THE TRAFALGAR CHRONICLE TRAFALGAR CHRONICLE Yearbook of THE 1805 CLUB No. 16, 2006 TRAFALGAR CHRONICLE
ii Cover Illustration: HMS Victory in her final berth at Portsmouth, from an original drawing by Hanslip Fletcher, 1932. Courtesy: Michael A. Nash Archive. Published by The 1805 Club, 2001, Cranbrook, Kent, TN17 2QD. Publication Design by Bumblebee www.bumblebeedesign.net Printed by B D&H, Litho and Screen Printers, Norwich. ISBN: 1-902392-15-9. Nelson by Ronnie Warneh, 2005
THE TRAFALGAR CHRONICLE Yearbook of The 1805 Club. No.16, 2006 Editorial Anthony Cross and Huw Lewis-Jones vi The Chairman’s Dispatch Peter Warwick viii Lily McCarthy CBE (1914-2005) Peter Hore xi The Trafalgar 200 Sermon: St Paul’s Cathedral, 23 October 2005 Richard Chartres 1 ‘Rusting Ingloriously’: James Noble and Peter Spicer, Nelson’s ‘St Vincent Heroes’ John Sugden 5 In the Footsteps of the Hero: Nelson at the Admiralty in London Justin Reay 24 ‘Ever,With Real Esteem…’: Continuing the Nelson Letters Project Colin White 44 ‘This Exposed Maritime County’: East Sussex and the Preparations for Invasion, 1803-04 Kevin Linch 50 Expeditionary Armies and Naval Power: The North German Campaign, 1805-06 Richard Harding 63 Primary Sources: Notice of the Execution of William White Anthony Cross 76 Nelson, Invasion Scares, and Film in 1939-45: That Hamilton Woman John Ramsden 78 Evidence of Absence: An Offence Against the Nation, Part II Anthony Cross 91 A Sailor of the King’s Navy: William Wheldon, (1783-1805) David Wheldon 107 Georgian Naumachias: Parkland Celebrations of British Naval Supremacy Patrick Eyres 113 Looking at Logbooks: Science and the Nelsonian Legacy Dennis Wheeler 130 From the Tower at Longon Sardo: Correspondence Between Lieutenant Magnon, Dr Alexander Scott, and Lord Nelson, Part I John Gwyther 141 Victualling Ship:A Comparison David Harris 159 Restoring Nelson:A Research Note Huw Lewis-Jones and Adrian Attwood 168 ‘The Story is Admirably Told’: The Nelson Pictures by Richard Westall R.A. (1765-1836) Richard Westall 171 Victory by Constable:A Rejoinder Charles Addis 180 The Nelson Portraits:Addendum II, 2006 Richard Walker 182 Napoleon and the Fondation Napoléon Peter Hicks 186 Contributors’ Biographies 193 The 1805 Club Membership as of September 2006 195 Notes for Contributors 199 iii
THE 1805 CLUB THE 18 05 CLUB President Mrs. Lily McCarthy, CBE (1914-2005) Vice Presidents Mr. K Flemming*, Mrs. J Kislak, Mr. M Nash*, Mr T A G Pocock, Mrs. W J F Tribe, OBE JP, Mr T Vincent*, Mr K Evans*, Dr Colin White Hon Chairman Peter Warwick 4A Camp Road,Wimbledon, London, SW19 4UL Hon Vice-Chairman Bill White 14 Devonshire Gardens, Chiswick, London,W4 3TN Hon Secretary John Curtis 9 Brittains Lane, Sevenoaks, Kent,TN13 2JN Hon North American Secretary Randy B Mafit 1981 Sunrise Boulevard, Eugene, Oregon, 97405, USA Hon Treasurer Lt. Cdr. David Harris, MBE RN 3 Stephenson Close,Alverstoke, Hampshire, PO12 2JD Hon Editors, The Trafalgar Chronicle Anthony Cross 30 Hopedale Road, Charlton, London, SE7 7JJ Huw Lewis-Jones, MA MPhil FRGS National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London SE10 9NF Hon Membership Secretary Sally Birkbeck 81 Pepys Road, West Wimbledon, London, SW20 8NW Hon Events and Public Affairs Officer Lynda Sebbage Oriole Cottage, Little St Mary’s, Long Melford, Suffolk, CO10 9HY Chaplain to The 1805 Club (Ex officio) Reverend Peter Wadsworth, MA The Vicarage, 21 Elson Road, Gosport, Hampshire, PO12 4BL Hon Editors, The Kedge Anchor Randy and Dana Mafit Paul and Penny Dalton Woodlands, Hawkham, nr. Pevensey, East Sussex, BN24 5BE Hon Publications Officer Stephen Howarth, FRHistS FRGS AMNI Shelton Great Barn, Shelton, Nottinghamshire, NG23 5JQ iv
Hon Fundraising Officer Chris Gray National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, SE10 9NF Hon PR and Media Officer Alison Henderson 5 Elder Close, Badger Farm,Winchester, Hampshire, SO22 4LG Hon Education Officer Dianne Smith Hazlebury, Main Rd., Birdham, Chichester,W.Sussex, PO20 7BY Hon Webmistress Josephine Birtwhistle 88, Bryer Island, Hants, PO6 4UF Research Advisor Professor Leslie P LeQuesne, CBE FRCS Flat 1, 10 Strathray Gardens, London, NW3 4NY * Indicates Founder Member. All posts listed above are honorary. The Club’s Bank TSB, 27, High Street,Whitchurch, Shropshire, SY13 1AX. Account Number: 11193060 Annual Subscription Rates Members: £25 / US$50 Schools: £50 / US$100 Corporate Members: £100 / US$200 Membership of The 1805 Club The 1805 Club is a non-profit-making voluntary association dedicated for the benefit of the public to the preservation and maintenance of Nelson-related graves and monuments. The 1805 Club also publishes original Nelson-related research, reprints rare Nelson-related documents and organises events of interest to students of the Royal Navy in the age of sail. Membership of The 1805 Club is by direct application to or special invitation from the Committee and is at the Committee’s discretion. Subscriptions are due on 1 January each year. All members receive, post-free, the Club’s Newsletter, the Club’s Yearbook The Trafalgar Chronicle, the Club’s Occasional Papers and the Club’s Nelson 2005 Commemoration series of booklets published at intervals during the Nelson Decade. A charge may be made for other special publications. A prospectus is available on request from the Membership Secretary or the North American Secretary. For economy of administration, members are encouraged to pay their subscriptions by Direct Debit. Disclaimer The opinions expressed in The Trafalgar Chronicle are those of the contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The 1805 Club as a whole. Registered as a Charity in England and Wales Registered Charity No. 1071871 v
Editorial [M]y fate is fixed, and I am gone, beating down Channel with a foul wind. Nelson writing from Victory to his good friend Alexander Davison, September 1805. After the storm of Trafalgar, ‘The Hero’is dead and buried. Indeed, after a protracted bicentennial exhumation, he has been re-buried with full honours; a life lived, and long remembered, in the public gaze. Is it proper, inevitable perhaps, that this sixteenth edition of The Trafalgar Chronicleshould be characterised by a ‘post mortem’solemnity? After all, as Nelson wrote dejectedly to Alexander Davison in May 1801, ‘the dead cannot be called back, it is of no use dwelling on those who are gone’. But then again, certainly not, when we recall how the same man had in happier times boasted to his wife, ‘a glorious death is to be envied…recollect that death is a debt we must all pay, and whether now, or in a few years hence, can be of little consequence’. The re-enactment of Lord Nelson’s funeral in St Paul’s on 8 January earlier this year stirred the memory of an incident that occurred in the same place some forty years before. Toward the close of the funeral of Sir Winston Churchill in January 1965, a trumpeter, high up in the Whispering Gallery, sounded the Last Post. As his final notes echoed throughout the vast cathedral, another trumpeter sounded Reveille. It was orchestrated to symbolize continuity, and like the ‘Ouroboros’, the tail-swallowing snake that adorns many portrait eulogia, it stood for eternity. Churchill, a lifelong admirer of Nelson, wanted to make the connection explicit; he had died, as his hero had, his duty to the country done. Nor, in reality, was there much time to mourn. Though Trafalgar had been fought and won, there were new theatres of war to arrest the imagination, and to test public sympathies for another ten years. These had all to be endured by a nation as its people struggled under conditions of severe economic and social upheaval. As at Trafalgar, there was to be no bright new beginning, no clear dawn to offer immediate hope. Indeed, it might have been Churchill speaking when Nelson wrote in 1804: ‘Buonaparte, by whatever name he may choose to call himself- general, consul, or emperor- is the same man we have always known, and the common disturber of the human race: it is much more dangerous to be his friend than his enemy’, and it would not be until 1815 that Nelson’s ambition, of ‘Stopping Napoleon’, would finally be realised. This year’s Chronicle follows on the success of our bicentennial number, by attracting a wide range of scholarship. The Club’s aim has always been to promote and publish research into the Royal Navy of the Georgian period, and while our emphasis is on maritime and naval history, we welcome work which reflects other approaches, or which offers new interdisciplinary insights. We are constantly commissioning new articles, as well as gratefully receiving all manner of submissions. But this is no free-for-all; we trust there is some definite order to this anthology. vi
First and foremost, it is full of original research, united by the goal of returning to primary sources and recovering unpublished correspondence, and to re-discover neglected lives and iconographies. We follow in Nelson’s footsteps as he navigates the Admiralty buildings; we can accompany brave junior officers as they wait there, increasingly desperate, on half-pay; we join local militia men as they prepare for foreign invasion, and others as they plan for an amphibious landing on a hostile coast. We consider some of the logistics involved in feeding them. We join the search for missing Nelsonian relics; enjoy mock naval battles in grand country estates; observe a painter at his easel working on his canvas. We meet Churchill in his private cinema as he watches Olivier stride stoically across his screen; we climb a column high above the capital to interview a mason applying pioneering techniques of ‘stone dentistry’to restore a weathered Nelson to his former glory. There is much else besides, and if some may be disappointed to discover that reviews are no longer included here, please note, it is instead our intention that the Club’s website www.admiralnelson.org will soon become the forum for a range of book reviews, where members will be invited to offer their own appraisals of the literature of maritime history. Making the website active in this way, we hope to bring a variety of voices to the table, and to make it far easier for members to share knowledge and enthusiasm for the books we all read. Thus, enthusiasm continues unabated, after the excitement of a bicentenary year. There are many new stories to be recovered, many new memorials to be restored, and much, much more research to be done in all aspects of our maritime history. Let us beat down Channel in full sail with the wind at our backs. Anthony Cross Huw Lewis-Jones vii Greenwich Pensioners at the Tomb of Lord Nelson. Engraving after Sir J.E. Millais, circa 1895. Courtesy:Warwick Leadlay Gallery.
viii The Chairman’s Dispatch Peter Warwick As Nelson’s coffin was lowered into the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral on 9 January 1806, Sir Isaac Heard, Garter Knight at Arms, offered an unscripted tribute: ‘The Hero, who in the moment of Victory, fell covered with Immortal glory. Let us trust that he is now raised to a bliss ineffable and a most glorious immortality’. Exactly two hundred years later, The 1805 Club’s special service and ‘funeral’evensong at St Paul’s well captured the spirit of these words. For many it was the most moving of all the Trafalgar Bicentenary events. It was certainly the one that will stay vivid in my mind forever. After more than ten years of celebrating the bicentenaries of Nelson’s achievements we were on the brink of an incredible threshold. There was a powerful sense of something unique, a sense of awe, and a true sense of loss. Not only were we all a part of Nelson’s ‘most glorious immortality’, we were also among those privileged and destined to be its custodians. The occasion undoubtedly enhanced the Club’s prestige and even the Cathedral, so used to great state occasions, was taken aback by the power of the service. While there was a sense of closure there was also a sense of aspiration and optimism about the future for our Club. The poignancy of this watershed was brought home to us in March with the death of our cherished President, Lily Lambert McCarthy CBE. Lily had a lifelong devotion to ‘The Immortal Memory’and a consuming interest in naval history, and had been President from the foundation of the Club in 1989. She will probably be best remembered for her generous donation to the Royal Naval Museum of one of the finest collections of Nelson artefacts in private hands, but she was also a strong Anglophile and at the outbreak of war in 1939 did all she could in America to support Britain. We shall remember her for her kindness, enthusiasm, and for the close interest she always took in the activities of the Club. Lily recognised that neither our charitable work nor the great interest in Nelson would come to an abrupt end just because the bicentenaries of Trafalgar and his death had passed. At such a moment, it is worth reminding ourselves that no other organisation exists to conserve the monuments and memorials of the Georgian sailing navy. Memorials are the very stuff of history- a constant and touching reminder of the bravery, adventures, and achievements that helped both to shape the world and to form our understanding of it. John Wilson Croker could have written the anthem for this with his lines from ‘Songs of Trafalgar’: Thither shall youthful heroes climb, The Nelsons of an aftertime,
ix And round that sacred altar swear Such glory and such graves to share. Appropriately, a national campaign was launched this summer under the banner: ‘History Matters: Pass It On’. The programme is gathering momentum and the way it justifies itself has real empathy with the raison d’être of the Club: ‘A society out of touch with its past cannot have confidence in its future. History defines, educates and inspires us. It lives on in our historic environment. As custodians of our past, we will be judged by generations to come. We must value it, nurture it and pass it on’. In the context of the Georgian sailing navy this is precisely what the Club seeks to do. Yet, the force of nature is a constant challenge as stones crack and mosses creep, as roots pry into fissures and acid rain dissolves. Our conservation work seeks to slow down this process of decay so that future generations are not deprived of their rich maritime heritage. Our mission is to identify and conserve these graves and monuments so that all can enjoy, and, more importantly, learn from the wonderful tales associated with those memorialised as we seek to bring them ‘alive’through research and with imaginative and exciting club events. Thanks to the interest aroused by the bicentenary of Nelson’s death we are being approached for help and advice more than ever. This interest is also demonstrated by the growth in our membership, which in 2005 exceeded five hundred– the target we set ourselves five years earlier. Another landmark is the progress we have made with The Trafalgar Captains Memorial Project. Our well-received publication The Trafalgar Captains:Their Lives and Memorials has already been reprinted and the conservation work is nearing completion thanks to grants totalling £12,450 from the Manifold Trust, Leche Trust, Idlewild Trust and Francis Coales Foundation. This has allowed us to progress the work on five of the seven graves, namely Captain Charles Bullen (Britannia), at St. James Church, Shirley, Southampton; Captain Thomas Dundas (Naiad), at St. Nicholas Church, Hurst near Reading; Lieutenant John Richards Lapenotiere (Pickle), at Menheniot Church, Cornwall; Captain Sir Edward Berry (Agamemnon), at St. Swithins Church,Walcot, Bath; and Captain Richard Grindall (Prince), at St. Nicholas Church,Wickham, Hampshire. The total cost of the works for all seven Trafalgar Captain graves amounts to £26,835 and the Club is now concentrating on raising funds for the conservation of Captain Thomas Capel’s (Phoebe) grave at Kensal Green, London, and Captain Henry Bayntun’s (Leviathan) tomb at All Saints Church, Weston, Bath. While the life and legacy of Horatio Nelson is always at the heart of everything we do, we are fortunate that the Club’s charitable objects allow it to spread its influence and activity beyond Nelson and Trafalgar. Nelson himself was the first to recognise the considerable talent gathered around him, whether precursor, contemporary, or protégé and there is now a real opportunity to build on our achievements attained throughout the Nelson Decade and revisit not only the naval story during the remainder of the Napoleonic Wars, but also the key eighteenth-century events that influenced Nelson’s own thinking.
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