John Ordronaux (privateer)

John Ordronaux was one of the most successful privateers of the War of 1812 between the United States and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. During the war he commanded two ships, Marengo, then Prince de Neufchatel. With these he captured or destroyed about thirty British merchant ships, outran about seventeen British warships and brought back goods to the US worth between $250,000 and $300,000. In August 1812, during his First Command with the Marengo, he captured a young Scotsman from the English ship Concord called James Swanston Miller (1798-1855) and stranded him unexpectedly on the island of Grand Canary. After this freak of chance, the Swanston and Miller families went on to build a famous and unplanned mercantile dynasty in the island which hugely boosted the local economy after the Napoleonic Wars and into the 20th century. ^{John Ordronaux, French-American soldier (d. 1841)}

16 December 1778

Born on the same birth day (16 December): Alexander Lebedev • Arthur C. Clarke • Dmitri Tymoczko • George Santayana • Harold Whitlock • Mame Biram Diouf • Margaret Mead • Mats Hummels • Melanie Sloan • Nicholas Courtney • Pärt Uusberg • Roger Wheeler (British Army officer) • Ruth Johnson Colvin • Sally Emerson • Seibo Kitamura • Simon Grayson • Steven Bochco • Ulrikke Eikeri • Valentin Bădoi • Wassily Kandinsky • Zoltán Kodály

Born in the same month (December 1778): Anders Sandøe Ørsted • Humphry Davy • Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac • Marie-Thérèse, Duchess of Angoulême