Alexander Ellice

Alexander Ellice (3 October 1791 8 October 1853) was a British naval officer, and for four years Member of Parliament for the constituency of Harwich, Essex. He was thereafter Comptroller of the Steam Department at the Admiralty for a year.

Biography

Alexander Ellice was born 3 October 1791 in London, the son of the merchant and fur trader Alexander Ellice, and Ann Ellice (née Russell). In 1795, his father purchased the Seigneury of Villechauve from Michel Chartier de Lotbinière, Marquis de Lotbinière. His brothers included General Robert Ellice and the politician and Hudson's Bay merchant Edward Ellice.

Alexander Ellice entered the Navy on 2 August 1806 as a volunteer on board , under Captain George Edmund Byron Bettesworth; and afterwards joined as midshipman, was present on 15 May 1808 in a severe action of an hour and a half with a Danish flotilla, near Bergen, in which Captain Bettesworth was killed. He continued to serve in HMS Tartar under Captain Joseph Baker until being transferred in June 1809 to , flagship of Sir James Saumarez in the Baltic.

Ellice was employed in the Mediterranean from January 1811 to June 1813 under Captain Henry Duncan in . During that period, among other services, he took part on 17 August 1812 in – according to the Naval Biographical Dictionary – a spirited skirmish with a powerful Neapolitan squadron in the Gulf of Naples.

Alexander Ellice died on 8 October 1853. There is a monument for him in St Mary's Parish Church, Hampton.

The Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership notes that Alexander Ellice renounced a claim arising from slaves held on the Morant estate in St Thomas-in-the-East, Jamaica, in favour of one A. R. Blake, but holds no further enlightening details.