In 1786 we find him on board the Winchelsea, and once more on the Newfoundland station, into every harbour of which he squeezed his ship with the utmost intrepidity, often exhibiting remarkable feats of personal strength and activity.
The Winchelsea was paid off in 1789, and till 1791 Captain Pellew served in the Salisbury, of 50 guns, again on the Newfoundland station; and this time with his younger brother, Israel, as first lieutenant. He afterwards became Admiral Sir Israel Pellew, K.C.B.—an officer whose distinguished career was scarcely less illustrious than that of his more celebrated brother. He was born at Flushing in 1761, and died at Plymouth in 1832. His ship, the Amphion, of 32 guns, blew up in the Hamoaze, Plymouth, on 22nd September, 1796, and only her commander and a few others escaped with their lives.
Once again the distasteful 'piping times of peace' came round; and Pellew, for want of something to do, turned farmer. His experiments in this capacity were made on the little family estate of Treverry, near Falmouth; but they were a failure; and the declaration of war against France, in February, 1793, promised him a most agreeable relief after his enforced idleness. He was appointed to the Nymphe (formerly a French frigate) of 36 guns; and, to Cornishmen at least, his connexion with this ship—manned as she was for the most part by Cornish miners, eighty of whom joined her at Spithead—is one of the most interesting parts of his career. On the evening of 19th June, 1793, the Nymphe came up with the French frigate Cleopatra,[124] of 40 guns, and after a furious cannonade of three-quarters of an hour, the Cornish crew, most of whom had certainly smelt powder before (underground), though none had ever before heard a cannon fired, had the proud delight of seeing the enemy's pennant hauled down, and of capturing the first frigate in the war,—thus illustrating Drayton's lines in his 'Barons' Warres':
'For courage no whit second to the best,
The Cornishmen, most active, bold, and light.'
For this action Pellew was knighted ten days afterwards. The Portsmouth correspondent of the Gentleman's Magazine, writing in July, 1793, of this engagement, says that 'the commencement of the action between the Nymphe and Cleopatra was the most notable and awful that the naval history of the world ever recorded. The French captain ordered his ship to be manned, and, coming forward on the gangway, pulled off his hat, and called out, "Vive la nation!" when the ship's company gave three cheers. Captain Pellew, in like manner, ordered his men from quarters to the shrouds, and gave three cheers to "Long live King George the Third!" and his putting on his hat again was the signal for action, one of the most desperate ever fought.' The captain of the Cleopatra, Citoyen Mullon, was buried in Portsmouth churchyard.
In January, 1794, he joined the Arethusa, which formed one of the cruising frigates of the Western Squadron, a branch of the service which our hero may be said to have originated. In the engagement between the small French and English squadrons on 23rd April, 1794, off the Isle of Bass, he captured the Pomone, a larger vessel than his own, and carried her into Portsmouth harbour, on which occasion Pellew received the warmest thanks of the First Lord of the Admiralty, and of Earl Howe. Another French squadron was, in the following August, driven ashore near Brest, by Pellew and his brave companions in arms; and the Channel was thus practically cleared of the enemy's cruisers for a while. But the following October saw the Frenchmen once more on the move; and it was not until after a smart engagement off Ushant between the Artois and the large French frigate Révolutionnaire, on which occasion Pellew commanded the squadron, that the French navy was completely cowed.
On the 2nd January, 1795, private intelligence having reached Sir Edward that the enemy's fleet, consisting of thirty-five sail of the line, thirteen frigates, and sixteen smaller vessels, had put to sea from Brest, he set forth from Falmouth with his little squadron of five ships to reconnoitre; but no engagement resulted from this expedition.
He now joined the Indefatigable, which he successfully insisted upon having cut down and rigged after his own method. She sailed from Falmouth on 2nd March; and shortly after, the squadron of which she formed part captured fifteen out of a convoy of twenty-five vessels near the Penmarcks rocks.
The scene now shifts to Plymouth Sound, where he performed, on 26th January, 1796, one of the most heroic acts that it has ever fallen to the lot of man to accomplish. He was in evening dress, and on his way to a dinner-party, when he heard that a large ship, an East Indiaman, the Dutton, was on the rocks under the citadel, and that no one was able to go to her assistance; but, with his usual hardihood, he swam out to her through the surf, and thus became the means of saving the lives of between 500 and 600 of his fellow-creatures. This service he performed at the imminent risk of his own life, and when, as we have seen, no other witness of the wild scene had the courage to make the attempt. For his gallant conduct on this memorable occasion he was created a baronet, as Sir Edward Pellew, of Treverry. The Corporation of Plymouth voted him the freedom of their town, and the merchants of Liverpool presented him with a service of plate. The civic wreath and the stranded ship which appear as honourable augmentations on his coat-of-arms were derived from this event.