GEORGE WILLIAM CHARLES PIM, 



MASTER MARINER. 



" And now the stdnn-blast came, and ho 

 \Vas t^Tannous and strong : 

 He struck \^ath his o'ertakmg \\'uigs. 

 And chased us south along."- — Coleridge. 



('APTAi^J (!. \y. 0. PiM was horn at (Gloucester, England, on 

 9th Maich. 1866, the sou of Mr. John Robert Pirn, a gentle- 

 man of means. He came of a Mell-known nautical family, 

 the eldest son in every instance having been in the Royal 

 Navy, a practice extending backwards for ujjwards of two 

 hundred years. The subject of this notice was the first who, 

 although he had been entered as a Naval cadet, was in conse- 

 quence of unforeseen causes luiable to continue a naval 

 care'n . 



The family of Pini, or Pym, as originally written, has left 

 its mark in British history. There is reason to believe that 

 Captain Pirn is a lineally descended kinsman of the celebrated 

 English parliamentarian. John Pym, who, with John 

 Hauipden, equally eminent in the same direction, was one 

 of the "five members" impeached by Charles l.in 1642. 

 The name appears to have originally been Pym. but in the 

 reign of James I. some of the yoimger and gayer members, 

 it is said, became courtiers, but this step not meeting with 

 the approbation of the older Quakers, the latter expressed 

 their resentment by changing the family name to Pim. 



The name is well known in naval history. From 1798 to 

 1810 one Lieutenant Samuel Pym (subsequently Captain and 

 finally Admiral Sir Samuel Pym) did great service in the 

 Anglo-French naval fights in the West Indies. His most 

 important commands appear to have been the 74-gun ship 

 " Atlas," and the frigate " Sirius." In recent years the best 

 known naval member of the family was Admiral Bedford 

 Clapperton Pim (grand-uncle to Captain Pim), who was born 

 at Bideford in Devonshire in 1826. He took part, amongst 

 other achievements, in the Franklin Search Expedition to 

 the Arctic regions under Sir E. Belcher, in 1852. 



After severing his connection \\'ith the naval training ship, 

 George Pim, to use a colloquial phrase, " went to sea " about 

 1881, serving in various capticities in at least three sea-going 

 vessels until 1886. when, being then in Queensland, he entered 

 the Lighthouse service and was attached to the Proudfoot 

 Lightship on the Proudfoot Shoal, Torres Strait. After some 



