The following obituary for Edward Hobart Seymour appeared in the Times newspaper.

Obituary in the Times newspaper
Date	Obituary
4 March 1929	SIR E.H. SEYMOUR. O.M. THE SENIOR ADMIRAL OF THE FLEET. Admiral of the Fleet the Right Hon. Sir Edward Hobart Seymour, O.M., died of influenza on Saturday at his residence at Maidenhead, in his 89th year. He had a distinguished career in the Navy for 68 years, and was, we believe, the only officer of the British Navy who ever commanded a force from eight nations in warlike operations; this he did in the first effort to bring succour to the besieged Legations in Peking in 1900. Sir Edward was the senior Admiral of the Fleet and the senior member of the Order of Merit, being indeed the last survivor of those originally nominated to the Order on its institution by King Edward in 1902. Many times he was chosen to represent the nation or the Navy on special occasions at home and abroad, where his courtesy and tact were always displayed to good purpose. Tall, and of fine physique, with his handsome presence he added dignity to many State ceremonies in various countries. He was one of the most travelled of naval officers, and his profession was everything to him, for he did not marry, and although a good man to hounds he was not specially keen on sport. His opinion on Service affairs was frequently sought after, but his modesty and sincere regard for policy made him one of the must discreet and reticent of officers. Sir Edward came of an old and distinguished naval family. He was the second son of the Rev. Richard Seymour; rector of Kinwarton, Warwickshire and Canon of Worcester; his grandfather was the Admiral Sir Michael Seymour who lost an arm in Lord Howe's action of the Glorious First of June, 1794, and was made a baronet in 1809 for his briljant capture of the frigates Thétis and Niémen. As Sir Edward Seymour himself wrote in The Times on September 8, 1920, this Sir Michael was the first of four generations in succession of Admirals Sir Michael Seymour on the active Flag List of the Navy, all four of whom had flown their flags on seagoing ships. A similar recurrence, both of names and of high rank, in one family, in either the Navy or the Arny, is probably without precedent. Born on April 30, 1840, Sir Edward was sent to Radley when the Rev. W.B. Heathcote was Warden. Many years after, in 1912, he recalled, at the College Commemoration, that three boys who were at Radley together — Lord Walter Kerr, Lord Charles Scott, and himself — entered the Navy at about the same age, and 50 years afterwards they were next to each other at the top of the active admirals' list. This was a most unusual occurrence, considering the large number of boys, schools, and naval officers, and the small proportion of the latter who reach flag rank. Entering the Service in 1852, after the perfunctory examination then in vogue — it being before the days of a training establishment at public expense — Seymour went straight to sea in the Encounter, screw corvette. The first thing he recollected, when he came to write his reminiscences, as happening to him in the Encounter was the First-Lieutenant's saying to him, "You will take charge of the signals of this ship." He, of course, know nothing about them, and the signal staff consisted of himself and a boy aged 16, no signalman being allowed to the ship, nor glasses of any kind. Appointed subsequently to the paddle-wheel frigate Terrible, built at Deptford in 1837, and one of the first British steam warships, he served in her in the Black Sea during the Russian War, receiving the Crimean and Turkish Medals and the Sebastopol clasp. In 1857, he joined the Calcutta, bearing the flag of his uncle, Sir Michael Seymour, Rear-Admiral of the White, and afterwards Vice-Admiral of the United Kingdom, in China, and he took part in the action with the Chinese junks in Fatshan Creek, the capture of Canton, and the reduction of the Taku forts, being awarded the China medal with three clasps. On reaching the age of 19, he passed in seamanship on board the then new naval cadets' ship Illustrious, in Portsmouth Harbour, and on completing the shore courses in gunnery, &c., was promoted to mate in May, 1859. Going out to China again the same year, he won the Royal Humane Society's silver medal on the way out by diving overboard, near the Rhio Islands, in a sea infested by sharks, to attempt to save a man who had fallen from a main-deck port. He became a lieutenant in February, 1860, and was appointed to the China flagship Chesapeake. In her he witnessed the last execution on board ship in the Royal Navy, a marine named Dalhanty being hanged at the yard-arm of the gunboat Leven for the attempted murder of two officers. From 1863 to 1866, Seymour was Flag Lieutenant to his uncle when Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth, and Sir Michael gave him a “haul-down promotion ” to commander. To occupy his time on half-pay he went for a northern cruise in a whaling ship from Peterhead. A Coastguard appointment in Ireland, at a time when Coastguard officers had an allowance to keep two horses so that they might rush off to any part of their coast in case of emergency, was followed by his first independent command, the gunboat Growler on the West Coast of Africa. Here in 1870 he was severely wounded in an action with pirates in the Congo. In 1872 he had command of the Vigilant, and afterwards of the Lively, both attached to the Channel Fleet, and next year was made a captain. The inevitable half-pay he again spent in travel in France and Italy, and also in studying at Greenwich, then just reopened as a Naval College. In 1875 he volunteered to command the Discovery in the Nares Arctic expedition, but on account of his African wound was not accepted medically, and instead took command of a troopship, the Orontes, in which he steamed nearly 100,000 miles. In 1880 he joined the Iris, the first ship in the Navy built of steel, and two years later succeeded Lord Fisher as captain of the Inflexible, then the largest ship in the Service and the first to be illuminated by electricity. An unusual billet was his appointment in command of the Cunard liner Oregon, commissioned as an armed merchant cruiser during the Russian war scare of 1885. When this blew over he served as chairman of an Admiralty Committee to revise naval officers' titles and readjust shares of prize money. In 1886-87 he was flag-captain to Admiral Sir George Willes, Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth, with whom, when captain of the Chesapeake, he had served nearly 30 years before; and in December, 1887, became assistant to the Admiral-Superintendent of Naval Reserves at the office in Spring-gardens. Among the Coastguard stations he had to inspect while so employed was one at Heligoland, which then belonged to us. Promoted to rear-admiral in July, 1889, Sir Edward had three years on half-pay, which he employed again in foreign travel and sea cruising. Russia, the Caspian Sea, Sebastopol and Odessa, a tour of the United States, the West Indies, and Panama added much to his experiences of the world. It Was typical of his wanderings that at Barbados one day he went to the post office and got one letter asking him to stay at Fonthill, in England, and another asking him to stay at Fonthill, Jamaica. He resumed sea service in 1892 as Second-in-Command in the Channel, and took a leading part in the operations which resulted in the salving of the Howe after she had been 148 days on the rocks at Ferol. His delight when the battleship was at last free and moving was almost, he said, like winning a victory. From 1894 to 1897 he was Admiral-Superintendent of Naval Reserves, and it was typical of his zeal and thoroughness that not only did he inspect every Coastguard station in the United Kingdom, but he went into every room in every house occupied by the ratings, to see that they were kept in order. An official steam yacht, the Hawk, was then at the Superintendent's disposal for inspection purposes. Sir Edward's period as Commander-in-Chief in China, from 1898 to 1901, was rendered memorable by the Boxer rising. News from Sir Claude Macdonald at Peking to say that the Boxers were troublesome and a guard was needed for the Legations led to the squadron proceeding to the anchorage off the Taku Bar, where Russian, French, German, American, Austrian, Italian, and Japanese ships were present. The situation becoming more serious, Sir Edward decided, in consultation with the foreign naval officers, to proceed to Poking with a naval brigade. He said afterwards in his memoirs:— Of course, I had to act without any home authority, but, in such cases, whether success or failure attends you, England nearly always approves an officer who has evidently done his best. I never could understand why anyone minds taking responsibility. You have only to do what seems proper, and if it turns out badly it is the fault of Nature for not having made you cleverer. The brigade was attacked by the Boxers just below Lang-fang, 40 miles from Peking, in much superior strength, and eventually the dash to save the Legations had to be given up, until a relief column came to the help of the brigade. For more than a week the latter was isolated and in a position of the greatest danger, but the foreign officers present bore testimony that the serious difficulties which were likely to arise from the clashing interests of eight nationalities were prevented by the judgment and courtesy of the British Admiral. Reinforced, Sir Edward began a retreat on Tientsin, which he reached safely, destroying a valuable armoury at Hsiku. Though unsuccessful in its main object, the expedition caused a diversion and a delay in any intended attack on the Legations. The Admiral was promoted to G.C.B. for his services, and the Admiralty retained him in the China command for six months longer than the usual period. In 1902, Sir Edward, who had been promoted to Admiral in the previous year, was naval representative with the Duke of Connaught's Garter Mission to King Alfonso of Spain, and four years later he took part in a similar Mission with Prince Arthur of Connaught to the Emperor of Japan. He was one of the first two naval members of the Order of Merit instituted in June, 1902, the other being Admiral of the Fleet the Hon. Sir Henry Keppel, and took part in the Coronation Procession in the following August. After serving as a member of the Naval Reserves Committee under Sir Edward (now Viscount) Grey, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief at Plymouth in March, 1903, and held the post until a month after promotion to Admiral of the Fleet in February, 1905. Later in that year he attended. Prince Arthur of Connaught to Berlin for the wedding of the German Crown Prince, and on the date of the Trafalgar Centenary he represented the Royal Navy at a celebration in Boston, U.S.A. In 1909 he was chosen to represent the British Government at the Hudson-Fulton celebrations in New York, when he hoisted his flag in the battle-cruiser Inflexible in command of a powerful squadron of the Royal Navy. He retired in 1910. Sir Edward was a good linguist, and his long and varied experience gave him exceptional knowledge, but he wrote little, and his autobiography, "My Naval Career and Travels," published in 1911, was his only important work. He was created G.C.V.O. in 1906, and sworn of the Privy Council in 1909, and in 1903 was made honorary LL.D. of Cambridge University.