BROOKE PECHELL, Sir Samuel John (1785-1849), of Paglesham, Essex and Aldwick, Suss.

Brooke Pechell, a highly distinguished naval veteran and expert on gunnery, had been returned for the rotten borough of Helston as an ostensible Tory in 1830, but had lost little time in converting to the Whig ministry of Lord Grey, who appointed him their third lord of the admiralty, 25 Nov. 1830.1Oxford DNB; HP Commons, 1820-32, iv. 347-8. He duly voted in support of their reform bill, 19 Apr. 1831, before retiring from Helston, which the bill proposed to abolish, at the ensuing dissolution.2Hansard, 4 Mar. 1833, vol. 16, c. 119; West Briton, 6 May 1831. A ‘personal friend of his majesty’, at the 1832 general election Brooke Pechell came forward as the court nominee for Windsor. After a close contest, in which the crown was accused of heavy interference, he was narrowly returned in second place. Petitions against his election, on the grounds of unconstitutional influence, however, came to nothing.3N. Gash, ‘The influence of the crown at Windsor and Brighton in the elections of 1832, 1835, and 1837’, English Historical Review (1939), liv. 653-63, at 654.

A fairly frequent attender, Brooke Pechell loyally supported the Grey ministry in the lobbies, appearing in their majorities against military economies, 14 Feb. 1833, currency reform, 24 Apr. 1833, pension reductions, 18 Feb. 1834, lower corn duties, 7 Mar. 1834, and shorter parliaments, 15 May 1834, and for replacing church rates with a land tax, 21 Apr. 1834. In his only known speech, he defended the admiralty’s procedures for repairing ships and replacing masts and their policy of allowing seamen to quit the service in peace time, 25 Mar. 1833. That year he married a niece of the Whig duke of Norfolk. In December 1834, following the king’s dismissal of the Whig ministry, he vacated his place at the admiralty and made way for a Tory nominee at Windsor.4Gash, ‘Influence of the crown’, 655. He remained a regular guest of the court, however, especially after the return of the Whigs to office. In May 1836 it was reported that he had left England for the curative waters of Carlsbad on the recommendation of his doctors.5Morning Post, 27 May 1836.

Brooke Pechell again served as a lord of the admiralty during the last phase of Lord Melbourne’s second ministry. Endorsing his reappointment, 6 Mar. 1839, his former chief at the admiralty Sir James Graham, by now a Conservative, praised his work in making improvements to naval gunnery, adding that ‘there was no officer more efficient in his peculiar branch’.6Hansard, 6 Mar. 1839, vol. 45 c. 1351. He was promoted to rear-admiral in November 1846.

Brooke Pechell died childless at his leasehold house in Hill Street, Berkeley Square, in November 1849.7Standard, 5 Nov. 1849; Gent. Mag. (1850), i. 86. The bulk of his estate, proved under £90,000, 10 Jan. 1850, and the baronetcy passed to his younger brother George Richard Pechell, another distinguished naval officer and Liberal Member for Brighton, 1835-60.8PROB 11/2108/54; IR26/1877/13. Letters relating to Brooke Pechell’s gunnery experiments aboard the Sybilla between 1824-7 are held in the Stapleton mss at the West Yorkshire Archives Service.