He took command of the Hazard on the 25th of July, 1780, and paid her off in the following January, having been employed between Shields and Leith. He held his next ship for a still shorter time. On the 12th of March, 1782, he commissioned the Pelican, a French prize, and a mere shell of a vessel; so low, that he would say his servant could dress his hair from the deck while he sat in the cabin. He sailed from Plymouth, on his first cruise, April 20th; and next day took a French privateer, with which he returned to port. On the 24th he sailed again, and stood over to the French coast. On the 28th, observing several vessels at anchor in Bass Roads, he made sail towards them; upon which a brig and a lugger, of ten or twelve guns each, laid their broadsides to the entrance of the harbour. He attacked them immediately, and compelled them to run themselves on shore under a battery, which opened on the sloop. The Pelican tacked, and stood out of the harbour, returning the fire, and the same night arrived at Plymouth. Her loss was only two men wounded. A heavy shot which struck her was begged by a friend, who, in a recent letter, makes a jocular allusion to it, and says that it is still doing service in the kitchen as a jack-weight. The action was most important in its results, for it obtained for him that rank in which he would rise by seniority to a flag. Had he remained a commander through the peace, which, but for this action, in all probability he would have done, he could not have become a flag-officer till near the close of the revolutionary war. The country would then have lost his most valuable services; and he would have been remembered only as a distinguished captain. His promotion was announced to him by the First Lord in the following terms:—
Admiralty Office. May 25, 1782.
"Sir,—I am so well pleased with the account I have received of your gallant and seaman-like conduct in the sloop you command, in your spirited attack on three privateers inside the Isle of Bass, and your success in driving them all on shore, that I am induced to bestow on you the rank of a post-captain, in the service to which your universal good character and conduct do credit: and for this purpose, I have named you to the Suffolk, and hope soon to find a frigate for you, as she is promised to a captain of long standing.
"Keppel."
Captain Pellew thus obtained every step of rank expressly as a reward of a brilliant action in which he personally commanded; and in this respect, and in the number and extent of his services while he remained in the lower grades of his profession, he was singular, not only among his contemporaries, but perhaps in the annals of the navy.
On the 4th of June, in the absence of Captain Macbride, of the forty-gun frigate Artois, Captain Pellew assumed the temporary command of that ship, and sailed two days after to cruize on the coast of Ireland. Her master was Mr. James Bowen, so highly distinguished in the battle of the 1st of June, when he was master of the fleet, and who afterwards became a retired commissioner, and rear admiral. On the 1st of July, the Artois fell in with a French frigate-built ship, the Prince of Robego, of twenty-two guns, and 180 men; and after a four hours' pursuit, and a running fight of half an hour with the chase guns, ran alongside, and took her. Captain Pellew gladly availed himself of this opportunity to show his grateful respect to the memory of his benefactor, Captain Pownoll, by giving the agency to his brother-in-law, Mr. Justice, one of the officers of Plymouth-yard: and the plea of gratitude which he offered to his own brother, was felt to be quite conclusive. Captain Macbride wished to appoint an agent of his own; but Captain Pellew asserted his right, as the actual captor, with so much temper and firmness, that the other at length gave way. He had known Captain Pellew from early childhood, having been his father's intimate friend, and quite understood his character, of which he now expressed an opinion in language less refined than emphatic. "Confound the fellow," said he, "if he had been bred a cobbler, he would have been first in the village."
Peace left him without employment for the next four years. In 1783, he married Susan, daughter of J. Frowd, Esq., of Wiltshire; who survived him nearly four years. For a short time after his marriage, he lived at Truro; but when his elder brother became collector of the customs at Falmouth, he removed to the village of Flushing, which is separated from Falmouth only by a narrow creek, and which had peculiar attractions for him from family associations.
During this period he went out in command of his brother's armed lugger, the Hawk, in search of a notorious outlaw, Wellard, who commanded an armed smuggler in the Channel, and who was at length killed in action with the Hawk, and her consort, which captured his vessel. Active occupation, indeed, was essential to his comfort, and he found a life on shore most irksome. At length, in 1786, he commissioned the Winchelsea, for the Newfoundland station. Among her midshipmen was the late gallant Sir Christopher Cole,[2] to whose pen the reader is indebted for the following animated sketch of his service in that frigate:—
"I joined the Winchelsea under Captain Edward Pellew's command in 1786, recommended to him by my brother. Captain Frank Cole, who told me, 'You are going to serve under a gallant and active officer, and one of the best seamen in the navy, who, if he live, must one day be at the head of his profession. Make a friend of him by your good conduct, and you will do well.' The Winchelsea was manned with good seamen, with scarcely a landsman on board; and the first lieutenant, senior master's mate, and boatswain, were all excellent practical seamen; so that the midshipmen and youngsters, to the number of nearly thirty, could not be in a better situation for obtaining a knowledge of practical seamanship. We soon found that the activity of our captain would not allow us an idle hour, and there was so much kindness of heart, and cheerfulness of manner, blended with daring exertion in the performance of his duties, that we were all happy to imitate his example to the best of our abilities. In the course of our passage to Newfoundland we encountered much blowing weather, and at all hours of the day or night, whenever there was exertion required aloft, to preserve a sail, or a mast, the captain was foremost at the work, apparently as a mere matter of amusement; and there was not a man in the ship who could equal him in personal activity. He appeared to play amongst the elements in the hardest storms, and the confidence this gave to those under his command, on many occasions, is not to be described.
"The reduced peace complement of the crew made it necessary that they should work watch-and-watch, and one part of his system was, that the watch on deck, assisted by the idlers, should be in the habit of making themselves equal to every call of duty, without trespassing on the rest of those whose turn it was to be below. I remember relieving the deck one night after eight o'clock, when the captain was carrying on the duty, and shortening sail upon the quick approach of a severe gale, and being an old sailor for my age, being then sixteen, he ordered me to the mizentop, to close reef and furl the mizen-topsail; and this being done, from the increase of the gale, we had before twelve o'clock to take in successively every reef, furl most of the sails, and strike the topgallant-masts and other spars, to make the ship snug; the midshipmen being on the yards as well as the men, and the captain, when the gale became severe, at their elbow. In close reefing the main-topsail, there was much difficulty in clewing up the sail for the purpose of making it quiet, and the captain issued his orders accordingly from the quarter-deck, and sent us aloft. On gaining the topsail-yard, the most active and daring of our party hesitated to go upon it, as the sail was flapping about violently, making it a service of great danger. A voice was heard amidst the roaring of the gale from the extreme end of the yard-arm, calling upon us to exert ourselves to save the sail, which would otherwise beat to pieces. A man said, 'Why, that's the captain—how the —— did he get there!' The fact was, that the instant he had given us orders to go aloft, he laid down his speaking trumpet, and clambered like a cat by the rigging over the backs of the seamen, and before they reached the maintop, he was at the topmast-head, and from thence by the topsail-lift, a single rope, he reached the situation he was in. I could mention numberless instances of this kind, but will proceed to relate a few others fresh in my recollection. On our arrival at St. John's Newfoundland, we anchored in the narrow entrance in the evening; and many officers would have been satisfied to have remained there until the morning, as we could reach our anchorage only by the tedious and laborious operation of laying out anchors, and warping; but we saw that the captain was bent upon exertion, and we went heartily to work. In the course of our progress against a strong wind, the ship had been warped up to the chain rock, and it became necessary to cast off the hawser attached to it, but all the boats were employed in laying out an anchor and warps elsewhere. The captain called to the men on the forecastle, and desired 'some active fellow to go down by the hawser, and cast it off,' at the same time saying that a boat would soon be there to bring him on board again. The smartest seaman in the ship declined the attempt. In an instant the captain was seen clinging to the hawser, and proceeding to the rock; the hawser was cast off, and to the astonishment of every one, he swang himself to the side of the ship by the same means, mounted the ship's side, and was again directing the duty going on. After nine hours laborious and incessant exertion, the ship was anchored near the Commodore in St. John's harbour, before daylight; and as a salute had been prepared in the hope of seeing the Commodore's pennant before sunset on the evening before, the captain remained on deck with the gunner only to assist him. The rest of the officers and men, being excessively fatigued, had been sent below to rest; and I was not singular in being unconscious of the firing, although my hammock hung close to the open hatchway, and immediately under the deck that the guns were fired from.
"The strong mind and fertile genius of our commander kept the young mids., in particular, in constant employment. Besides that some of the number were stationed on every yard in the ship, the mizen-mast from the deck to the truck was entirely managed in the sails and rigging by the midshipmen, who were not such dandies as to despise the tar-bucket, or even volunteering the laborious task of working the oars of one of the boats in harbour. They were all emulous to leave nothing undone to make themselves practical seamen, and they all found the advantage of such examples as they had then before them, many years afterwards, at the breaking out of the revolutionary war.
"In the course of this year we visited every harbour, nook, and corner, on the east coast of Newfoundland, that the ship could be squeezed into; and the seamanship displayed by the captain, in working the ship in some most difficult cases, was not lost upon the officers and crew. With respect to his personal activity, I have often heard the most active seamen, when doubting the possibility of doing what he ordered to be done, finish by saying, 'Well, he never orders us to do what he won't do himself;' and they often remarked, 'Blow high, blow low, he knows to an inch what the ship can do, and he can almost make her speak. On our return from Newfoundland, he applied to cruise after smugglers in the winter months, instead of being kept idle in harbour until the season opened for visiting Newfoundland again; but this did not come within the scope of the management of that day. In 1787, we returned to our station at Newfoundland. The summers there are very hot, and on the birthday of the good old king, George III., the 4th of June, the ship's company obtained permission to bathe. The ship was at anchor in St. John's harbour, and the captain prepared himself for the public dinner at the Governor's by dressing in his full uniform, and mounted the deck to step into his barge, which was ready to take him ashore. The gambols and antics of the men in the water caught his attention, and he stepped on one of the guns to look at them; when a lad, a servant to one of the officers, who was standing on the ship's side near to him, said, 'I'll have a good swim by-and-by, too.' 'The sooner the better,' said the captain, and tipped him into the water. He saw in an instant that the lad could not swim, and quick as thought he dashed overboard in his full dress uniform, with a rope in one hand, which he made fast to the lad, who was soon on board again, without injury, though a little frightened, but which did not prevent his soon enjoying the ludicrous finish of the captain's frolic. The lad's boasting expression gave an idea that he was a good swimmer, and I believe if ever the captain was frightened, it was when he saw the struggles in the water: but his self-possession and activity did not forsake him, and no one enjoyed the laugh against himself more than he did when the danger was over.
"This season at Newfoundland was passed in the same course of active exertion as the former one. We sailed for Cadiz and Lisbon in October, for the purpose of receiving any remittances in bullion to England, which the British merchants might have ready on our arrival. We had light winds and fine weather after making the coast of Portugal. On one remarkably fine day, when the ship was stealing through the water under the influence of a gentle breeze, the people were all below at their dinners, and scarcely a person left on deck but officers, of whom the captain was one. Two little ship-boys had been induced, by the fineness of the weather, to run up from below the moment they had dined, and were at play on the spare anchor to leeward, which overhangs the side of the ship. One of them fell overboard, which was seen from the quarter-deck, and the order was given to luff the ship into the wind. In an instant the officers were over the side; but it was the captain who, grasping a rope firmly with one hand, let himself down to the water's edge, and catching hold of the poor boy's jacket as he floated past, he saved his life in as little time as I have taken to mention it. There was not a rope touched, or a sail altered in doing this, and the people below knew not of the accident until they came on deck when their dinner was over.
"In every instance when a life was in danger, he was instant to peril his own for its preservation; and I could fill pages, if it were necessary to notice any but those which I was so fortunate as to witness."
After the Winchelsea had been paid off in 1789, Captain Pellew was appointed to the Salisbury, 50, bearing the flag of Vice-Admiral Milbanke, on the Newfoundland station; in which he served till 1791. His brother Israel became the first lieutenant, and was promoted from her. While in this ship, he was one day required to decide on the case of a seaman belonging to a merchant vessel in the harbour, who came on board to complain that his captain had punished him for a theft. Finding that the captain had acted illegally, though the man had really deserved a far more severe punishment, he said to the complainant, "You have done quite right in coming here: your captain had no business to punish you as he has done, and that he may learn to be more cautious in future, we order him to be fined—a shilling!" The man turned to leave the cabin, much disappointed at the award; but how was his surprise increased, when Captain Pellew said, "Stop, sir; we must now try you for the theft." The fact, which had been already admitted, allowed of no defence; and before the man left the ship, he was deservedly brought to the gangway.
The admiral's secretary, Mr. Graham, afterwards the well-known police magistrate, related this circumstance to Lord Thurlow. The chancellor relaxed his iron features, and throwing himself back in his chair in a burst of laughter, exclaimed, "Well, if that is not law, it is at least justice. Captain Pellew ought to have been a judge."