Palmer made his first voyage in the Carnatic in 1786.[2] Commander of the Boddam in 1796,[5] he received a complimentary letter from the court of directors for his conduct in an encounter with four French frigates. His last voyage was made in 1799,[2] after which he resigned owing to ill-health.[4]
In business
In 1802 Palmer entered into partnership with his father and brother, Horsley Palmer, and Captain Wilson, as East India Company merchants and shipowners at 28 Throgmorton Street, London.[2] In 1831 he was master of the Mercers' Company,[6] and 1832 he was elected chairman of the General Shipowners' Society,[2]
He and his brothers had property interests in Grenada, which used slaves on their Springs, Mount Aire and Upper Latante estates.[3]
In 1788 a near-drowning near Macao[4] directed his attention to the equilibrium of boats, and the means of preventing them from sinking. He first became connected with the recently founded Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck (now Royal National Lifeboat Institution) in 1826, and his plan of fitting lifeboats was adopted. He designed a new lifeboat, built in the shape of a whaleboat, narrow and pointed at both ends, with special pockets of air built in for buoyancy, which was officially adopted by the Institution in 1828.[4] The design was used for rescue lifeboats placed by the Institution at more than twenty ports, and was used until 1858, when it was superseded by the system of self-righting lifeboats.[2]
Palmer was deputy chairman of the society for over 25 years, and required his own ships to go to sea with the means of saving life.[2] His role was crucial in getting Algernon Percy, 4th Duke of Northumberland appointed as president of the Institution (an office he held from 1851 to 1865, during which he undertook a reorganisation[9]). In February 1853 he resigned his office, when the committee voted him the Gold Medal. In September 2008 this Gold Medal, with unique pendant in the shape of a lifeboat, was sold at auction for £3,200.[4]
Public life
Palmer served as Sheriff of Hertfordshire in 1818. In 1821 he held the office of master of the Mercers' Company, and in that capacity he attended the Lord Mayor at the coronation of George IV on 19 July 1821.[2]
An Act to make perpetual and amend an Act of the Fifth and Sixth Years of Her present Majesty, for preventing Ships clearing out from any Port in British North America or in the Settlement of Honduras from loading any Part of their Cargo of Timber upon Deck.
In 1832, when South Shields became a parliamentary borough, Palmer was a candidate for the Conservative Party, but was not elected.[2] After winning an 1836 by-election for South Essex, Palmer raised the matter of deaths at sea caused by shipwrecks, in Parliament. In April 1839, He chaired a select committee looking at the regulation of timber trading ships crossing the Atlantic Ocean to British North America. The resulting report led to the recommendation that these ships should be barred from carrying loads on their decks. As the Timber Ships Bill, it was discussed first in the Commons (2nd reading, July 1839)[10] and then the House of Lords (July 1840).[11] Changes were first introduced in the Timber Ships, British North America Act 1840, then the Timber Ships, America Act 1842, and then finally the Timber Ships Act 1845, which expanded and finalised legislation which prohibited timber ships from carrying cargo on deck.[4]
Although he had not had experience in agriculture, he vowed to his constituents that he would defend the Corn Laws, and publicly rebuked the Prime Minister Robert Peel when he repealed them.[4]
Palmer sat in Parliament from 1836 to 1847, successful in three strongly-contested elections.[2]
Palmer was the author of Memoir of a Chart from the Strait of Allass to the Island Bouro, 1799, and of A New Plan for fitting all Boats so that they may be secure as Life Boats at the shortest notice, 1828.[2]
Family
Palmer married, on 29 December 1795, Anna Maria, daughter of William Bund of Wick, Worcestershire, who died on 13 October 1856. They had five children:[2]
