McGill Library
McLennan Library Building3459 rue McTavish
Montreal, Quebec
H3A 0C9
Memo about the ship Zebra, 17 August 1865
Item
1 folded sheet
A.P. (Arthur Parry) Eardley-Wilmot was a British naval officer born on 24 April at Berkswell Hall in Warwickshire, England. He was the fourth son of Elizabeth Emma Parry and Sir John Eardley Eardley-Wilmot, Baronet, MP for Warwickshire and Governor of Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania, Australia). He joined the Royal Naval College on 7 August 1828, and was first deployed in 1830. His early assignments included postings in south-east Asia, southern China, and the Sandwich Islands. He was promoted to the rank of Mate in 1834, Lieutenant in 1840, and Acting -Captain in 1847. Notably, Eardley-Wilmot held the post of Commodore Commanding West Coast of Africa between 1862 and 1865. This was a command created to disrupt the trans-Atlantic slave trade following the 1807 Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. He married Charlotte Louisa Mackenzie Wright on 28 July 1868. They had a daughter together named Flora. Eardley-Wilmot died on 2 April 1886, with the title of Vice-Admiral.
Memo about the approval of the Lords Commissioners of the [British] Admiralty following a positive report on an inspection of the H.M.S. sloop Zebra, under the command of Charles Gowan Lindsay, that was conducted in Sierra Leone on 10 April 1865. Memo includes a short note of congratulations from A.P. Eardley Wilmot, Commodore Commanding. Written from aboard the Rattlesnake at Ascension, an Island garrison of the British Admiralty in the Atlantic Ocean.