In 1765, when the future admiral was only eight years old, his father died, and the mother making an imprudent marriage three years later, the children were thrown upon the world with small provision and scanty care.  The resolute, active, and courageous character of the lads, however, brought them well forward among their equals in age.  At school Edward was especially distinguished for fearlessness.  Of this he gave a marked instance, when not yet twelve, by entering a burning house where gunpowder was stored, which no other of the bystanders would approach.  Alone and with his own hands the lad brought out the powder.  A less commendable but very natural result of the same energetic spirit was shown in the numerous fighting matches in which he was engaged.  Being threatened with a flogging for one of these, the circumstance became the immediate occasion of his going to sea.  If flogged, he declared, he would run away; and as a decided taste for seafaring life had already manifested itself, his guardian thought better to embrace at once the more favorable alternative and enter him regularly in the navy.  He thus went afloat towards the end of 1770, the date at which Nelson, also, though one year younger, began his career.

His first cruise was in the Mediterranean.  It came to a premature end through a quarrel between the commander of the ship and one of the midshipmen.  In this the captain was clearly and grossly in the wrong; yet nevertheless carried his resentment, and the power of oppression in his hands, then little restrained by law, so far as to expel the youngster from the ship and set him on shore in Marseilles.  Pellew insisted upon accompanying his messmate, and the two lads of fourteen, aided by some of the lieutenants, secured a passage home.  It shows a pleasing trait in our hero’s character that, some years afterwards, he advanced materially the professional fortunes of the son of the officer who had thus abused his authority.

He next passed under the command of a Captain Pownoll, between whom and himself were established such warm relations, of affectionate interest on the one side and reverential regard on the other, that Pownoll became a family name among the descendants of the admiral.  He himself gave it to his first-born, and it still appears in the present generation.  Under him, also, Pellew was brought into direct contact with the American Revolution; for on board the frigate Blonde, Pownoll’s ship, General Burgoyne embarked in 1775 for Canada, there beginning the undertaking which ended so disastrously for him.  It is told that when the distinguished passenger came on board, the yards being manned to receive him with the honors due to his rank, he was startled to see on one yardarm a midshipman standing on his head.  Upon expressing alarm, he was laughingly reassured by the captain, who said that Pellew—­for he it was who put this extra touch upon the general’s reception—­was quite capable of dropping from the yard, passing under the ship’s bottom, and coming up on the other side.  A few days later the young officer actually did leap from the yardarm, the ship going fast through the water—­not, however, as bravado, but to aid a seaman who had fallen overboard, and whom he succeeded in saving.