Houston Stewart

Admiral of the Fleet Sir Houston Stewart GCB (3 August 1791 – 10 December 1875) was a Royal Navy officer and briefly a Liberal Party Member of Parliament (MP).

Naval career
Born at Springkell, near Kirtlebridge, Dumfriesshire, the son of Sir Michael Shaw Stewart, 5th Bart., of Greenock and Blackhall, Stewart joined the Royal Navy in February 1805. After service at Walcheren in 1809 he was posted to the Jamaica Station as a commander. After promotion to captain, he was in charge of HMS Menai and the Halifax dockyard. He served in the Syrian War as captain of the HMS Benbow. Thereafter the was Captain-Superintendent of Woolwich Dockyard, Controller-General of the Coastguard and a Commissioner of the Admiralty (Third Naval Lord and then Second Naval Lord). He was made a Rear-Admiral in 1851.

During the Crimean War, Stewart was second in command of the Black Sea and was in command at the capture of Kinburn. His flag in was in HMS Hannibal (1854). Thereafter he was Superintendent of Devonport dockyard from 1856, Commander-in-Chief, North America and West Indies Station from later that year and Commander-in-Chief, Plymouth from 1860. Appointed Governor of Greenwich Hospital in 1869, he became Admiral of the Fleet in 1872.

At the 1837 general election he stood for Parliament in Renfrewshire, but was unsuccessful. He entered the House of Commons fifteen years later, when he was elected a by-election in February 1852 as a Member of Parliament MP for Greenwich, following the resignation of Sir James Dundas. However, he held the seat for only a few months, until his defeat at the general election in July 1852.

He married, in 1819, Martha, youngest daughter of Lord Glenlee, and had three sons, the eldest of whom was Admiral Sir William Houston Stewart GCB.