“OLD GROG"

Evening Star, Issue 20128, 19 March 1929, Page 11

“OLD GROG"

AN EARLY NAVAL HERO .lust alongside Solomon’s Porch. in Westminster Abbey, yon will find, a monument to a roaring old sailorman. Admiral Edward Vernon tv riles “A.8.L..” in Ibc London ‘Daily Mail ’). .He was at the taking cl Gibraltar, and Queen Anne gave him -!U0 guineas tor his exploits there. He was with Norris in 1 lie Baltic. Hr t apt-nerd Porto Bello—-as ho vowed ho would—with six ships, ami losr only seven men in the tight; all London, when ’.ho news came, being lit i |i .n Ins honoir; and —as yon may remember it yon have read ‘Poderick Pandnm ’ —ho put up a great fight at Cartagena. It is not lor what he did amid the battle smoke, however, that the Navy and the nation re men i her him. He was in polities, too; and at an election after his popular victory was returned for Pocliester, Ipswich, and Penryn (in Cornwall) and only failed by a touch to win a seat for Westminster, too. He chose to sit for Ipswich, ami did so till his death, pouring forth broadsides when the Commons deliberated on his pet subjects. But for ail the storms lie raised in the House, if he had been only an M.P., we should have forgotten him completely. But he wore a boat cloak of some mohair stuff. Grosgrnin, the French call it—coarse texture, that is to say. We call it grogram. And lie introduced, in tho West Indies, tho cherished naval custom of drinking rnm-and-watcr. “Old Grog” the sailors called him; hence "grog”— and his everlasting remembrance.