[2] Edward's grandfather, also George, (1706–1780), was the Attorney-General of West New Jersey in 1767-1775 and commanded the Salem Light Horse during the Revolutionary War.
[1] However, a sea voyage to England at the age of 16 turned his mind to a military career, and on his return, he obtained a midshipman's warrant on April 30, 1800.
The following year Trenchard was transferred to the Constellation seeing more action off Tripoli, and when his ship was fired upon by the Spanish batteries near the Strait of Gibraltar on September 21, 1805.
Trenchard fell ill with "lake fever" (the Madison at one time having eighty of her two hundred men on the sick list) and on July 21, 1813, left the ship to recuperate.
On his return to the United States, Trenchard was assigned to duty in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, but his health had been irrevocably damaged; he died in 1824.