Edward Peel (big game fisherman)

Early life and career

Peel, a son of William Felton Peel and Sarah Edith Peel, nee Willoughby, daughter of General Michael Francklin Willoughby, was born at Knutsford, Cheshire, on 31 May 1884. He had thirteen brothers and sisters and was a member of the wealthy, aristocratic Peel family. He attended Arnold House School in Llanddulas, Cheltenham College and the Lycee Francais in Tours. From 1902 he lived mostly in Egypt, in Alexandria. He was a keen cricketer both at college and in Egypt.

In World War I Peel served with the Wiltshire Regiment on the Western Front in France, in the Gallipoli Campaign, and with the Middle East force in Egypt, Palestine and Syria. He had a very distinguished record, being mentioned in dispatches five times and awarded the DSO and MC. From being a private in 1915 he had been promoted to lieutenant colonel by 1918; in 1919 he was awarded the Order of the Nile by the Sultan of Egypt, Sultan Fuad.

Peel worked in the family firm of Peel and Company, cotton and wheat merchants, which had been established in Alexandria since the mid-19th century. He became a director of several commercial companies and a leading member of the British community there. In 1923 he married Francoise Nora de Reviere.

Peel became a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1933, proposed by Field-Marshal Lord Allenby, and was vice-president of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom. Peel was keenly interested in marine biology and he provided his yacht and gave assistance to Frederick Russell in investigating the movements of tunny off the east coast of Britain. Although local fishermen considered there had been no tunny before World War I, the studies suggested that migration into the North Sea had not been recent. There are photographs of Peel and Russell engaged on this study. In 1934, together with Richard Kindersley, he took out a patent for a fishing reel. It incorporated a frictional braking device which allowed big-game fish to pull out the line under strong tension, while leaving the line free during baiting, etc.

In 1937 he was awarded a pilot's licence by the Royal Aero Club. In yachting, on three occasions he won the Royal Thames Yacht Club's Cumberland International Cup, the contest for 8–metre International class yachts.

Peel & Co.

In 1907, Peel's father William Felton was killed playing polo and Peel with his elder brother Willoughby Ewart, and his father's parter Kenneth Birley took on the family business, Peel and Company, with Peel himself becoming chairman in 1908. Described by former Ambassador, Lord Killearn as 'one of the biggest cotton firms of Alexandria' Peel insisted on keeping the company as a British registered company and paying taxes to the British Government, for he believed that the British Government would help protect the company, should there be political instability. This it did not. After the Suez crisis, President Nassar confiscated the company and its assets and expelled Peel and his family from Egypt.

Big-game tunny fishing

Following a catch off the Yorkshire coast of a large Atlantic bluefin tuna in 1929 (the fish were called "tunny" in Britain at the time), big-game tunny fishing in Britain became fashionable from 1930. Scarborough was the centre of attraction and the town was transformed into a resort for the wealthy who fished from their yachts. Magazines published many sensational stories covering the personalities and the yachts that sailed to Scarborough. A gentlemen's club, the British Tunny Club, was founded there in 1933 and Peel was their first president. In the season, which was August and September, Peel sailed with his "huge steam yacht" St George with an "exotic Sudanese crew" and in 1932 he landed a world-record tunny of 798 pounds (362.0 kg), capturing the record by over 40 pounds (18 kg) from a tuna caught off Nova Scotia by American champion Zane Grey. In 1950, when North Sea tunny were declining, Peel nevertheless caught a 639-pound (290 kg) specimen. Much of Mark Ross's book The Glory Days of the Giant Scarborough Tunny is dedicated to Peel's fishing.

Second World War

During Second World War, Peel was head of the British Community in Alexandria and on the recommendation of Sir Miles Lampson (later Lord Killearn) Peel was awarded the KBE. He was knighted in 1944 and was awarded the Grand Officer of the Order of George I by the King of the Hellenes, King Paul, in 1947.

Suez Crisis

In 1952 Peel wrote to the British government warning of the impossibility of maintaining a secure base on the Suez Canal but, following the failure to withdraw British troops and the ensuing 1956 Suez crisis, in 1958 he produced a report to the government on protecting British property in Egypt which was accepted but not acted upon.

Peel was a close friend of Lord Walter Monckton and advised him during the Suez Crisis. Peel wrote to Monckton stating that 'If Anthony Eden is banking on the Egyptians not being able to run the Canal, to think again. They could do it on their heads. I have been using the canal for fifty years and the Suez Canal Company have been providing a second rate service at exorbitant prices.'

In relation to the Suez Crisis, Killearn states that Peel was 'foremost in pressing the claims of the "small man" in priority to the larger claimants of who he was, of course, one of the biggest in the class of private firms'. Peel was one of the main protagonists in the effort to secure adequate compensation for the British residents who lost their all.

Death

Peel died at the Grosvenor House Hotel on 6 September 1961. His memorial service was held at the Grosvenor Chapel, Mayfair, London. Lord Killearn wrote an obituary of Peel, which was published in The Times, 26 September 1961. Killearn describes Peel as 'an outstanding character excelling at work as at play, a first class shot, a fine cricketer and golfer, a good tennis played who navigated his own yacht the S.S. St. George of 500 tons' and says that the distressing miscarriage of the Suez crisis resulting in the expulsion and ruin of the British community in 1956 broke Peel's heart and hastened his death.