Author: SPENCE, Robert Traill
Biography:
SPENCE, Robert Traill (1785-1826: ancestry.com)
A hero in the US Navy after whom a destroyer was named, he was born in Portsmouth NH on 30 Mar. 1785, the son of Mary (Traill) and Keith Spence. His father, originally from Orkney in Scotland, had settled in Portsmouth as a merchant and later became purser of the US frigate Philadelphia. (There may have been literary talent passed on in the family: one of the daughters, Harriet, married the Rev. Charles Lowell and became the mother of the poet James Russell Lowell.) Robert Spence joined the navy as a midshipman in 1800. In 1804 his ship saw action off Tripoli, where his father as it happened was a prisoner of war. When the stern of his ship was blown to pieces, Spence, who was working a gun in the bow, continued to fire it until the ship sank--himself, unable to swim, sitting astride the gun and waving his cap until he went under (but was fortunately rescued). He was made lieutenant in 1807, served in the War of 1812, was promoted to master-commandant in 1813 and to post-captain in 1815, and commanded the naval station at Baltimore until 1822. After postings in Africa and the West Indies, he was appointed to command the West India fleet in 1826 but died at his home near Baltimore before he could take up his position, probably on 26 Sept. 1826 (not 1827). The Minstrelsey [sic] of Edmund the Wanderer was published by "Lieutenant Spence" under the editorial fiction of manuscripts left with a friend by a departed genius; in emulation of Petrarch, it follows the devoted but ultimately disappointed love of "Edmund" for "Licea." Spence married Mary Clare Carroll (1794-1871) of Annapolis MD at Baltimore on 16 June 1812. The couple had seven children, of whom at least four survived their father. (ancestry.com 12 Oct. 2020, 30 Apr. 2026; Appleton; destroyerhistory.org 12 Oct. 2020; Southern Patriot [Charleston SC] 4 Oct. 1826) HJ
Other Names:
- Lieutenant Spence