Page:Men of the Time, eleventh edition.djvu/906

 PIETER-MARITZBUE0— PIM.

889

nary to the Eussian Court, but he declined the honour. In April, 1875, he waa appointed Attomey- Gteneral of the tJnited States, and in 1876 Envoy-Extraordmary and Minister-Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James. He resigned that office in Dec, 1877. He is at present Gonsul-Gcneral for Her Britannic Majesty at New York.

PIETER-MARITZBURG, Bis- hop OP. {See Macboby, Dr.)

PIM, Captain Bedford Clap- PEBTON Tbevelyan, M.P., is the only son of Captain Edward Bedford Pirn, of Weirhead, Exeter (who died in command of H.M.S. Black Joke, on the coast of Africa), by Sophia Soltau, eldest daughter of T. F. Harrison, Esq., of Totnes. He was born at Bideford, Devon, June 12, 1826, and educated at the Royal Naval School. He went to India in the merchant service, and on his return was appointed a volunteer (Ist class) in the Royal Navy in 1842. Having been employed for some years in the Surveying service, he made the voyage round the world in H.M.S. Heraldy in 1845-61, and was engaged from first to last in the search for Sir John Franklin, both through Behring's Straits and Baffin's Bay. He was the officer who reached the Investigator, and saved the crew of that ship, besides being the first man who made his way from a ship on the eastern to a ship on the western side of the North-West Passage. He saw active service, in command, in the Russian war, for which he has a medal, and in China, where he was desperately wounded in no fewer than six places. He was made a Commander, April 19,1858. After visiting the Isthmus of Suez, Commander Pim returned to England in 1859, and read before the Royal Geographical Society a highly interesting paper on the Suez Canal. Soon afterwards, the Board of Admiralty appointed him to the command of the Oorgon, and despatched that vessel to the river Tyne, with a view of popularising

the navy, and encouraging the entry of seamen. His next service was the settling a delicate question with the French respecting the fisheries. This business having been satisfac- torily concluded, the Oorgon was despatched to the West Indies, and employed on the coast of Central America for the prevention of any further filibustering attempts against Nicaragua on the part of General Walker. In Nov., 1860, Commander Pim sailed in the Oorgon for the Cape of Good Hope and coast of Africa station, but in the June following, having ex- changed into, and brought home H.M.S. Fury, he paid that ship off at Portsmouth, and has since con- tinued on half-pay. He was ad- vanced to the rank of Captain, April 16, 1868, and was compulso- rily retired in April 1870, when he at once began to qualify himself for a new profession, and was called to the bar of the Inner Temple, Jan. 27, 1873. Captain Bedford Pim unsuccessfully contested Totnes in July, 1865, and Gravesend in Dec, 1868, but he was returned for the latter borough, in the Conser- vative interest, at the general elec- tion of Feb., 1874, and retained the seat till 1880. Since 1862 he has been engaged in opening, by his own private efforts, railway transit from the Atlantic to the Pacific across Nicaragua. Captain Bedford Pim is the author of " The Gate of the Pacific," 1863; " Dottings on the Roadside in Panama, Nicara- gusL, and Mosquito" (in conjunc- tion with the late Dr. Berthold Seemann), 1869; an "Essay on Feudal Tenure;" "The War Chronicle," 1873, being a history of the Franco-Prussian war; and various pamphlets and articles, mostly geographical. He is a magistrate for the county of Mid- dlesex, a member of several scien- tific societies, and proprietor of The Navy, a newspaper devoted exclu- sively to the maritime interests of the country.