During the Napoleonic War he was press ganged and spent the following four years as the ship fiddler on Sir Edward Pellew’s ship.  It has been suggested that Pellew (1^st Viscount Falmouth) had Emidy singled out because of his musical talent. 

In 1799, he was discharged in Falmouth and began to work as a performer, composer and violin teacher, becoming leader of the Truro Philharmonic Orchestra, founding Truro’s biennial concerts in 1804. 

One of his students was James Silk Buckingham (August 25^th) who described him as ‘an exquisite violinist, a good composer, who led at all the concerts of the county, and who taught equally well the piano, violin, violoncello, clarionet and flute’.   

He married Truro-born Jenefer Hutchins with whom he had eight children and some of his descendants still live in the south west of England.