Thomas Whetstone
English privateer
Sir Thomas Whetstone (1630 – 1668?) was an English privateer and naval officer whose career resulted from nepotism and his connections to Oliver Cromwell, his maternal uncle.
Naval career
Whetstone was probably born in the Netherlands. His father was an army officer, and his mother was the favourite sister of Oliver Cromwell. During the Interregnum, Whetstone volunteered for naval service on the expedition to Hispaniola in 1654. Because of pressure from the Lord Protector, Whetstone went from volunteer to lieutenant to command of a ship called Golden Cock on his return to England. In 1656, he was put in command of Phoenix and then Fairfax the next year. In 1657, he was put in command of a squadron in the Mediterranean. Acting as a privateer, Whetstone disobeyed direct orders and sold a prize ship of grain for his own profit. When his command was revoked in response, Whetstone deserted and sailed his ship for Algiers.
Oliver Cromwell's support was unswayed, however.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thomas Whetstone” 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.