Palmer was an officer of His Britannic Majesty's forces.
Novel[]
Neil Palmer was a 38 year old Captain of the Royal Marines aboard HMS Vengeance (Sharpe's Siege, Chapter 5). He led the Marines into an ambush set by Cornelius Killick as they marched to assault the Teste de Buch fort. He and his men were saved from defeat by Captain William Frederickson and his Riflemen (Sharpe's Siege, Chapter 7).
He said he and his wife lived at Gravesend, where he had buried two of his children who had died in infancy. The eldest of his two surviving children suffers fragile health. He dreams of taking his family far from the sea after the war, a small cottage with books, a horse, an orchard. Perhaps to live the life of a market gardener.
At Sharpe's eventual tribunal (Sharpe's Revenge, chapter 5), Palmer was reported to have been sent on a voyage to Van Dieman's Land (now Tasmania).
Television[]
Palmer played by James Rowland
A captain of the Prince of Wales' Own Volunteers, formerly the South Essex, he served under Colonel Horace Bampfylde and was badly wounded in the thigh at the assault on the Maquerre castle in Sharpe's Siege. The bullet was dangerously close to the artery, causing the surgeon to hesitate about removing it, until Sharpe threatened him.
He fought with Sharpe and Frederickson in repulsing General Calvet's assault on the castle, and returned with him to report Bampfylde's incompetence and cowardice.