Admiral of the White Sir Charles Wager, PC (24 February 1666 – 24 May 1743) was an English Royal Navy officer and politician who served as Senior Naval Lord from 1730 to 1733 and then as First Lord of the Admiralty from 1733 to 1742. Despite heroic active service and steadfast administration and diplomatic service, Wager was criticized for his failure to deal with an acute manning problem.

He was born in Rochester, Kent, after the death of his father Captain Charles Wager (b. 1630), on 24 February 1666. His father had started life in the merchant service and then gained advancement in the navy of the Commonwealth. His mother was Prudence (b. 1640/41), daughter of Vice-Admiral William Goodsonn, who became a renowned officer in the navy of the time. Wager remarked in 1731, "On both sides I am related to the navy". His paternal grandfather was John Wager (died 1656 when captain of the Greyhound which blew up in action with Spanish pirates) of St Margaret's, Rochester, who became a mariner after migrating from Charlton Kings, Cheltenham.

His father commanded the Yarmouth in the fleet that brought Charles II to England and quickly proved to be a capable, trustworthy, well-liked officer of the Royal Navy. He dined at the home of Samuel Pepys who remarked in his diary "A brave, stout fellow this Captain is, and I think very honest.". Two years after the elder Wager's death, Samuel Pepys heard a friend who had been at Tangier contrast his conduct with that of others who had served in the Strait of Gibraltar, remarking, as Pepys noted, "that above all Englishmen that ever was there, there never was any man that behaved himself like poor Charles Wager, whom the very Moores do mention with teares sometimes". Prudence remarried after his father's death to Alexander Parker, a Quaker and London merchant. There was already an older sister, Prudence, and the marriage produced six more children.

Wager was apprenticed to a Quaker merchant captain of New England named John Hull of Barnstable, Massachusetts who operated a transatlantic shipping service. Wager's mother was a witness when John Hull married Alice Teddeman in the London Quaker Meeting in 1684. When Dr Teddeman Hull, their oldest son, visited London in 1742 he had a letter of introduction from Governor Richard Ward of Rhode Island which stated that he was "the son of Captain John Hull, late of this colony, under whom Sir Charles Wager was educated". It was while working with the Quaker John Hull that Wager displayed the strength of character that ultimately brought him to the attention of the Navy. During one of many transatlantic voyages the vessel which Hull was commanding with Wager as understudy was waylaid by a French privateer and told to "strike". Hull could not fight due to his religious convictions but equally was loath to surrender his valuable vessel and cargo and so he turned to his right-hand man. The young Wager did not share his patron's religion and had no such compunctions, and so it was Wager, "who accepted the encounter, and falling to work with the Frenchman, soon obliged him to sheer off."

The earliest record of Wager's naval service is his listing as lieutenant of the frigate Foresight on 1 August 1689. By 1691 he had become first lieutenant of the Dreadnought (64 guns). On 8 December that year he married Martha Earning (b. 1664×6, d. 1748), daughter of Anthony Earning, a Commonwealth navy captain who went into the East India Company's service after 1660 and died while captain of the George in the Indian Ocean. Wager was in the Britannia, Admiral Edward Russell's flagship, in 1692, took part in the battle of Barfleur, and was made post captain on 7 June.

The year 1693 saw Wager in command of the Samuel and Henry (44 guns), in which he convoyed the New England trade. He was captain of the Newcastle (48 guns) in 1694, and in 1695, after a month in the Mary, he was reassigned to the Woolwich (54 guns). In early March 1696 the Woolwich was watching Dunkirk against a rumoured invasion. A month later Wager moved to the Greenwich (50 guns) and commanded a small squadron for convoying the tobacco trade home from the Chesapeake. He stayed in the Greenwich until she was paid off in late 1699. He lived at Watergate cottages, Kilminorth near West Looe on half pay whilst his ship was under repair in Plymouth. He immediately became a freeman of that borough. As he informed the Admiralty in June 1700, his residence was only "about ten miles from his Majesty's Yard at Plymouth" and he could "be at London in four or five days, if required". Eight months later, in February 1701, he was appointed to the Medway (64 guns). In the mobilization of January 1702 for the War of the Spanish Succession he was assigned to the Hampton Court (70 guns) and remained her captain for the next five years. He commanded a squadron of four of the line and two frigates that cruised between Cape Barfleur and the Isle of Batz in early 1703. Later that year he went to the Mediterranean and in October he came under the command of Admiral George Byng (later Lord Torrington). Captains Wager and John Baker were the men Byng sent ashore to carry out negotiations and witness the signing of the England's re-negotiated treaty with the Dey of Algiers. Going again to the Mediterranean in 1704, Wager was with the fleet under Sir George Rooke that captured Gibraltar. The Hampton Court was on detached service and missed the battle off Malaga, but she was present at the capture of Barcelona in 1705. After wintering with Sir John Leake's squadron at Lisbon, Wager took part in the relief of Barcelona and the winning over of Ibiza and Majorca before returning home with Leake in later in 1706.

As a senior captain, who had commanded detached squadrons, Wager was a logical choice for the Jamaica station. Appointed in January 1707, he left Spithead in the Expedition (70 guns) on 28 March and reached Jamaica on 22 June. A French squadron under Admiral Ducasse was known to be coming from Europe, and Wager's initial deployments were designed to gain intelligence of its arrival and protect trade. He learned in December that Ducasse had gone to Havana, far to leeward; thus the French squadron (ten of the line) could neither surprise Jamaica nor shield the galleons of the Spanish treasure fleet at the isthmus, and if those galleons were to follow their usual practice of returning to Cartagene de Indias before proceeding to Havana, Wager would have a chance to intercept them after they loaded Peruvian silver at Portobelo. The Expedition (70 guns), Kingston (60 guns), and Portland (50 guns) plus a fireship left Port Royal in time to attain, on 23 May 1708, a position about 36 miles west of Cartagena. There followed the action which was later called Wager's Action, in which one treasure ship was destroyed and one was captured, while the others escaped into Cartagena harbour. The proceeds of his capture meant that he returned to England a rich man. He also came home a rear-admiral, the promotion having occurred by seniority on 19 November 1707. His wealth stemmed chiefly from the silver on the captured galleon, its value estimated at over £60,000 in addition to his flag share of other prizes taken in the West Indies. The action against the galleons made him a hero and he was knighted on 8 December 1709. At Portsmouth he was nominated for a by-election to parliament and was elected on 23 January 1710.

Despite a Tory landslide in the election of 1710 Wager was re-elected to the Portsmouth seat, but the Tory-dominated house overturned the result on petition. As a firm Whig he could no longer expect an important command so he prepared to spend the rest of his life ashore in contrast to the previous twenty years of almost continual sea service. Although there is no record of his residing again at Kilminorth he served as MP for West Looe from 1713 to 1715.