Frederick Thomas Pelham


Frederick Thomas Pelham, was a Royal Navy officer who went on to be Second Naval Lord.

Naval career

He was the son of Thomas Pelham, 2nd Earl of Chichester, and Lady Mary Henrietta Juliana Osborne, and entered the navy on 27 June 1823. Serving as a midshipman on HMS Sybille in the Mediterranean, he was promoted to lieutenant in 1830 before serving with until being promoted to commander on 21 September 1835. He then served at that rank on off Spain's north coast during the Carlist War before receiving his first command,, in the same theatre in 1837 and 1838, being awarded the cross of San Fernando for his services. He rose to captain on 3 July 1840. He then commanded, a steam paddle frigate, in the Mediterranean Sea from 1847 to 1850.
At the suggestion of Sir Hyde Parker, he served as private secretary to the first Lord of the Admiralty, the Duke of Northumberland, from March to December 1852, working against a government keen to keep defence spending down, against his own brother Lord Chichester's politics and connections with Sir Francis Baring, and against the political secretary Stafford O'Brien. He was made commander of the Portsmouth steam reserve in 1853, participating at Bomarsund and other episodes of the 1854 Baltic campaign in that role from his flagship. During the construction of he was appointed her commander, but this putative post was cancelled when his friend Richard Saunders Dundas selected him for the second Baltic campaign as captain of the fleet. In that role he headed the attack on Sveaborg, though a surveying officer on the expedition, Captain Bartholomew James Sulivan, blamed Pelham for making Dundas overcautious. In 1855, he was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath.
Sir Maurice Berkeley declined to take Pelham on at the Board of Admiralty in December 1856 due to his connections with Northumberland. Pelham did enter the Admiralty in November 1857 as Fourth Naval Lord after Berkeley's retirement, though he then left it in March 1858, having been promoted to rear admiral. Under Dundas and the Duke of Somerset he joined the new Liberal board as Second Naval Lord in June 1859, remaining with it until resigning on grounds of ill health in early June 1861. On his death later that year he was buried in Highgate cemetery.

Family

He married Ellen Kate Mitchell on 26 July 1841, with whom he had: