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Edmund Howard Pace of Yorkshire, England

The following e-mail was sent to the Pace Network in Sept. 2002. Edmund' story is worth publishing.

Hi Roy

I have just discovered your marvellous web site devoted to the Pace name and family connections. I'll spend time over the next few days exploring all its fascinating nooks and crannies.

I'm particularly interested in Edmund Howard Pace, who lived in our house here in Cleveland, North Yorkshire, England.

I attach a brief (although probably not brief enough!) story of his life, but you will see that it is just work in progress.

I wonder if you, or any of your friends on the Pace networks, might be able to help me find out more about him?

Best wishes

Tony Nicholson  t.nicholson@ntlworld.com

According to a later census, Edmund was born in Devon around 1799.

He entered the navy as a boy of eleven years old, serving as a 'First-Class Volunteer' on his uncle's ship, the Freija. The ship itself was originally Dutch, but had been captured at Copenhagen on 7 September 1807 and incorporated in the British fighting fleet. She carried 38 guns. Edmund's uncle had already made something of a reputation for himself as the temporary captain of another vessel which he navigated successfully to and from the Roompot (?), bringing home 70O French soldiers who had been captured at Flushing. In the wake of this success, he was promoted to the position of captain of the Freija. In September 1809, it was reported that the ship was being fitted out for the Leeward Islands' Station, and by the end of that same year, the Freija took the young lad out to the West Indies to join other naval vessels at Barbados.

On 18 December, 1809, Edmund had his first taste of action. His uncle was employed as senior officer of a small squadron sent to blockade the north-west side of Guadeloupe, and on the evening of Wednesday 17 January 1810, the Freija captured a French schooner which had just sailed from Mahaut Bay with a cargo of coffee, sugar and cotton. Once the schooner was boarded, Pace's uncle discovered its log book which revealed that that other French vessels were anchored nearby in a sheltered bay, defended by two batteries. To begin with, this anchorage was difficult to find and the Freija spent almost two days in fruitless searching. By noon of the second day however, three vessels were spotted in the distance, anchored behind shoals. The British waited their moment. Between eight and nine in the evening, four boats were lowered from the Freija, commanded by three officer and manned by 30 marines and 50 seamen. Without adequate charts, they had great difficulty finding their way through the complex shoals that surrounded the bay, and the leading boat ran ashore eight or ten times. By eleven o'clock at night, they encountered a local fisherman who told them that a troop of regular French soldiers had arrived from Point-a-Pitre together with a company of native infantry. It was clearly a well-defended position.

As they approached the shore, they were spotted and a signal gun fired. This was quickly followed by a discharge of grape-shot from both batteries as well as fire from one of the anchored ships, a six-gun brig. If this were not enough, the British sailors were also raked by musket fire from bushes near the shore. Faced with this onslaught, the boats pulled for one of the anchored ships which they found deserted, and then undaunted they made for another part of the shore. It was impossible to reach the main shore because of shallow waters and shoals, and they grounded some distance from dry land. The company then had to jump into the water waist-deep and wade ashore. As they advanced on the battery, the enemy retreated behind a brick breast-work from which they were soon driven, and one 24-pounder gun and twenty barrels of powder were destroyed. At the second battery three 24-pounders were spiked and the guard house destroyed.

Having destroyed the defences, the British marines and seamen returned to the anchored ships. They found a brig fast in the mud, but after much effort managed to free her. They were less successful in freeing a large English-built ship under repair and because this ship blocked the escape route of a schooner behind her, they had no alternative but to burn both ships rather than leave them for the enemy. Incredibly, only one British officer and two men were wounded in this action.

After the capture of Guadeloupe, the Freija proved defective, so she returned home in September 1810 and was soon put out of commission. On his return, Edmund was appointed as Midshipman on the Vingeur, a much larger ship, armed with seventy-four guns and acting as the flag-ship of Sir Joseph Sydney Yorke. This was a newly-commissioned vessel, completed recently at Harwich. Edmund now served under Captain Andrew Brown, and the ship patrolled the dangerous waters off the French and Portuguese coasts. For a brief period, he transferred to another ship before rejoining Brown in his new command of the Loire. In 1812 , they sailed out via Medeira to the coast of North America, and on 10 December 1813 captured a privateer of 5 guns and 80 men which had sailed from Newport the night before. By February 1814, he had joined his uncle again on the Majestic, and over the next few months captured an American ship - The President - before engaging in a lengthy action with a French frigate. On the morning of 3 February 1814, they were chasing a ship between St. Michael's and Madeira, when they accidentally came across three more ships and a brig, about nine miles off. Edmund's uncle immediately gave up his pursuit of the first ship and closed with these four unknown ships. As they came closer they discovered that two of the ships were 44-gun frigates, one was a 20-gun ship, and last a brig with no apparent armament. Never daunted, he opened fire on one of the frigates and after an hour and three quarters she struck her colours and surrendered. As darkness began to descend, the sea also began to rise, and this made it necessary for MAJESTIC to stay close to her main prize; in doing so, the other three ships managed to escape. The captured ship was the Terpsichore which had sailed with her sister ship from the Scheldt on 20 October 1813 for L'Orient, which he had left on 8 January. The enemy suffered three men killed, six wounded and two drowned; the Majestic none.

Towards the close of the Napoleonic War, Edmund was serving on a sloop called the Fly, where he witnessed more action. On July 18, 1815, a certain Capt Malcolm led two a body of seamen and marines from the three ships, at Corrijon, near Abervrach, where he stormed and carried a fort, and with the assistance of the Fly, effected the capture of an armed cutter, a praam-brig, and a gun-vessel, together with a convoy reposing in the harbour under their protection. This affair was the last of the sort achieved during the war. During the remainder of 1815, he served on another sloop based in Liverpool, and then after the war, served as Admiralty-Midshipman on the Home, Mediterranean, West India, and St Helena stations.

For a brief period in 1816, he served under Captain William M'Culloch, who he later joined in the coastguard service, but by 1817, when he was now twenty years old, he was on board the Glasgow when it set sail from Portsmouth on 20 July for service against Algiers. It rendezvoused with other ships in the Mediterranean fleet at Gibraltar and the attack began on 24 August. The Glasgow used her larboard guns against the town batteries and was in the thick of the action throughout. When one of the British ships signalled that she had suffered 150 killed and wounded and requested help from a frigate to divert the fire, Glasgow tried to oblige. Lack of wind meant that after an hour's best effort, she got no further than a short distance, but was then exposed to withering fire from the land batteries. Edmund saw ten of the crew killed, with another thirty-seven wounded. The ship was so badly damaged that she was returned home for repairs at Deptford.

Edmund served as midshipman on several other ships until he joined the Spartan (38 guns) in 1818 under Captain William Furlong Wise. During 1818, a Genoese ship was plundered by Algerian (Algerine (?)) pirates and the Genoese Vice-consul treated with great indignity and expelled from Algiers. When complaints were made to the British government of this violation of the treaty made with the Dey after the bombardment of August 1816, Spartan was sent from England to demand compensation. They found that the Dey had died of plague on 1 March and, with the assistance of the British Consul, negotiated a payment of 35,000 dollars for the property taken. During the following year, Edmund sailed with the Spartan to Madeira, Dominica, Vera Cruz, Jamaica, Barbados and Halifax, returning to England in July 1820.

After a year serving in the Home station, mainly in and around Plymouth, Edmund was finally made up to the rank of Lieutenant in January 1821. No further action was experienced until 1824, when he joined the Champion, a newly built ship of 18 guns which had been designed by his irrepressible uncle. It was found during a cruise with two other ships to the west of Scilly that "she could carry more sail, worked quicker and behaved better in a gale or heavy sea than either of her companions." The new ship set off for East Indies in June 1824, arriving at Rangoon on 14 November 1825 at the end of the rainy season. Here she joined two other vessels for the resumption of hostilities in the Burmese War. During the last three months of the war, it was Champion's job to keep navigation open between Rangoon and Prome. Her service in the area lasted until the peace treaty in February 1826.

At this point, Edmund joined one of the other two ships - Arachne - for the voyage home, replacing its First Lieutenant - Charles Keele - who had distinguished himself in action at Martapan. Keele had led an attack on Martapan on 30 October, shortly before Edmund and the crew of the Champion arrived in Rangoon. Among the spoils from this victory were 16 guns with 7000 round shot and 1500 grape, 26,500 lb of powder and 500 muskets with 100,000 balls. On top of this, an East India Company's gun vessel with her crew in irons was also found. It transpired that her commander had put into Martapan by mistake and had been taken prisoner. Naval losses were minimal, with two killed and three badly wounded. The following year - 1826 - Keele continued to command the naval part of a number of joint expeditions, and when the Arachne returned home, Edmund replaced him as First Lieutenant. They reached Portsmouth on 27 September 1826.

Here his active service came to an end, and he appears to have spent the remaining years between 1826 and his death in the 1860s either on half-pay, or serving in the newly created Coastguard Service. He married Louisa (I don't know her maiden as yet) in the late 1820s or early 1830s, and their first daughter was born at Jersey in 1831. It was around this time that he served his first term of office in the Coastguards. Edmund and his family lived in Gravesend during the early to mid 1840s when two other daughters were born, and he eventually came to Cleveland as Chief Officer of Coastguards in 1849. He was based in Saltburn where coastguard cottages had already been constructed in an attempt to curb the extensive smuggling operations that had been going on since the late eighteenth century. By the 1840s, the 'golden age' of smuggling was largely passed, and he probably rubbed shoulders with many local people who had previously been active smugglers. Whilst stationed at Saltburn, he rented our house in the neighbouring village of Brotton and probably remained until the late 1850s when he finally retired from the Navy and Coastguards. When the 1851 census was taken, his household was recorded as follows:

Edmund Howard Pace, Head, Married, 53, Lieutenant Royal Navy, b. Sedwood (?), Devon

Louisa Pace, Wife, Married, 44, b. Hungerford, Berkshire

Charlotte Pace, Daughter, Single, 20, b. St Heliers, Isle of Jersey

Ellen L R Pace, Daughter, Single, 6, b. Gravesend, Kent

Nora S Pace, Daughter, Single, 2, b. Gravesend, Kent

Helena Abraham, Servant, Single, 23, House Servant, b. Easington

He probably died in the early 1860s, but I have discovered that his wife and daughters were running a female boarding school in Beckenham, Kent, when the 1881 census was taken.

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