Edward Hobart Seymour

Admiral of the Fleet Sir Edward Hobart Seymour GCB OM RN (30 April 1840–2 March 1929) was a British Admiral of the Fleet.

He was the grandson of Rear-Admiral Sir Michael Seymour, 1st Baronet, and nephew of Admiral Sir Michael Seymour. He was educated at Radley College and Eastman's Naval Academy, Southsea.

He served in the Black Sea until the evacuation of Crimea in 1856. After the end of the Crimean War, still a midshipman, he was appointed to the HMS "Calcutta", flagship of his uncle Sir Michael Seymour, on the China station. He took part in the capture of Canton (December 1857). In HMS "Chesapeake" Seymour took part in the attack on the Taku forts in September 1860.

In December 1897, Seymour was appointed commander-in-chief on the China station, where his flagship was battleship HMS "Centurion". Service there was peaceful until the Boxer Rebellion. Seymour led the Naval Brigade in the relief of Peking.

"Seymour was a man of a singularly broad and humane outlook...He was a widely read and good linguist. He described his services with great modesty and a total lack of self-consciousness in "My Naval Career and Travels" (1911). He was unmarried."

At the time of his death, he was the last living of the original (1902) members of the Order of Merit.

ee also

*Seymour family
*Culme-Seymour Baronets
*Sir Ernest Satow who mentioned meeting Seymour in his diaries

References

* See entry by H.W. Richmond in "Dictionary of National Biography", Oxford, 1997.