John Knox Laughton

Sir John Knox Laughton (23 April 1830 – 14 September 1915) was a British naval historian and arguably the first to delineate the importance of the subject of Naval history as an independent field of study. Beginning his working life as a mathematically trained civilian instructor for the Royal Navy, he later became professor of modern history at King's College London and a co-founder of the Navy Records Society. A prolific writer of lives, he penned the biographies of more than 900 naval personalities for the Dictionary of National Biography. Family Laughton was born in Liverpool on 23 April 1830, the second son and youngest child of a former Master Mariner, James Laughton of Liverpool (1777–1859). In 1866, Laughton married his first wife, Isabella, daughter of John Carr of Dunfermline. They had two sons, Leonard and Arthur, and three daughters – Elsbeth, Mary and Dorothy. In 1886, Laughton married his second wife, María Josefa, daughter of Eugenio di Alberti, of Cádiz, Spain; they had three sons and two daughters, one of whom was Dame Vera Laughton Mathews. Sir John Knox Laughton died at his home at Wimbledon on 14 September 1915, aged 85.