THE TRAFALGAR CHRONICLE
Dedicated to Naval History in the Nelson Era
New Series 4
Journal
of
THE 1805 CLUB
Edited by
P ETER H ORE
In association with The 1805 Club
Text copyright individual authors 2019
First published in Great Britain in 2019 by
Seaforth Publishing,
A division of Pen & Sword Books Ltd,
47 Church Street,
Barnsley S70 2AS
www.seaforthpublishing.com
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 5267 5950 4 ( PAPERBACK )
ISBN 978 1 5267 5951 1 ( EPUB )
ISBN 978 1 5267 5952 8 ( KINDLE )
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Presidents Foreword
Earlier this year we gathered at St Mary the Virgin, Merton, for the funeral of The 1805 Clubs long-standing and charismatic chairman, Peter Warwick. The church was full and the service, which Peter had designed, centred around his many interests and especially his love for Lord Nelson. Peter Warwick will be much missed: it is a tribute to him, and a sign of the life that he breathed into the Club, and his enthusiasm for everything he touched that the Trafalgar Chronicle goes from strength to strength. As a centre of excellence and the goto publication for new research and writing about Admiral Nelson, his life and times, the Trafalgar Chronicle sticks to its last. It continues to draw in new material and new information about that period, from authors ranging from leading academics to novitiates, and to provide the reader with hours of entertaining reading and much unexpected and interesting knowledge.
The American War of Independence separated one English-speaking nation, which by the eighteenth century was firmly established on both sides of the ocean. As is clear from reading this years Trafalgar Chronicle , families were divided by their loyalties to the Crown or to the newly proclaimed Republic, yet here too lay the foundation of the special relationship that serves down to this day to the mutual benefit of the USA and the United Kingdom. Ties of language and culture could not be broken by war, and cousinships continued to prosper across the North Atlantic.
Therefore, it is appropriate that this year there will be sea-change in the leadership at the Trafalgar Chronicle . The 1805 Club is an international organisation, and the new editors are based in the USA. I wish them every success as the journal enters its third decade.
A DMIRAL S IR J ONATHON B AND GCB DL
Former First Sea Lord
President of the 1805 Club
This very rare Trafalgar medal and unique ribbon were recently discovered by Sim Comfort.The medal is a Boulton Trafalgar medal named to Yorkshireman Thomas Jepson, Landsman on board HMS Revenge . What makes it unique is the light blue watered silk ribbon with Trafalgar Revenge painted in black and gold, and that Jepson was a substitute who later, after being promoted to Able Seaman, deserted. How the medal came into the possession of fellow Yorkshireman John Wray and was worn by him when sexton of Holy Trinity Church, Ripon, is a story told by Sim Comfort in the Autumn 2019 edition of the Nelson Despatch , the quarterly journal of the Nelson Society. Research into the medal and ribbon are ongoing and Sim Comfort will make an updated version of his report in a subsequent edition of the Trafalgar Chronicle . (Sim Comfort)
Editors Foreword
The theme for this edition of the Trafalgar Chronicle , the 29th, is Nelsons 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 Nelsons 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 Nelsons 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 177583 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 records the life of a ScotsAmerican, William Rutherford. Finally, Barry Jolly offers a slightly alternative interpretation of the achievements of John Peyton to that which your editor recorded in Nelsons Band of Brothers.
Entries by Rui Ribolhos and Mark West, The Beach of the English Dead and Russians on the Tagus , remind the reader how unlikely events can coincide upon foreign shores. Two stalwarts of the Trafalgar Chronicle , Anthony Cross and Tony Bruce, have written important articles about technology in Nelsons time, about ballooning and the tactical advantages of the carronade. Finally, there is a vignette about an obscure battle on the edges of the Caribbean by Michael Harris and, still in those waters, Douglas Hamilton offers a definite biography of black Jack Punch Perkins.
