Welcome to the third issue of
our occasional newsletter.
Latest
News
Thanks to everyone for feedback
on our latest book, The War for All the
Oceans.
It has been widely reviewed, and many of the
reviews have been extremely complimentary. Here are extracts from two of
them:
[The] post-1805 section is packed with
dramatic incidents and colourful personalities, leaving the reader breathless
with its accounts of battles at all corners of the globe ... the great celebrant of the sailing navy,
novelist Patrick O’Brian, once said that naval history of the Nelsonian period
is Britain’s Iliad. Like Homer’s epic, it is a story of ‘so many sturdy souls/
great fighters’ souls’. Lesley and Roy Adkins deserve our gratitude for allowing
some of those ‘sturdy souls’ to speak again so vividly. (Colin White,
Director of the Royal Naval Museum at Portsmouth, The
Observer)
This is a fascinating, lively, tour
d’horizon of the Royal Navy and its
battles, its trials and tribulations, its way of life in an era of heroes known
– Nelson, Cochrane, Hood – and heroes unknown, such as Capt Christopher
Cole. (Navy News)
We have been busy signing books
in various shops. Not at ‘book-signings’, those terrifying events where an
author sits and hopes that someone other than his mother will come and buy the
book. Instead, we have been signing what books the shops have in stock, because
they welcome this in the approach to Christmas, as signed hardback books are
popular gifts. So, in case anyone is still looking for a Christmas present for a
relative who has everything, we are keeping an up-to-date list on our website of
places with signed copies.
Giving talks about some of the
events in our book has also been keeping us busy – we have already given talks at Barnstaple,
Warwick, Torquay and Tiverton, and talks for next year are being discussed and
will be found on our website (under ‘Latest News’).
Latest
Expedition
This summer we spent some time
at Newcastle to do some research and visit some naval monuments set up to people
we had mentioned in The War for All the
Oceans. We were in the cathedral looking at the monument to Nelson’s friend
and fellow-admiral Cuthbert Collingwood when a cloudburst occurred, so we
decided to stay in the cathedral and explore further.
There are many interesting
features tucked away in the shadows of the side aisles, but for us the prize was
the tomb monument of John Collingwood Bruce on the south side of the chancel.
Appropriately, the monument’s inscription is in Latin, and so it would be easy
to pass by the dedication to ‘Johannis Collingwood Bruce’ and not immediately
realise that this was the man behind the most famous guidebook to Hadrian’s
Wall. Originally published as The Wallet
Book of the Roman Wall in 1863, and later issued as The Handbook of the Roman Wall, it stood
the test of time, and the last revised edition appeared in 1978. Early editions
are now sought-after collector’s items, and later editions are still a useful
source for archaeologists and historians.
Born in 1805, Bruce trained for
the presbyterian church, but then assisted his father who owned a school called
the Percy Street Academy in Newcastle. When his father died in 1834, Bruce ran
the school himself until he retired in 1863. He died in 1892.
Throughout his life he was an enthusiastic antiquary, publishing various
research papers and books, and belonging to many societies. He was
elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1852, and served as
secretary and vice-president of the Newcastle Society of Antiquaries. His
interests ranged far beyond the Romans, and he published The Handbook of English History in 1848
and helped to revive interest in the folk music of Northumberland. But to many
generations of historians, travellers and tourists, he is known as the man who
wrote the guide to Hadrian’s Wall.
Monument of the
Month
In the novels of Patrick
O’Brian, the naval surgeon Stephen Maturin acts as a spy, largely without the
knowledge of his captain, Jack Aubrey. In reality the highly educated men on
board the ships of Nelson’s navy, such as surgeons, chaplains and schoolmasters,
often acted as gatherers of naval intelligence, but usually they worked in close
co-operation with the senior naval officers on board. One such chaplain, who
worked with Nelson himself, was Dr Alexander Scott. He was an exceptional
linguist, being fluent in French, Spanish and Italian, so he could not only
translate foreign newspapers and 
captured documents, but
also assist in interrogating prisoners and in picking up information at foreign
ports. In 1802, before he was Nelson’s chaplain, he was on board the frigate Topaz in the West Indies when the ship
was struck by lightning. Scott was asleep in the captain’s cabin and the bolt
ignited gunpowder cartridges stored above –
the electric shock and explosion knocked out several teeth, injured his jaw and
affected his sight and hearing. Scott was lucky to escape alive (the lightning
strike killed or wounded fourteen other men), but he never fully recovered his
health and understandably suffered from ‘nerves’ from then on.
With Nelson he served as
chaplain and ‘foreign secretary’, and at the height of the Battle of Trafalgar
he was helping the surgeons in the cockpit. This was one of the bloodiest naval
battles of the Napoleonic war. The carnage that the surgeons were struggling to
cope with was almost more than he could stand. He was just going on deck for
some fresh air when the wounded Nelson was carried down. Scott followed him and
supported the admiral until he died. He remained with the corpse, day and night,
until the morning of Nelson’s funeral, and even then he almost had to be
forcibly led away from the coffin.
In later life Scott led a more
tranquil existence as vicar of Southminster, and then vicar of Catterick and
chaplain to the Prince Regent. He died at Ecclesfield in Yorkshire in 1840 at
the age of 72, and his tomb can be found to the north of the church. Many thanks
to Christopher Catling of the Society of Antiquaries of London for suggesting
this as ‘monument of the month’.
Christmas in
Napoleonic Times
At least from Roman times, if
not before, there have been celebrations around the time of the shortest day.
This period sees the darkest days of the year, and before efficient lighting by
electricity or gas they could be very bleak. People celebrated by feasting and
drinking to cheer themselves up, and also to welcome the fact that the worst of
the dark days were over. Even in cities, people were very aware of the changing
seasons and knew that the weather was likely to become worse in January and
February, but at least the days would become longer and brighter on the way
towards spring. This midwinter celebration was adopted by the Christian Church,
but when the Puritans tried to stamp out the festival, it was driven
underground.
By Napoleonic times, although
the season had not acquired the sentimentality and formality that the later
Victorians would give it, the basic elements of eating, drinking, making merry
and giving presents were all back in place. Apart from the modern commercial
trappings of Christmas, perhaps the most striking difference between now and 200
years ago is that Christmas Day was not then a universal holiday–
although people celebrated, they were not automatically allowed time off from
work and had no rights to a paid holiday. It was in the hands of employers what,
if any, holidays their workers were given.
During the Napoleonic Wars, as
in any long period of warfare, civilians at home frequently suffered shortages,
and the high price of some foods curtailed the Christmas feasting. In rural
areas, as well as their liturgical duties, many vicars gave a dinner for the
poor at Christmas. In 1800 William Holland, Vicar at Overstowey in Somerset,
wrote in his diary for Christmas Day, ‘I gave this day a good dinner to the
Sunday School children and had a great many to dine in the kitchen. I think that
there were no less [than] thirty nine that dined at my expence.’ In the evening
it was the turn of the adults, who were invited to dinner.
Many families were split up by
fathers and sons being away fighting the French, and letters from them took
weeks, if not months, to reach home. The men themselves made the best of it,
particularly if they were in a position to celebrate. The seaman Robert Wilson
spent Christmas 1807 on board HMS Unité
at Malta. He wrote in his diary: ‘25th. Sent our powder on shore. Did no further
duty this day but had a jovial day of it, everyone in the ship having an
excellent dinner and extra liquor allowed on board us. There was mirth, glee,
there was dancing, singing, quarrelling, fighting and such an uproar fore and
aft, that if your life depended on it you could not make out a sentence that was
said.’ Eventually the celebrations subsided, and Wilson recorded that ‘our
surgeon came about to see that no one was hurt by falls, etc. I recollect he
came to one man who was laying down, tipsy as you please, and ordered a clothes
bag to be put under his head; which upon their lifting his head, I heard him say
“another drop of grog and then I don’t care how soon I die”.’
Others, though, were not so
lucky, and in 1814, towards the end of the war with America, Lieutenant George
Gleig of the 85th Regiment was in a barn outside New Orleans. Spent cannonballs
from an American warship on the nearby river were bouncing off the barn wall. In
his diary Gleig spoke for many who were trying to celebrate Christmas after
suffering many weary years of warfare: ‘At so melancholy a Christmas dinner I do
not recollect at any time to have been present. We dined in a barn; of plates,
knives and forks there was a dismal scarcity, nor could our fare boast of much
either in intrinsic good quality, or in the way of cooking. These, however, were
mere matters of merriment: it was the want of many well known and beloved faces
that gave us pain; nor were any other subjects discussed, besides the amiable
qualities of those who no longer formed part of our mess, and never would again
form part of it.’
Competition
Results
Last month’s competition was
unfortunately too clever by half and – with hindsight – was rather misleading.
The argument over the mismatch between the calendar and the seasons rumbled on
for centuries after the initial introduction of the Gregorian Calendar, and
different parts of Europe adopted different solutions: some even continued using
the Julian Calendar. There was a further complication caused by the fact that
with the passage of time the gap between the two systems grew larger, so that by
the early nineteenth century it was not ten days but twelve. The rural vicar who
let his servant have a holiday on old Christmas Day in 1808 was William Holland,
and in his diary he constantly refers to 6 January as old Christmas Day.
However, before 1800 the gap was closer to 5 days rather than 6, and from the
way we set the question, we unfortunately implied that the answer was 4 January.
So anyone who answered 4, 5 or 6 January we took as correct and the two winners,
first out of the hat, are Terry Janes and Colin Winn, both of whom saw through
the fog in the question and got the answer absolutely right.
Competition
Just before the Battle of
Trafalgar, Nelson sent six battleships from his fleet to Gibraltar for supplies:
one of these was the Canopus. The Canopus was once the French ship Franklin that had been captured at the
Battle of the Nile and then renamed Canopus after the ancient port of Egypt.
The captain of the Canopus, whose
first name was Francis, missed the Battle of Trafalgar and, as he said, lost
‘all share in the glory of a day, which surpasses all which ever went before’.
Francis had a sister who would become a famous novelist. Was this novelist;
A) Jane Austen?
B) Charlotte Brontë?
C) Frances (Fanny) Burney?
D) Elizabeth Gaskell?
E) Mary Shelley?
Two winners will each receive a
signed copy of The Little Book of
Egyptian Hieroglyphs. The closing date is 10 February 2007.
In the Next
Issue
Traditional songs to welcome
spring and summer, regulars like Monument of the Month, and all our latest
news.