Captain Edward Pelham Brenton CB (20 July 1774 – 13 April 1839) was a Royal Navy officer and historian who served in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

In January 1805, Brenton took command of the brig HMS Amaranthe in the North Sea and in 1808 moved to the West Indies, where he distinguished himself in an attack on a small French convoy off Martinique on 13 December,[1] notably against Cygne.

[1] Following his time in the Navy, Brenton became a keen if controversial historian, publishing his five volume Naval History of Great Britain from the Year 1783 to 1822 in 1823 and the Life and Correspondence of John, Earl of St. Vincent in 1838.

Brenton's works were controversial, because he rarely attempted to sift fact from rumour, provoking an outcry from those affected by these, often inaccurate, revelations.

Particularly scathing of Brenton was William James, whose alternative history of the naval campaigns of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars was published in 1827.