Orders, Decorations and Medals

Naval General Service 1793-1840, 1 clasp, Syria (E. P. Charlewood, Lieut. R.N.) fitted with silver ribbon buckle and pin brooch, toned, very fine £400-500

Edward Phillips Charlewood was born on 14 November 1814, at Oak Hill, Stafford, and entered the Royal Naval College in June 1827. He served on the coast of Africa, as Midshipman, on board the Favourite from June 1829 until August 1833. Passing his examination in October of that year, he became attached, in February 1834, as Mate, to the Salamander on Channel service. In October 1834, he had the good fortune to be one of the four Naval officers chosen to accompany the Euphrates Expedition then being prepared by the intrepid explorer Colonel F. R. Rawdon, later a General and acknowledged as founder of the overland route to India and ‘father of the Suez Canal.’

Early in 1835, with a company of thirteen officers and a small number of artillerymen, engineers, sappers and miners, Chesney set sail for the bay of Antioch, in order to prove his own theory that the Euphrates was navigable from the oint nearest that bay down to its mouth. The operation was attended by apparently overwhelming difficulties, but the energy of the commander and men triumphed over the physical obstacles that blocked their way. They performed the Herculean task of transporting, in sections, two steam-vessels, the Euphrates, of which Charlewood had been appointed Acting-Lieutenant, and the Tigris, from the vicinity of Antioch by land to the town of Bir, over a tract of 140 miles, almost impassable for the want of roads. After immense labour and much suffering from malaria, the two steamers were put together on the upper river at Birejik, and the voyage down was begun under favourable auspices. They had almost got as far down as Anah, when a fearful storm wrecked the Tigris, with the loss of twenty lives, and she had to be left at the bottom of the river. That the Euphrates was saved from destruction was due entirely to the skill of Lieutenants Cleveland and Charlewood in getting out two anchors in the very nick of time and, by the means of two hawsers and the engines working at full speed, keeping the vessel stationed close to the bank until the storm abated. The Euphrates was thus able to proceed on her way down, and, having safely reached the mouth, steamed across to Bushire in the summer of 1836. Chesney had proved that the Euphrates was navigable for steam vessels through the entire course, from a point about 120 miles from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, and had shown how short and rapid a route this would prove to India.

On his return to England, Charlewood joined the Excellent gunnery-ship at Protsmouth, and in April 1839 to the Benbow in the Mediterranean. Here, he took part in the various operations of the Syrian campaign, including the disastrous and unsuccessful attack on Tortosa and the bombardment of St Jean d’Acre. On the former occasion, 25 September 1840, he landed at the head of a pioneer party, entered a breach in the wall of the castle, and brought off several stores of corn and rice. Charlewood’s gallantry was rewarded with a Commander’s commission, but the attack was in general a complete failure, costing the lives of eight killed and eighteen men wounded.

Charlewood was employed in the Coast Guard at Deal from January 1848, and at Harwich in the same service, as Captain successively of the Southampton and Pembroke. He was appointed Captain Retired in 1855; Rear-Admiral in 1864; Vice-Admiral in 1878; and to Admiral on 27 October 1884.