Pirates and Privateers - The Trafalgar Chronicle

Cover Art: The Trafalgar
Chronicle New Series 2

The Trafalgar Chronicle New Series 2
Edited by Peter Hore
Seaforth, 2017, ISBN 978-1-4738-9976-6, £20.00 / US $32.95

The Royal Marines, whose history traces back to 1664, and the United States Marine Corps, first founded in 1775, gained distinction when the world was at war between 1792 and 1815. Past histories have often given short shrift to these sea soldiers, but here The 1805 Club allows them to take center stage. The various essays chosen for inclusion demonstrate the vital roles they played and illustrate why they participated in “every important action of fleet, afloat and ashore during the Great War.” (5) The contributors include navy and marine personnel, academics, researchers, writers, and historians.

The book opens with Julian Thompson’s “The Marines: The Early Days,” which explores the origins of the British Marines, how they became the Royal Marines, who they were, and what they did during their first 151 years. Anthony Bruce focuses on “The Marines in Boston, 1774-75,” with particular emphasis on the events leading up to and including the Battle of Bunker Hill, while Britt Zerbe examines their participation in the Battle of Trafalgar and their marginalized treatment in the age of sail in “That Matchless Victory: Trafalgar, the Royal Marines and Sea Battle in the Age of Nelson.”

In “Leathernecks: The US Marine Corps in the Age of the Barbary Pirates” Charles Neimeyer discusses the origins of their contemporary nickname and their activities in America’s war with Tripoli, which is immortalized in the “Marines’ Hymn.” Benjamin Armstrong also looks at this war, but his focus is on Commodore Edward Preble and naval diplomacy in “‘Against the Common Enemies’: American Allies and Partners in the First Barbary War.”

Two other essays discuss the naval officers who also held commissions in the Marines, even though they never served as marines themselves. John D. Bolt’s “The ‘Blue Colonels’ of Marines: Sinecure and Shaping the Royal Marine Identity” explains this practice and how Royal Marines viewed it, as well as how it affected their ability to advance through the ranks. David Clammer focuses on one particular officer, who was charged with defending England’s coastline from a French invasion in “Captain Ingram, the Sea Fencibles, the Signal Stations and the Defence of Dorset.”

“The Royal Marines Battalions in the War of 1812” by Alexander Craig looks at raids and encounters in the Chesapeake Bay and Canada, while Robert K. Sutcliff’s “The First Royal Marine Battalion’s Peninsular War 1810-1812” examines their activities in Portugal and Spain. Tom Fremantle explores the thirty-six-year career of “Captain Philip Gidley King, Royal Navy, Third Governor of New South Wales,” an ancestor who served on several ships before being sent to Botany Bay to establish a base for the convict colony.

Larrie D. Ferreriro discusses the French and Spanish navies in “The Rise and Fall of the Bourbon Armada, 1744-1805: From Toulon to Trafalgar,” while Jann M. Witt explores “Smuggling and Blockade Running during the Anglo-Danish War of 1807-14.”

Another author, Allan Adair, also writes about his ancestors. He focuses on two brothers – one a captain in the Royal Marines, the other a fourteen-year-old master’s mate – who participated in Trafalgar in “Loyal Au Mort: The Adairs at the Battle of Trafalgar.” Sim Comfort, on the other hand, turns his attention to a weapon and the man who wielded it in “The Royal Marine Uniform Sword by Blake, London, Provenanced to Captain Richard Welchman, Royal Marines.”

Two additional entries in this book provide glimpses into two men who were veterans of Trafalgar: “Marine Stephen Humphries 1786-1865” and “Captain James Cottell: The Pictorial Life of a Trafalgar Veteran.” Humphries’s account of Trafalgar, his first fight, his time as a prisoner of the French, and his participation in the march on Washington are from his memoir, one of the few written by a marine that has survived to the present day. In the other offering, John Rawlinson provides background to tie together Cottell’s life with the many sketches and watercolors that he made while at sea.

For me, these last two offerings are the most intriguing and absorbing, but all the essays enlighten readers and illuminate men who deserve more recognition, but rarely receive it. Excerpts from primary documentation are included in some, while resources consulted and other materials are listed in the endnotes. Recruiting posters, maps, portraits, paintings, and tables are among the illustrations included with the contributions. A center section of color plates, including Geoff Hunt’s painting of marines aboard a ship, further enriches the text. There is also a list of contributors with short biographies. As always, the yearbook shines a spotlight on tantalizing new naval research in the 18th and early 19th centuries, and this edition with its focus on the marines makes this a praiseworthy contribution to any library or historian fascinated with the Georgian Navy.

The 1805 Club

Review Copyrighted ©2018 Cindy Vallar

Cover Art: Tragalgar
Chronicle New Series 3

The Trafalgar Chronicle New Series 3
Edited by Peter Hore
Seaforth, 2018, ISBN 978-1-4738-9976-6, £20.00 / US $32.95
Also available in e-book formats

The Trafalgar Chronicle explores new research about the Georgian navy (also known as Nelson’s Navy. Since the articles support a central theme for each edition, this latest issue focuses on women and the sea during this time period. As Margarette Lincoln points out in the opening essay, “Women and the Sea,” this topic was often overlooked until 1990 when women in the Royal Navy were finally permitted to serve at sea and Jo Stanley’s Bold in Her Breeches: Women Pirates across the Ages was published in 1995. This latest volume of The Trafalgar Chronicle “is an important step in furthering our understanding of women’s myriad connections with the sea.” (12)

The eighteen remaining articles cover a wide range of topics. Peter James Bowman’s “A Real-life Jane Austen Heroine and her Naval Hero” discusses the love story of Katherine Bisshopp and George Pechell. “Questing for Cuba Cornwallis, Nelson’s Afro-Caribbean Nurse” is Jo Stanley’s hunt to learn more about the woman who tended Horatio Nelson during his illness in Jamaica in 1780, and to understand why her minor role in his life has “been elevated into almost a heroine, and been so widely interpreted on the basis of so very little evidence.” (28) Kevin Brown examines prostitution and the navy in “Portsmouth Polls and Spithead Nymphs: Sexual Health in Nelson’s Navy.”

Using letters and correspondence, Heather Noel-Smith and Lorna M. Campbell explore the lives of three women – two mothers of midshipmen and Susan Pellew, the commander’s wife – in “‘I Shall be Anxious to Know . . .’: Lives of the Indefatigable Women.” Ellen Gill also references letters to show how women dealt with hardships and separation during war in “Letters Home: Trauma and the Cost of Conflict in Eighteenth-Century Naval Families.” During this period, soldiers were often transported overseas to fight and David Clammer examines the journeys that their wives experienced when traveling with their husbands in “Women All at Sea: Soldiers’ Wives aboard Naval Transports during the Napoleonic War.” Lucie Dutton’s “Utterly Charming and Adorable: Lady Nelson of the Silent Screen” takes a close look at why actress Ivy Close was chosen to play Fanny Nelson in Nelson: The Story of England’s Immortal Naval Hero (1918) and how Maurice Elvey crafted a love story with tense undercurrents.

Lily Style discusses “Four Female Ancestors: Life in Trade, Foreign Courts and Domesticity,” two of whom were Kitty Matcham (Horatio Nelson’s favorite sister) and Emma Hamilton (Nelson’s paramour). The latter and her mother are the focus of Geoff Wright’s “Emma, Lady Hamilton: The Untold Story,” where he explores how Emy Lyon became Lady Hamilton. Charles Fremantle’s “Lady Bentinck and the Tunis Slaves” is about a woman, dressed as a Royal Marine, participated in a mission to North Africa to recover Sicilian slaves. “Did Nelson Know Mary Anne Talbot? The Strange Story of Mary Anne Talbot” by Peter Turner demonstrates why this tale of another woman who dressed as a man cannot be true.

Marianne Kindgren and Birgitta Tingdal focus on a female smuggler who became entangled in Gotheburg’s last case of piracy in “Johanna Hård: The Story of a Swedish Piratess.” The Bank of England prosecuted a number of women whose punishment involved serving their sentences in Australia, which is the topic of Deirdre Palk’s “‘Going to the Bay in Utmost of Distress’: Women Convicts Being Transported to Australia 1803-1824.” Karen McAulay and Brianna Robertson-Kirkland demonstrate that Georgian women knew what was happening in politics and that they used the medium of music to convey this knowledge to others in “‘My Love to War is Going’: Women and Song in the Napoleonic Era.”

Each reader of The Trafalgar Chronicle will have their own favorite essays within this collection and I am no different. No matter a man’s rank or rating, men wanted to give their sweethearts mementos of their love. While officers could afford to bestow miniature portraits, those with lesser means left their women engraved coins, both of which are discussed in Sim Comfort’s “When You See Thee, Remember Me, Forget Me Not.” Particularly unique in the telling is Joe Callo’s “Television Interview with Emma, Lady Hamilton.” The question-and-answer format allows readers to gain a better understanding of this woman from her perspective, rather than how others tend to portray her. Normally, men went to sea and the females in their lives stayed home, but from 25 June 1796 to 1 September 1797, Betsey Fremantle lived at sea on several different ships. Tom Fremantle’s “The ‘Kidnap’ of Betsey Fremantle: A Captain’s Romance” tells the story of how this young refugee ended up on Inconstant, married the captain, and lived aboard warships until after she became pregnant and he was wounded.

The book includes one final essay – Sea Surgeons and the Barbers’ Company of London by Peter Willoughby – which doesn’t fit into the theme of women and the sea, yet it is equally interesting and important. Black and white images are found throughout the collection, and about one third of the way into the book is a color section of illustrations.

While this edition isn’t as absorbing as earlier volumes, the fact that it focuses on women makes this an important contribution to maritime history.

The 1805 Club

Review Copyrighted ©2019 Cindy Vallar

The Trafalgar Chronicle New Series 4
Edited by Peter Hore
Seaforth, 2019, ISBN 978-1-5267-5950-4, £20.00 / US $39.95
Also available in e-book formats

The annual journal of The 1805 Club shares the latest research into Vice Admiral Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson and his era. Each issue has a central theme, and this, the twenty-ninth such offering, focuses on his friends and contemporaries. The majority of those depicted in this volume come from families that remained loyal to the British Crown, during and after the American Revolution, even though their members lived in the American colonies at the outbreak of hostilities. Others opted to follow the road toward independence. These twenty-one essays also cover a breadth of distance, extending from Honduran islands to Australian shores and several places in between.

John Lehman’s “The Decaturs, the Lehmans and the Privateers” examines the American privateers during the Revolutionary War with particular emphasis on Captain Stephen Decatur, Senior of the Fair American, and his ship’s surgeon, George Lehman.

“The Summer Before Trafalgar” is Susan K. Smith’s survey of Benjamin Silliman, a college professor from America, who visited England in 1805. He kept a journal of his travels and special events, such as his opportunity to see Admiral Nelson and what happened when news of his final victory and death reached London.

With numerous connections to Irish officers, some of whom were mentors and others who were friends and colleagues, one might almost claim “Nelson Was an Irishman,” as Des Grant explains in his essay.

Since seamen faced many perils, it is no wonder that religion played a role in the everyday lives of the crew. Not all naval chaplains adhered to the stereotypical preacher, as The Reverend Lynda Sebbage discusses in “Sin Bo’suns in Nelson’s Ships.” One of her atypical examples is a chaplain who often found himself one step ahead of the authorities.

While men fought the conflicts, women also played their parts. Derek Morris and Kenneth Cozens look at what women of this era could and did do in “The Role of Women in London’s Sailortown in the Eighteenth Century.”

Harold E. ‘Pete’ Stark discusses “North America’s Seafaring Cities” in his essay of ports and how they evolved in North America, the Atlantic, and the Caribbean. Not all served the same purpose. Nor were they equal in importance to the Royal Navy. But all played a role in Britain’s maritime economy.

“Loyalist Mariners during the American Revolution” is Thomas B. Allen’s offering. He covers the often-neglected Whaleboat War and includes the perspective of the common sailors – such as Jacob Nagle, one of the few sailors who shared their experiences – who fought.

Tom S. Iampietro shares the story of “Admiral George Augustus Westphal,” who lived longer than any other officer who served with Nelson at Trafalgar. Wounded himself in the battle, he was with the admiral when he died. T. Jeremy Waters, on the other hand, looks at Westphal’s brother, “Admiral Philip Westphal,” whose career was overshadowed by his younger sibling.

The man who holds the record for longest naval service is “Admiral of the Fleet Sir Provo William Parry Wallis.” Jeremy B. Utt outlines this man’s career from when Wallis’s name first appeared in a muster book when he was four years old to his time as Queen Victoria’s naval aide-de-camp.

Present at Nelson’s death, “Lieutenant Richard Bulkeley” was immortalized in Benjamin’s West’s depiction of the admiral’s death, as discussed in John R. Satterfield’s essay. He was a midshipman aboard Victory, where he spoke with Nelson before he died. His own life was cut short at the age of twenty-five.

Andrew A. Zellers-Frederick contributes two offerings in this volume. The first is about one of Nelson’s Canadian friends, “Admiral Sir Manley Dixon, KCB.” The second discusses “Rear-Admiral Thomas Tudor Tucker” of Bermuda, who survived the wreck of HMS Sceptre, participated in the navy’s experiment of adding citrus to grog rations, and was present when the Royal Navy captured the USS Essex, during the War of 1812.

Anna Kiefer reviews the career of “Captain William Gordon Rutherford, CB” of North Carolina, who enlisted in the Royal Navy more than once and also served with the Honourable East India Company. Barry Jolly reconsiders the career and life of “Rear-Admiral John Peyton” since he has often been confused with other family members. Rui Ribolhos Filipe’s “The Beach of the English Dead” considers the actions of Captain Conway Shipley, the first British officer to die in action during the Peninsular War. Rather than focus on a particular person, Mark West delves into the “Russians on the Tagus” and their connection to Portsmouth and the naval hospital at Haslar.

Anthony Cross analyzes the development of hot air balloons and their use during times of war in “Bringing Up Franklin’s Baby.” Anthony Bruce assesses another weapon in warfare, the navy’s use of “The Carronade.”

The final two essays return to the Caribbean. Rear-Admiral Michael Harris investigates the “Battle of St. George’s Cay, 10 September 1798,” which also has ties to British seafarers and buccaneers. Douglas Hamilton probes the extraordinary career of “Captain John Perkins,” a black officer and former slave assigned to protect British colonies involved in slavery.

In addition to these articles, black-and-white illustrations, tables, and maps are found throughout the book. There is also a section of color plates depicting ships, campaigns, and commentary involving the Royal Navy. While notes are included, no index is provided.

This latest offering of The Trafalgar Chronicles educates, clarifies, and demystifies the Nelson Era. Its focus is broader than some previous issues, but this serves to immerse readers in a wider swath of topics that might otherwise be missed. The fourth volume in the new series is a compelling review of the variety and depth of research being conducted and readers will meet people and visit places that are more often than not forgotten in history books.

The 1805 Club

Review Copyrighted ©2020 Cindy Vallar

The Trafalgar Chronicle: New Series 5
Edited by Judith E. Pearson, Sean Heuvel, and John Rodgaard
Seaforth, 2020, ISBN 978-1-5267-5962-7, US $39.95 / UK £20.00

Do visual portrayals of Horatio Nelson do him justice? Are they realistic, or do they stem from their creators’ imagination and interpretation of him? How authentic is literature’s depiction of the Georgian navy and the men and women who served in one capacity or another? These are themes explored in the latest yearbook of The 1805 Club.

Using his medical expertise, Gerald Stule opens with “Representations of Horatio Nelson in the Visual Arts: Heroic Portraiture Versus Historical Reality from a Medical Perspective.” He examines the visual depictions of Nelson, his ailments, and his battle injuries in various mediums to show whether the portrayals are correct, how they may have affected Nelson, and how they shaped his image as a flawed, courageous hero who deserved his countrymen’s veneration.

Andrew Venn utilizes eyewitness accounts of Nelson’s tragic demise and compares them to two paintings of the admiral’s final moments in “William Beatty, Arthur Devis and the Death of Lord Nelson in Early Nineteenth-Century Literature and Art.” This allows Venn to demonstrate how this event impacted the legend surrounding Nelson’s death and how we perceive these events today.

“Nelson has more faces than a clock factory, but nobody today can be certain about what he really looked like.” (45) He has long been a favorite subject to portray, whether these depictions be fulsome or disparaging. This is the subject of cartoonist Pete Turner’s “Nelson in Caricature and Cartoon.”

In 1748, an author and former sailor penned a novel that became a big success. Its contents and his descriptions of the Georgian navy influenced many subsequent writers of the 18th century, even if those depictions weren’t as authentic as historical accounts show. Anthony Bruce discusses The Adventures of Roderick Random in “Tobias Smollet and the Early Georgian Navy.”

In spite of the fact that women played significant roles in the lives of Georgian navy men, historical novelists often portray them as peripheral entities. As Linda Collison points out in “Beyond Lady Barbara: Women as Portrayed in British Naval Fiction,” this often misleads readers into thinking that women played less than significant roles both at home and at sea.

It is during the Georgian era that the fouled anchor is introduced on the uniforms naval officers wore. Its popularity as a decorative item blossomed thereafter. Lily Style, an expert on Emma Hamilton and a direct descendant of her union with Horatio Nelson, explores the use of this symbol in “The Rise of the Fouled Anchor: The Visual Codification of the Royal Navy During the 1700s.”

France is often depicted as the ally who came to the aid of the American colonists in their bid to gain their freedom from Great Britain, but Chipp Reid reveals that Spain also played a significant role in the revolution. He also explains why few people are aware of this connection in “Spain and American Independence: The Best-Kept Secret of the Georgian Age.”

In addition to these thematic essays, the new editors of The Trafalgar Chronicle have chosen to include biographical portraits and three historic papers pertaining to the navy during the Georgian era. These include:

“Sir Andrew Pellet Green: Vice Admiral Thomas Fremantle’s Protégé” by Charles Fremantle
“Commander Sir James Pearl” by Sean Heuvel
“Captain John Houlton Marshall” by John Rodgaard and Lisa Heuvel
“Captain Ralph Willett Miller” by Gerald Holland
“The Popham Code Controversy” by Chris Coehlo
“Cornwallis, a Woman Named Cuba, and the Caribbean” by Barry Jolly
“A Second Naval War: The Immediate Effects of the American War on Royal Navy Operations, June 1812-July 1812” by Samantha Cavell

When combined with black and white illustrations, a few graphs and tables, and a center section of color plates, these essays are entertaining and, at times, fascinating. All the contributors are eminently qualified and, as always, The Trafalgar Chronicle provides informative glimpses into new research that leave indelible impressions on readers.

The 1805 Club

Review Copyrighted ©2021 Cindy Vallar