Joseph Denman
British naval officer (1810-1874)
Vice-Admiral Joseph Denman (23 June 1810 – 26 November 1874) was a British naval officer, most noted for his actions against the slave trade as a commander of HMS Wanderer of the West Africa Squadron.
Early life
Denman was born in Bloomsbury on 23 June 1810, the son of Thomas Denman, 1st Baron Denman, Lord Chief Justice and a noted abolitionist.
Military career
Joseph entered the Royal Navy on 7 April 1823, and was promoted to Lieutenant in 1831 and commander in 1835.
In 1834, Lieutenant Joseph Denman commanded a prize crew aboard the captured slave ship Maria da Gloria. He first sailed her to the Anglo-Brazilian Mixed Commission Court at Rio de Janeiro, which declined jurisdiction on the grounds that the ship was Portuguese, not Brazilian. Denman then had to sail back across the Atlantic to the Anglo-Portuguese court in Sierra Leone. Seventy-eight of the 400 or so slaves on board died during the back-and-forth, which also severely debilitated the survivors. Denman later testified before parliament about this voyage, stating that he had "witnessed the most dreadful sufferings that human beings can endure".
On 26 December 1836 Commander the Honourable Joseph Denman commissioned the brig-sloop HMS Scylla for the Lisbon Station. He remained in command of her there until 17 November 1839.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15443007. VIAF identifies the subject as 40927190. The Library of Congress control number is n88108840. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1810, 1874, 1823 and 1831.
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This entry incorporates text from “Joseph Denman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.