Background
Hornby was born on February 10, 1825 in Winwick, England, the son of Admiral Sir Phipps Hornby and Sophia Maria Hornby.
Hornby was born on February 10, 1825 in Winwick, England, the son of Admiral Sir Phipps Hornby and Sophia Maria Hornby.
Hornby was educated at Winwick Grammar School and Southwood's School in Plymouth and joined the Royal Navy in March 1837.
At the age of twelve Hornby was sent to sea in the flagship of Sit Robert Stopford, with whom he saw the capture of Acre in November 1840. He afterwards served in the flagship of Rear-Admiral Josceline Percy at the Cape of Good Hope, was flag-lieutenant to his father in the Pacific, and came home as a commander. When the Derby ministry fell in December young Hornby was promoted to be captain. As the Derby connexion put him out of favour with the Aberdeen ministry, and especially with Sir James Graham, the first lord of the Admiralty, he settled down in Sussex as manager of his father's property. He had no appointment in the navy until 1858, when he was sent out to China to take command of the "Tribune" frigate and convey a body of marines to Vancouver Island, where the dispute with the United States about the island of San Juan was threatening to become very bitter. As senior naval officer there Hornby's moderation, temper and tact did much to smooth over matters, and a temporary arrangement for joint occupation of the island was concluded. He afterwards commanded the "Neptune" in the Mediterranean under Sir William Fanshawe Martin, was flag-captain to Rear-Admiral Dacres in the Channel, was commodore of the squadron on the west coast of Africa, and, being promoted to rear-admiral in January 1869, commanded the training squadron for a couple of years. He then commanded the Channel Fleet, and was for two years a junior lord of the Admiralty. It was early in 1877 that he went out as commander-in-chief in the Mediterraean, where his skill in maneuvering the fleet, his power as a disciplinarian, and the tact and determination with which he conducted the foreign relations at the time of the Russian advance on Constantinople, won for him the K. C. B. He returned home in 1880 with the character of being perhaps the most able commander on the active list of the navy. His later appointments were to the Royal Naval College as president, and afterwards to Portsriiouth as commander-in-chief. On hauling down his flag he was appointed G. C. B. , and in May 1888 was promoted to be admiral of the fleet. From 1886 he was First and Principal Naval Aide-de-Camp to the Queen to Queen Victoria, and in that capacity, and as an admiral of the fleet, was appointed on the staff of the German emperor during his visits to England in 1889 and 1890. He died, after a short illness, on the 3rd of March 1895.
President of the Royal Naval College (1881-1882)
In 1853 Hornby married Emily Frances Coles (sister of Captain Cowper Coles), with whom he had three sons and two daughters. One of his sons, Edmund Phipps-Hornby, a major in the artillery, won the Victoria Cross in South Africa in 1900; another, Robert Hornby, became an admiral in the Royal Navy.