Admiral Sir Manley Dixon, KCB was a prominent Royal Navy officer during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Born into a military family in the late 1750s or early 1760s, Dixon joined the Navy and served as a junior officer in the American Revolutionary War, gaining an independent command in the last year of the war. Promoted to captain seven years later, Dixon then served in the French Revolutionary Wars in the Channel Fleet and off Ireland until 1798, when he gained command of the 64-gun HMS Lion with the Mediterranean Fleet. Employed in the blockade of Cartagena, on 15 July 1798 Lion fought four Spanish frigates and successfully captured one, Santa Dorothea. Transferred to the Siege of Malta later the same year, Dixon remained off the island for two years, capturing the French ship of the line Guillaume Tell at the action of 31 March 1800. After the Peace of Amiens, Dixon remained in various active commands but saw no action and later retired, advancing to a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath and a full admiral.

HMS Lion was a 64-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, of the Worcester class, launched on 3 September 1777 at Portsmouth Dockyard.