Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Pye, Thomas (1713?-1785)
PYE, Sir THOMAS (1713?–1785), admiral, born about 1713, was second son of Henry Pye (1683–1749), of Faringdon in Berkshire, and of Knotting in Bedfordshire, by his second wife, Anne, sister of Allen Bathurst, first earl Bathurst [q. v.] Sir Robert Pye [q. v.] was his grandfather, and Henry James Pye [q. v.], the poetaster, was his nephew (Berry, Berkshire Genealogies, p. 133; Gent. Mag. 1800, i. 506). He entered the navy in May 1727, as a volunteer ‘per order,’ on board the Lark, and having served in her, in the Torrington and in the Rose, for the most part in the Mediterranean and West Indies, he passed his examination on 12 June 1734, being then, according to his certificate, twenty-one years old. On 18 April 1735 he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant. In 1739 he was lieutenant of the Bristol, and in 1740 of the Elizabeth in the Channel fleet; on 13 April 1741 he was promoted to be captain of the Seaford frigate, of 20 guns, on the home station. In 1743 he was officially commended for procuring certain intelligence of the state of the French fleet at Brest; and in 1744, being then in the Mediterranean, was sent by Admiral Mathews into the Adriatic, to intercept the supplies to the Spanish forces in Italy, and to co-operate with the Austrian army. For his service on this occasion he received ‘a special mark of distinction from the court of Vienna,’ and on his return to England was personally commended by the king. In August 1744 he was appointed by Mathews to be captain of the Norfolk, which he brought home from the Mediterranean in March 1748. He was then appointed to the Greenwich, a 50-gun ship; was moved a few days later to the Norwich, and in April 1749 to the Humber; in April 1751 to the Gosport, and in February 1752 to the Advice, with a broad pennant as commander-in-chief at the Leeward Islands.
In October 1755 he was superseded by Commodore (afterwards Sir Thomas) Frankland [q. v.], who, after reprimanding him for keeping his broad pennant flying in the presence of a senior officer, charged him with fraud, peculation, and neglect of duty, suspended him from the command of the Advice, and ordered him to return to England to answer to the admiralty for his conduct. Frankland's action was irregular; it was his duty to have brought Pye to a court-martial on the station; and accordingly, when Pye arrived in England, the admiralty refused to go into the matter, considering that by coming home Pye had practically acknowledged the truth of the charges; if he wished to be tried, they told him, he could go back to the West Indies, or wait till Frankland came home. Pye believed that Frankland's influence in the West Indies would prevent his having a fair trial, so he elected to wait. He was eventually tried by court-martial on 1, 2, 3, and 4 March 1758, and acquitted of the more serious charges, though reprimanded for carelessness in some of the accounts. He was accordingly ordered to be paid his half-pay from the day of his suspension, 18 Oct. 1755 (Memorial, 19 May 1758; Admiralty Treasury Letters, vol. iv.; Minutes of Courts-martial, vol. xxxviii.; Admiralty Minute-book, 28 Aug. 1758); and on 5 July 1758 was promoted to be rear-admiral of the blue squadron. In 1762 he was commander-in-chief at Plymouth.
On 21 Oct. 1762 he became vice-admiral of the blue squadron, but had no active service during the war. From 1766 to 1769 he was commander-in-chief at the Leeward Islands, and from 1770 to 1773 was commander-in-chief at Portsmouth. In June 1773 the king visited Portsmouth, and during several days reviewed the fleet at Spithead. On the 24th he knighted Pye on the quarter-deck of the Barfleur, under the royal standard, and at the same time ordered his promotion to the rank of admiral of the blue (Beatson, iv. 34–40).
From 1777 to 1783 he was again commander-in-chief at Portsmouth, and was especially ordered to be president of the court-martial on Admiral Keppel, in January 1779, a duty which he had endeavoured to avoid on the plea of ill-health (Admiralty to Pye, 24 Dec. 1778, Secretary's Letters, vol. lix.). He seems to have been excused from presiding at the court-martial on Palliser, the admiralty preferring to appoint a partisan of their own. This was the end of Pye's service; he died in London in 1785. His wife died in 1762, apparently without issue. He is described as a man of very slender ability, thrust into high office by the Bathurst interest. The peculiarity of his features obtained for him the distinguishing name of ‘Nosey,’ and his figure was ungainly; but ‘he had the vanity to believe that he was irresistible in the eyes of every woman who beheld him,’ and was notorious for the irregularities of his private life.
[Charnock's Biogr. Nav. v. 112; Beatson's Naval and Military Memoirs; The Naval Atalantis (a work mostly scurrilous, but not without a substratum of truth), p. 17; Official Correspondence, &c., in the Public Record Office.]