Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth

1757–1833

Edward Pellew, later Viscount Exmouth, was a Royal Navy officer celebrated for daring actions during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. He became famous after the wreck of the Dutton and as captain of the frigate Indefatigable, later commanding in India and the Mediterranean. In 1816 he led the bombardment of Algiers, compelling the release of Christian captives and a temporary agreement against enslavement. His career combined seamanship, personal courage and influential patronage.

Pellew is closely associated with C. S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower world and appears in adaptations and fictional treatments of the young Hornblower’s service, although Forester reshaped chronology and command relationships. He also provides a historical model for the hard-driving frigate captain in Napoleonic naval fiction. Novelists commonly emphasise his rescue work and combat audacity while paying less attention to the politics of promotion and imperial command.

Julian Stockwin’s To the Eastern Seas places Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth within a narrative shaped by military command and battlefield decision-making, exploration, travel and cultural encounter, and empire, conquest and resistance.

Series

Series featuring Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth (1 series)

Thomas Kydd in Order

by Julian Stockwin 27 books 4.2

The Thomas Kydd series follows a Guildford wig-maker pressed into the Royal Navy in 1793 and traces his rise from inexperienced landsman to admiral. Across twenty-seven novels, Kydd learns the work of the lower deck, crosses to the quarterdeck and commands increasingly important ships during the French Revolutionary…

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