Editor’s Foreword The theme for this edition of the Trafalgar Chronicle, the 29th, is Nelson’s friends and contemporaries. The lead entry is a reminder that it is not just the British who founded naval dynasties, families whose sons served the nation and the navy over several generations, but, as we learn from no less than John Lehman, who was Secretary of State of the US Navy under President Ronald Reagan, he too descended from a line of seafarers. Then, written by Susan Smith, there is a fascinating glimpse of Nelson himself through the eyes of a young American professor from Yale who visited Europe in 1805. Des Grant sheds a light on a sometimes overlooked feature of Nelson’s life: that throughout his career he was influenced to a great extent by the Irish. And the Rev Lynda Sebbage looks at another influence on Nelson, the padres – or sin bosuns as they were known in the Navy – who served in ships with him. Two articles, one by Kenneth Cozens and Derek Morris and the other by Pete Stark, enable the reader to compare and contrast aspects of life ashore during Nelson’s time, while Tom Allen reminds us that the American War of Independence or American Revolutionary War was, in fact, more like a second English Civil War. We tend to see history in black-and-white, goodies and baddies, winners and losers, but the next half a dozen articles remind us that this is not so. In the war of 1775–83 many good men and women on both sides had difficult choices to make about which loyalties to follow, decisions that would affect them and their families over the generations. That many Canadians would remain loyal to the Crown is to be expected, like the Halifax-born Westphal brothers, whose stories are told by Tom Iampetro and Jeremy Waters, who enjoyed long and successful careers in the Royal Navy. As did Provo Wallis, who Jeremy Utt tells us, was an admiral of the fleet for so long that the Admiralty asked him to step down, but the old man refused. Jack Satterfield recalls the story of Richard Bulkeley, father and son, who knew Nelson throughout his life, while Andy Zellers-Frederick records the unusually long, active career in the Navy of Nova Scotian-born Manley Dixon. A second article by Zellers-Frederick tells the story of Thomas Tudor Taylor, from a family that split into Rebel and Loyalist factions, and Anna Kiefer 8
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