Captain d’Eyncourt R.N.

A carte-de-visite portrait of Captain Edwin d'Eyncourt (1813-1903) of the Royal Navy.

Edwin Clayton Tennyson d’Eyncourt was a distinguished British naval officer. The second son of Charles Tennyson d’Eyncourt (1784-1861, born Charles Tennyson), and a first cousin of the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, he entered naval college in 1826 and in 1837 became a Lieutenant. He served in South American, East Indies and China stations during the 1840’s. In 1854 he served in the Baltic campaign under Sir Charles Napier as captain of the gunboat H.M.S. Desperate, and returned to that theatre in 1855 under Rear-Admiral Richard Saunders Dundas, as captain of the frigate H.M.S. Pylades. By 1878 he had attained the rank of Admiral. He was made a Companion of the Bath in 1873.

As a young man he thoroughly embodied his family’s social pretensions and their snobbish behaviour towards their poor relations, the Tennysons of Somersby. However, in later years the mutual dislike between him and his famous cousin thawed, and he gave Alfred advice on the propriety of accepting the peerage offered to him in 1883.

Photographed by Camille Silvy of London on 11 June 1861.