Life
Born into an aristocratic family, Alexandre was the nephew of the mathematician Marc-Antoine Parseval and the Académicien François-Auguste Parseval-Grandmaison. He volunteered for the Navy in 1804 and participated in the recapture of Fort Le Diamant on Martinique, then fought at Trafalgar as an aspirant on board Bucentaure, the admiral's flagship. As an enseigne de vaisseau, Parseval-Deschenes participated in the 1815 hydrographic investigations of Brittany. In 1817 he took part in the expedition that retook Guyana for France, then commanded the French naval station in that colony for two years.
In 1822, as lieutenant de vaisseau, Alexandre was awarded the Légion d'honneur for successfully rescuing the crew of the frigate Africaine, shipwrecked on the Newfoundland coast. He then commanded the frigate Iphigénie in the Mexico expedition participating in the blockade of Veracruz and bombardment of San Juan de Ulúa in 1838, then the occupation of Argentine island of Martin-Garcia in 1839.
Promoted to contre-amiral on 30 April 1840, Alexandre then served as major-general of the navy at Toulon, then Maritime Prefect at Cherbourg, before commanding the training squadron in the Mediterranean. He then rose to vice admiral on 15 July 1846, he next served as Maritime Prefect at Toulon then once again commander of the Mediterranean training squadron. He entered the Conseil de l'amirauté in 1851 and presided over the Conseil des travaux de la Marine. He was made a senator by Napoleon III on 26 November 1852. He the commanded France's Baltic fleet during the Crimean War, with which he bombarded the Russian fortress of Bomarsund and received its surrender on 16 August - as a reward he was promoted to admiral on the following 2 December. Admiral Parseval-Deschenes is buried at the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise and a late 19th-century aviso in the French Navy (launched in 1879 and decommissioned in 1898) was named after him.
Read more about this topic: Alexandre Ferdinand Parseval-Deschenes
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“The genuine artist is never “true to life.” He sees what is real, but not as we are normally aware of it. We do not go storming through life like actors in a play. Art is never real life.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Like children, the elders are a burden. But unlike children, they offer no hope or promise. They are a weight and an encumbrance and a mirror of our own mortality. It takes a person of great heart to see past this fact and to see the wisdom the elders have to offer, and so serve them out of gratitude for the life they have passed on to us.”
—Kent Nerburn (20th century)
“To quarrel with the uncertainty that besets us in intellectual affairs would be about as reasonable as to object to live one’s life with due thought for the morrow because no man can be sure he will alive an hour hence.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)