Admiral Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth, GCB (19 April 1757 – 23 January 1833) was a British naval officer.

Edward's grandfather, Humphrey Pellew (1650–1721), a merchant and ship owner, son of a naval officer, resided at Flushing manor-house in the parish of Mylor.

[citation needed] On the death of Edward's father in 1764 the family removed to Penzance, and Pellew was educated for some years at Truro Grammar School.

Pellew described himself as "pock-marked, ugly, uninteresting and uneducated"; a naval historian adds that he was "tough, brave, skilful, lucky, and unscrupulous".

[4] In 1770, Pellew entered the Royal Navy on board HMS Juno[1] with Captain John Stott, and made a voyage to the Falkland Islands.

In consequence of a high-spirited quarrel with his captain, he was put on shore at Marseilles where he found an old friend of his father's in command of a merchant ship.

In October, Pellew and midshipman Brown were detached for service in the Carleton tender on Lake Champlain, under Lieutenant Dacres.

In the summer of 1777, Pellew and a small party of seamen were attached to the army under Burgoyne, and he was present in the fighting at Saratoga,[1] where his youngest brother John was killed.

He wanted to be appointed to a seagoing ship, but Lord Sandwich considered that he was bound by the terms of the surrender at Saratoga not to undertake any active service.

Towards the end of the year, he was appointed to the Licorne which went out to Newfoundland in the spring of 1779, returning in the winter, when Pellew was moved into the Apollo with his old captain Pownoll.

Pownoll was killed by a musket-shot, but Pellew continued the action and dismasted the Stanislaus, driving her on shore where she was protected by the neutrality of the coast.

On the 18th, Lord Sandwich wrote to him: "I will not delay informing you that I mean to give you immediate promotion as a reward for your gallant and officer-like conduct."

In special reward for this service, he was promoted to post rank on 25 May[1] and, ten days later, was appointed to the temporary command of the Artois,[1] in which he captured a large frigate-built privateer on 1 July.

At the action of 18 June 1793, Nymphe fell in with the Cléopâtre, also of 36 guns and commanded by Captain Jean Mullon, one of the few officers of the ancien régime who still remained in the French navy.

After a short but very sharp action, Cléopâtre's mizzenmast and wheel were shot away, making the ship unmanageable, and it fell foul of the Nymphe.

The most striking life-saving event was on 26 January 1796 when the East Indiaman Dutton was carrying more than four hundred troops, together with many women and children, when it ran aground under Plymouth Hoe.

Both the Droits de l'Homme and Amazon ran aground, but Indefatigable managed to claw her way off the lee shore to safety.

[1] Pellew was also responsible for pressing young violinist and composer Joseph Antonio Emidy who had been playing in the Lisbon Opera orchestra.

When in February 1808 Pellew was at sea in his flagship, HMS Culloden, he heard of the outbreak of war between the United Kingdom and Denmark.

When Admiral Drury arrived to replace Pellew as C-in-C, East Indies, and to seize Tranquebar, he found that he was too late.

A building at Wyvern Barracks in Exeter, Devon is used as a temporary billet and a training facility for the Army Cadet force as well as other units.

Pellew is the name of a minor character in several of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey–Maturin novels, including The Reverse of the Medal and The Surgeon's Mate.

He appears in Alexander Kent's Adam Bolitho novel Relentless Pursuit, which partially relates to Pellew's expedition against the Barbary States.