Page:Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.djvu/917

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SIR EDWARD CHICHESTER
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manner, in his racy conversation, in the very roll of his walk, he was every inch a sailor. Wherever he went he carried with him the savour of the sea. A thorough West-countryman a man 'of Bideford in Devon'—he preserved the traditions of the old Elizabethan sailors, and seemed indeed to be in the lineal succession to Grenville and Hawkins, to Drake and Raleigh."

Equally sympathetic was a notice in the Standard:—

"In Rear-Admiral Sir Edward Chichester there has passed away a sailor after Lord St. Vincent's own heart. We had said after Nelson's, but Nelson had no hand in the administrative work of the Navy, in which Sir Edward took so great, if subordinate, a share. He belonged to a class which will probably become more and more rare in the Navy the type of blunt sailor who is a sailor first, second and last, but who, just because he is all a sailor, is also an inimitable diplomatist, prompt and resolute, seeking no quarrel, but fearing no responsibility. We do not for a moment imply that these qualities are not to be found in abundance in the new Navy; but the naval officer of to-day has the habits and manners of the world in a degree to which a sailor of the school of Sir Edward Chichester did not attain."

At a dinner given in honour of Sir Redvers Buller in Exeter, in November, 1900, the late Lord Clinton, in the course of a speech on that occasion, said:—

"I believe if ever there was the right man in the right place, it was Sir Edward Chichester. Go outside England—go to America, and ask what is thought of him there. We know that the opinion is very high. I believe if the American Navy were at war, and found Sir Edward Chichester on the high seas without an escort, they would kidnap him, and place him at the