Pellew being appointed to superintend the payment of the ships afloat at Chatham.
On 31 July 1810 he was promoted to the rank of rear-admiral, and in 1811 went out to the Mediterranean with his brother, as captain of the fleet. In January 1815 he was nominated a K.C.B., and in the spring returned to the Mediterranean with Lord Exmouth. But Exmouth refused to permit him to go with him to Algiers. He had thus no further service, but was advanced to be vice-admiral on 12 Aug. 1819, and admiral on 22 July 1830. He resided during his later years at Plymouth, and died there, after a lingering and painful illness, on 19 July 1832. He married, in 1792, Mary, daughter of George Gilmore, and had issue one son, Edward, a captain in the lifeguards, who was slain in a duel at Paris on 6 Oct. 1819.
[Osler's Life of Viscount Exmouth, Appendix A; Marshall's Roy. Nav. Biogr. ii. (vol. i. pt. ii.) 454; Ralfe's Nav. Biogr. iii. 55; Service-book, &c., in the Public Record Office; Gent. Mag. 1832, ii. 179.]
PELLEW or PELLOW, THOMAS (fl. 1738), captive in Barbary during twenty-four years, was the child of humble parents descended from a family which has numerous branches in the south of Cornwall, and of which Lord Exmouth was the most distinguished representative. After some years at Penryn school, upon the death of his father young Pellow obtained leave in 1715 to go to sea with his uncle, John Pellew. He embarked at Falmouth in the spring of 1715, in the merchant ship Francis, and before that vessel's arrival at the port of Genoa he had outlived his maritime ambition. Unfortunately for his resolution, the Francis on its return journey was surprised and captured off Cape Finisterre by a couple of Sallee rovers. The rovers were surprised in turn off the bar of Sallee by an English cruiser commanded by Captain Delgarnoe, but the Moors saved themselves by running ashore. After getting to land as best they could, the prisoners, consisting of twenty-five Englishmen and seventeen Frenchmen, were conducted to a prison, and thence, after a brief delay, were despatched to ‘Mesquinez,’ where the palace of the sultan Muley Ismail was situate. Being a mere boy at the time, Pellow was at first sent to clean arms in the armoury, and was then given as a slave to the emperor's son, Muley Spha, by whose influence, with the assistance of the bastinado, he was induced to adopt the faith of Islam. He was in consequence excluded as a renegade from the ransom effected by Commodore Stewart in 1720, when two hundred and ninety-six Englishmen, most of whom were sailors, were recovered and restored to their homes. The full printed account of Stewart's embassy was subsequently incorporated by the compiler in Pellow's narrative of his captivity. On arriving at manhood Pellow was trained in military exercises, and about 1725 was entrusted with the command of a Moorish castle at Tannorah; he was subsequently employed by the sultan to put down an insurrection in Guzlan. Muley Ismail died in 1727, after a reign of fifty-five years, and was succeeded by Muley Ahmed IV, during whose brief reign Pellow made an unsuccessful attempt to escape to Gibraltar, being recaptured and narrowly escaping execution. He had a share in the siege of Fez, and in the course of 1728 took with great equanimity the death of a mahommedan wife, whom he had married under Muley Ismail's orders, and of his daughter by her. The poisoning of Ahmed IV by one of the old sultan's wives, and the eventual succession of Muley Abdallah V (1728–1757), only involved him in a change of masters. During the next few years he was busily occupied as a captain of horse in assisting to put down the frequent insurrections inseparable from Moorish methods of government. During the fratricidal wars that followed Ismail's death Muley Abdallah was deposed six times, and as many times reinstated; and in all the vicissitudes of the earlier portion of his reign Pellow had an active share. He was also, according to his own account, entrusted with a large caravan to Timbuctoo in quest of slaves and other merchandise. If, as seems probable, he may be identified with a certain ‘Pilleau,’ a renegade of influence, who is mentioned in Braithwaite's ‘History of the Revolutions in the Empire of Morocco’ (1729), the importance of the services he claims to have rendered is to some extent corroborated. Braithwaite writes under date 27 Nov. 1727: ‘To-day we were visited [in Mequinez] by one Pilleau, a young fellow of good family in Cornwall, but now turned Moor. He was taken very young with Captain Pilleau, his uncle, and, being a handsome boy, he was given by Muley Ismael to one of his sons. The Christian captives give this young man a wonderful character, saying he endured enough to kill seven men before his master could make him turn. … He spoke the Arabick language as well as the Moors, and having traversed this vast country, even to the frontier of Guinea, was capable of giving a very good account of it.’ Pellow was occasionally employed as an interpreter at the embassy, but his staple employment was as a soldier, in which capacity he
