Augustus Keppel (1725-1786) was the second son of Willem van Keppel, 2nd Earl of Albemarle, and Anne Lennox, daughter of the 1st Duke of Richmond. (The Keppels were a Dutch family who had come to England with William III in 1688.) He was a commander in the Royal Navy, and served during the Seven Years War and the American Revolutionary War. He was commander of the Channel fleet until 1779, and on 27th July 1778 fought against the French in the first Battle of Ushant; this ended in failure which Keppel and his colleague Sir Hugh Palliser blamed on each other. Both men were tried in courts martial and acquitted. In 1782 he was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty and raised to the peerage as Viscount Keppel in 1782, but died unmarried and the peerage became extinct.