course, i.e., on 2 June 1869, he became a Knight Grand Cross of the Bath (GCB)

Order of the Bath

The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the elaborate mediæval ceremony for creating a knight, which involved bathing as one of its elements. The knights so created were known as Knights of the Bath...

 and promoted to the rank of Admiral

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

.

Family

On 19 June 1837 he married Emma Margaret, eldest daughter of Sir James John Gordon Bremer

James Bremer

Sir James John Gordon Bremer, KCB, KCH , was a British Royal Navy officer. He served in the Napoleonic Wars, First Anglo-Burmese War, and First Anglo-Chinese War. In China, he served twice as commander-in-chief of British forces.Born in Portsea, England, Bremer joined the Royal Navy in 1794...

.

External links

• Kuper island, British Columbia, was named after Augustus Leopold Kuper.