captain on 7 June 1814, but had no opportunities of achieving any special distinction. On 4 June 1815 he was nominated a C.B.; and on 24 Oct. 1816, whilst in command of the Comus frigate, he was wrecked on the coast of Newfoundland. In February 1824 he was sent, in command of the Tamar, to establish a colony on Melville Island, Australia; after which he went to India and took part in the first Burmese war. On 25 Jan. 1836 he was made a K.C.H., and in the following year was appointed to the Alligator, and again went out to Australia, where, the colonising of Melville Island having failed, he formed a settlement at Port Essington. Thence he again went to India, where, by the death of Sir Frederick Maitland, in December 1839, he was left senior officer for a few months, till superseded by Rear-admiral Elliot in July; and again in the following November, when Admiral Elliot invalided, till the arrival of Sir William Parker in August 1841. Sir Gordon Bremer had thus the naval command of the expedition to China during a great part of the years 1840-1, for which services he received the thanks of parliament, and was made K.C.B. on 29 July 1841. In April 1846 he was appointed second in command of the Channel squadron, with his broad pennant in the Queen; and in the following November to be commodore-superintendent of Woolwich dockyard, which post he held for the next two years. He attained his flag on 15 Sept. 1849, but died a few months later, on 14 Feb. 1850.
He married, in 1811, Harriet, daughter of Thomas Wheeler, and widow of the Rev. George Henry Glasse, and left a family of two sons and four daughters, the eldest of whom married Captain (afterwards Admiral) Sir Leopold Kuper.
[O'Byrne's Nav. Biog. Dict.;Gent. Mag. (1850), N.S. xxxiii. 534.]
BREMNER, JAMES (1784–1856), engineer and ship-raiser, was born at Keiss, parish of Wick, county of Caithness, on 25 Sept. 1784, being the son of a soldier. He received such education at Keiss as his mother's means could afford until 1798, when he was apprenticed to Robert Steele & Sons, shipbuilders of Greenock, whose establishment afforded every opportunity for both theoretical and practical instruction. He remained at Messrs. Steele's for about six years and a half. At the age of twenty-five, after having made two voyages to North America, he settled at Pulteney Town in his native parish, where he eventually occupied the shipbuilding yard for nearly half a century. During that time he built fifty-six vessels, from a ship of 510 tons to a small sloop of 45 tons. He was also engaged in designing and constructing harbours and piers on the northern coast of Scotland. His works of this kind included the reconstruction of the old harbour of Pulteney Town, the construction of Keiss harbour (1818), the reconstruction of Sarclet harbour near the bay of Wick (1835-6), the construction of Lossiemouth harbour, and the harbour of Pitullie, near Fraserburgh, besides surveying and preparing working plans for many other ports in Scotland.
Bremner evinced great ingenuity in the raising and recovering of wrecked vessels; and in the wide circuit between Aberdeenshire and the isle of Skye, comprehending the islands of Orkney, Shetland, and Lewis, and the critical navigation of the Pentland Firth, he raised no less than 236 vessels. With one of his sons he was employed in assisting to take the Great Britain off the strand at Dundrum Bay in August and September 1847. Bremner was elected a corresponding member of the Institution of Civil Engineers on 12 Feb. 1833, and received a Telford medal in 1844 for his papers on 'Pulteney Town Harbour,' 'Sarclet Harbour,' 'A New Piling Engine,' and 'An Apparatus for Floating Large Stones for Harbour Works,' For the last twelve years of his life he acted as agent at Wick for the Aberdeen, Leith, and Clyde Shipping Company. He died suddenly at Harbour Place, Pulteney Town, on 20 Aug. 1856. Bremner was the author of a tract, entitled 'Treatise on the Planning and Constructing of Harbours in Deep Water, on Submarine Pile Driving, the Preservation of Ships Stranded and Raising of those Sunk at Sea, on Principles of lately patented Inventions,' 1845, 8vo.
Of his numerous family the sons were all brought up as engineers; one of them, David Bremner, engineer for the Clyde trustees, died in 1852.
[Minutes of Proceedings of Institution of Civil Engineers (1857), xvi. 113-20.]
BREMNER, ROBERT (d. 1789), music publisher, was born in Scotland in the early part of the eighteenth century. He began life as a teacher of singing, but about 1748 set up in business in Edinburgh as a music printer and publisher, at the sign of the Harp and Hautboy, in High Street. Here he published, in 1756, a work entitled 'The Rudiments of Music; or, a Short and Easy Treatise on that Subject. To which is added, A Collection of the best Church tunes, Canons, and Anthems.' This book, which is characterised by its sensible directions for church singing at a time
