Edward "Old Grog" Vernon (12 November 1684-30 October 1757) was an English Royal Navy admiral and a Tory MP for Penryn from 1722 to 1734, for Portsmouth in 1741, and for Ipswich from 1741 to 1757.
Biography[]
Edward Vernon was born in Westminster, London, England in 1684, the son of Secretary of State James Vernon. He joined the Royal Navy at the age of 16 and fought in the Mediterranean before taking command of the West Indies Station in April 1708. He transferred to the Baltic from 1715 to 1717 and became commodore of the Jamaica Station in 1720. Vernon concurrently served in Parliament as a Tory. He took up the case of the Welshman Robert Jenkins after the Spanish cut off his ear, and the ensuing outcry resulted in the War of Jenkins' Ear. Vernon captured Portobelo, Panama before besieging Cartagena de Indias, only for disease to ravage his fleet. He also failed in his attack on Santiago de Cuba, but he captured Guantanamo Bay and renamed it "Cumberland Bay." After being recalled in 1742, he served as MP for Ipswich and harassed the government on naval affairs. He died in 1757. His legacy is reflected in the drink "grog," named for Vernon's habit of wearing a grogram coat; in his former subordinate Lawrence Washington's Virginia plantation Mount Vernon; and in the English nickname "limey," which came from the lemon juice and sugar he and the Admiralty introduced to sailors' diets to deal with scurvy.