Author: Armstrong, A. W.
Biography:
ARMSTRONG, Archibald W. (b c. 1789)
Little is known but a clue to his identity is in the letter and poems from his sister, Ann Spoor, about the death of her son George and printed in The Poetical Works. Ann Spoor’s brother was Archibald Armstrong born in about 1789 to Captain Archibald Armstrong (d 1801) and his wife Ann Askew. They were married in Shadwell, London, in Oct. 1785. Archibald Armstrong the younger was also a seaman; he lived in North Shields and may have risen to be a captain by 1820. (Both O’Donoghue and C. R. Johnson identify him as Irish but the preface to his O’Neil makes this unlikely.) His poems indicate that he was married and had at least one child, a son, but that both his wife and child had died. In 1818 Armstrong was arrested for high treason for threatening the life of the Prince Regent but there was no evidence and he was let go. He published The Particulars of the Arrest and Examination of A. W. Armstrong in 1818 with letters requesting an apology from the Prince Regent and Lord Sidmouth. A last possible sighting of him is in an 1820 list where A. W. Armstrong features as captain of the merchant ship Fame. (ancestry.co.uk 16 June 2022; Jeffrey Dennis, A Systematic Plan for Bettering the Condition of Merchants…in the Merchant Sea Service [1820]) SR