Item 0015 - Letter, 6 August 1886

Lourenço Edye was born in Rio de Janeiro. He rose through the ranks of the Royal Navy from major to lieutenant colonel in the Royal Marines to assistant director of Naval Intelligence. He authored a number of books on military and naval subjects, including Catechism on the Manual of Instruction in Army Signalling. His most important work was Historical Records of the Royal Marines, of which volume one — concerning the period 1664-1701 — was published in 1893. After retiring from the military, he came to Canada in 1899 and worked first as Assistant Commissioner for the Trust and Loan Company of Canada in Toronto and the next year as Commissioner at the head office in Montreal. He worked on a second volume of his Historical Records of the Royal Marines, but the manuscript was lost when the ship on which Edye was travelling from South America to Britain was attacked by a German U-boat. Edye himself survived and died later in Sidmouth, England. Two other naval scholars, Colonel Cyril Field, RMLI, and General Sir H. E. Blumberg, KCB RM were able to use Edye's notes to produce the three-volume work Britain's Sea Soldiers.