life, he kept touch with it by the variety of his interests in all
useful and benevolent undertakings, to which an ample fortune allowed
him freely to contribute. "The hopes entertained of his assistance and
sympathy," observes his biographer, "were never disappointed." Among
naval biographies, there is none that presents a more pleasing picture
of genial and dignified enjoyment of well-earned repose. In 1831, upon
the accession of William IV., the Sailor King, the long-coveted peerage
was at last bestowed. Lord de Saumarez died on the 9th of October, 1836,
in his eightieth year.

PELLEW

1757-1833

Like the English tongue itself, the names of British seamen show the
composite origin of their nation. As the Danes after the day of
Copenhagen, to them both glorious and disastrous, claimed that in Nelson
they had been vanquished by a man of their own blood, descended from
their Viking forefathers; as Collingwood and Troubridge indicate the
English descent of the two closest associates of the victor of
Trafalgar; so Saumarez and the hero of this sketch, whose family name
was Pellew, represent that conquering Norman race which from the shores
of the Northern ocean carried terror along the coasts of Europe and the
Mediterranean, and as far inland as their light keels could enter. After
the great wars of the French Revolution and the Battle of Algiers, when
Lord Exmouth had won his renown and his position had been attained,
kinship with him was claimed by a family still residing in Normandy,
where the name was spelled "Pelleu." Proof of common origin was offered,
not only in the name, but also in the coat of arms. In England, the
Pellew family was settled in the extreme southwest, in Cornwall and
Devonshire, counties whose nearness to the great Atlantic made them the
source of so much of the maritime enterprise that marked the reign of
Elizabeth. Lord Exmouth's grandfather was a man of wealth; but, as he
left many children, the juniors had to shift for themselves, and the
youngest son, Samuel Pellew, the father of the admiral, at the time of
the latter's birth commanded a post-office packet on the Dover station.
He accordingly made the town of that name the home of his wife and
children; and there Edward, the second of his four sons, was born, April
19, 1757. Their mother was the daughter of a Jacobite gentleman, who had
been out for the Pretender in 1715,--a fact which probably emphasized
the strong Hanoverian sy