Victoria Cross Recipient. Born in Dublin, the only son of Field Marshall Sir John Fox Burgoyne, 1st Baronet Burgoyne and his wife Charlotte, and the grandson of General "Gentleman Johnny" Burgoyne. He joined the Royal Navy at the age of 14 in 1847. In 1854 he was promoted to Lieutenant and served on the steam sloop, HMS Swallow in the Baltic during the Crimean War. His actions cited as follows: "On 29 May 1855 in the Sea of Azov, Lieutenant Burgoyne of HMS Swallow, with a lieutenant from HMS Miranda and a gunner from HMS Ardent, volunteered to land at a beach where the Russian army were in strength. They were out of covering gunshot range of the ships offshore and met considerable enemy opposition, but managed to set fire to corn stores and ammunition dumps and destroy enemy equipment before embarking again..." for which he was awarded a Victoria Cross, the highest military decoration awarded for valor, created on 29 January 1856 by Queen Victoria to honor acts of valor during the Crimean War. On 27 June 1875, Queen Victoria presented the very first Victoria Crosses at a ceremony in Hyde Park, attended by a crowd of more that 100,000. Burgoyne was the third man ever to be awarded the medal. In 1863 he served as second in command of the sloop Pekin, of Sherard Osborne's Chinese squadron. After his return to England, he was appointed to command the HMS Wivern, serving from 1865 to 1867. In 1868, he was appointed to superintend the building and fitting out of the HMS Captain, an experimental craft of a full-rigged ship with turrets. In August of 1870, the Captain accompanied the Channel fleet as far as Gibraltar, and off Cape Finisterre, Spain, shortly after midnight on the 7th, a squall hit the top heavy craft and she heeled over, capsized, and sank. Over 450 officers and men went down with her; but about eighteen managed to make it into the launch, which had been thrown out when the ship rolled. Burgoyne and a few men were spotted on the keel; and as the launch came near, the men jumped and were picked up. Burgoyne would not or could not jump, however, and was lost. He is memorialized on his father's tombstone at Brompton Cemetery and two brass mural tablets, commemorating the officers and ship's company of the ill-fated Captain can be found in St. Paul's Cathedral.