As we have seen, he was the third son of the first Viscount Falmouth, and was called Edward after his grandfather. His grandmother, Jael, was of the fine old Cornish stock of Godolphin, and his mother was Charlotte Godfrey, a niece of the great Duke of Marlborough, not a natural daughter (as Hals says) of James II., by Arabella Churchill, but her eldest daughter, by Colonel Charles Godfrey, Master of the Jewel Office, whom she had subsequently married;--so that he seems to have had royal as well as good fighting blood in his veins, some of which he was destined to shed for his country. I do not know at what date he received his lieutenant's commission; probably it was on being appointed to the _Hector_ in 1732; but on the 12th March, 1737, when not quite twenty-six years old, he was appointed captain of the _Leopard_, a fourth-rate of fifty guns. On the outbreak of the war with Spain, he was transferred to the _Shoreham_ of twenty guns, and was sent to cruise off Jamaica. Unfortunately, when Admiral Vernon determined, in November, 1740, on attacking Porto Bello (a place which Columbus had discovered and named in 1562, and which had once before succumbed to a British Admiral, Sir Francis Drake, in 1596), the _Shoreham_ was found to be unfit for action; but Boscawen would not be deprived of this chance of seeing some active service, so he sailed as a volunteer, and so far distinguished himself at the easy capture of the place--for the garrison was on a peace footing, and the British lost only seven men--that he was entrusted with the duty of superintending the demolition of the fortifications. Rejoining the _Shoreham_, which had now been thoroughly overhauled, we next hear of him, in March, 1740-41, at the siege of Carthagena, the chief port in New Granada, again under Admiral Vernon, who is described as a man of fair abilities, but of harsh overbearing temper;--one of those naval heroes of whom Byron sourly says in his 'Don Juan:' 'They filled their sign-posts then like Wellesley now.' Here again he gathered laurels, and attracted considerable notice by what Campbell describes as his 'quick-sighted judgment and intrepid valour,' commanding a detachment of 300 sailors and 200 soldiers, and storming a fascine battery on Boca Chica, which had much galled General Wentworth, and held our forces in check. Campbell thus describes Boscawen's part in the affair, which reminds us of the recent gallant rush on Tel-el-Kebir:[91]