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 HMS Crocodile, under Captain George Edmund Byron Bettesworth; and afterwards joined HMS Tartar 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 HMS Victory, 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 HMS Imperieuse. 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.
He was promoted to the rank of lieutenant on 30 October 1813 and transferred to HMS Indus under Captain William Hall Gage. Ellice subsequently joined – on 18 January 1814, HMS Caledonia, bearing the flag of Lord Exmouth, under whom he appears to have been soon afterwards present in a partial action with the Toulon fleet – on 2 June 1814, HMS Cossack and on 29 April 1815, HMS Tenedos, commanded on the North American station by Captains Lord Prudhoe, Robert Rodney, and Hyde Parker – on 6 March 1816, he joined HMS Minden under Captain William Paterson, in which ship, after participating in the 1816 Bombardment of Algiers, he served for four years in the East Indies under the flag of Sir Richard King – and, on 27 May 1822, as first-lieutenant, HMS Jupiter, under Captain George Augustus Westphal, employed on Particular Service.