John Augustine Edgell, 1880-1962

Abstract

Vice-Admiral Sir John Edgell, K.B.E., C.B., served for fifty-one years in the Royal Navy, forty-three of them in the Surveying Service. He was Hydrographer of the Navy from 1932 till his retirement in 1945. He was born at Teddington on 20 December 1880. His father, James Edgell, second son of the Rev. William Edgell, was Solicitor and Clerk to the Surrey County Council. His mother, Mary Beatrice, was the eldest daughter of the Rt Rev. Bishop Henry Lascelles Jenner, D.D. On his father’s side he was descended from Martin Folkes, who was primarily an antiquary though he had studied classics, philosophy and mathematics, and was elected a Fellow of the Society in 1713 and President from 1741 to 1752. More recently there was Rear- Admiral Henry Folkes Edgell, 1767-1846, who saw service against the French and fought in the Battle of Cape St Vincent, and against the Dutch, being present at the capture of Java, and his son, Vice-Admiral Harry Edgell, who saw service in the Crimean and Second China Wars, and brought the Canning Marbles from Bodroum. On his mother’s side Sir Herbert Jenner-Fust, Dean of Arches, was his great-grandfather, and Henry Lascelles Terence, youngest son of Sir Herbert and first Bishop of Dunedin, was his grandfather. The eldest son, Herbert Jenner-Fust, who captained Cambridge in the first inter-varsity cricket match, was afterwards President of the M.C.C., and is said to have played his last game of cricket at the age of 95.