September 10th Sir Walter Tremenheere (Birth)
     

Penzance – born Sir Walter Tremenheere (1761 – 1855) served in the Royal Navy in the Caribbean (1779 – 1783) until, with the ‘Treaty of Paris’, he was discharged on half pay and returned to the family home in Chapel Street. 

The nephew of William Borlase, the renowned historian and Rector of Ludgvan, Tremenheere spent his seven years on half pay engaging in the social life of Penzance’s society, drawing and painting.  The picture below is of Penzance Quay and shows the pre-1835 church and Church House at the bottom of Chapel Street.
                                                                                   Penzance Quay from New Street Slip by Walter Tremenheere, the view predates the construction of the Abbey Basin but shows the old pre-1835 church and Church House at the bottom of Chapel Street, New Street Stairs would have been just to the right of this view (courtesy Penlee Gallery)

Following the French Revolution, Tremenheere was recalled to the Navy to serve in the West Indies where he was welcomed by Sir Rose Price (November 21st) who was managing the Price family’s slave plantations.

In November 1800, Tremenheere was appointed governor of Curacao, which had been captured from the Dutch.  Returning to Cornwall in 1802, he married Frances Apperly who was 19 years his junior and to whom he had been betrothed for eight years.

Tremenheere served as a Royal Marine in 1805 on board ships of the Channel Fleet and was then posted to Woolwich.  In 1829, he was appointed Aide de Camp to King William IV and he was knighted three years later.

He turned down the offer of the Governorship of Jamaica and retired to Penzance in 1838 where he remained for the rest of his life.
 
 

 

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