Admiral Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth, GCB (19 April 1757 – 23 January 1833) was a British naval officer. He fought during the American War of Independence, the French Revolutionary Wars, and the Napoleonic Wars. His younger brother Israel Pellew also pursued a naval career. Childhood Pellew was born at Dover, the second son of Samuel Pellew (1712–1764), commander of a Dover packet, and his wife, Constantia Langford. The Pellew family was Cornish, descended from a family that came originally from Normandy, but had for many centuries been settled in the west of Cornwall. Edward's grandfather, Humphrey Pellew (1650–1721), a merchant and ship owner, son of a naval officer, resided at Flushing manor-house in the parish of Mylor. Part of the town of Flushing was built by Samuel Trefusis, MP for Penryn; the other part was built by Humphrey Pellew, who was buried there. He also had a property and a tobacco plantation in Maryland. Part of the town of Annapolis stands on what was, before the American Revolution, the estate of the Pellews. On the death of Edward's father in 1764 the family removed to Penzance, and Pellew was educated for some years at Truro Grammar School. He was a pugnacious youth, which did not endear him to his headmaster. He ran away to sea at the age of 14, but soon deserted because of unfair treatment to another midshipman. Pellew described himself as "pock-marked, ugly, uninteresting and uneducated"; a naval historian adds that he was "tough, brave, skilful, lucky, and unscrupulous". Early career 1770s In 1770, Pellew entered the Royal Navy on board HMS Juno with Captain John Stott, and made a voyage to the Falkland Islands. In 1772, he followed Stott to the Alarm, and in her was in the Mediterranean for three years. In consequence of a high-spirited quarrel with his captain, he was put on shore at Marseilles where he found an old friend of his father's in command of a merchant ship. He was able to get a passage to Lisbon and so home. He was later in HMS Blonde, under the command of Captain Philemon Pownoll, which took General John Burgoyne to America in the spring of 1776. In October, Pellew and midshipman Brown were detached for service in the Carleton tender on Lake Champlain, under Lieutenant Dacres. During the Battle of Valcour Island on 11 October, Dacres and Brown were both severely